We are often more ashamed than grieved and humbled for our sins. Our own consciousness of them, and of God’s being privy to them, does not pain us near so much as it would to have them known to others. See, therefore, whether what you call our penitence is not more pride than any thing else…Not one is a thousand forms his plan of life, and pursues it steadily, from principle and regard to the will of God; if we did, there would hardly be an unhappy man in the world. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
It is so hard to get it beyond the mere awareness of it that men live in the sight of God and that He knows all of their desires, intents, motives, and thoughts. The old phrase, Coram Deo, teaches us that we live in the presence (or face) of God each moment. It is so easy to come to the knowledge of that reality, but it is far harder (even impossible for the natural man) to actually have all things guided by that reality. We are more ashamed of ourselves in failing to live up to our own standards than we have shame before a holy God. We have more shame of our sin being seen by others than of knowing that it is against God and in His presence. But despite our shame for our sin to ourselves and before others, why are we so immune to have shame before God?
The question in the previous paragraph should teach us the nature of our own hearts. We live by sight rather than by faith. We live by what our eyes see and what our five senses can sense more than we live in the presence of the thrice holy God who for all eternity will retain His anger for our sin if we don’t have Christ. For believers, their sin is in the presence of the One they claim to love with all of their being and of the One they say they prefer over all things. When a person lives in such a way that that s/he has more shame to self or before others rather than before God for sin, this is a demonstration of a fleshly heart. One of the things that a Christian must do is to live before God because Christ is the life of the heart of the believer.
It is important to think of faith as something more than just intellectually believing certain things, but instead to think of faith as the spiritual sight of the soul. A soul with faith is a soul with spiritual understanding or spiritual sight, which should show how the soul with faith lives a certain way because that soul lives in the presence of a seen (eyes of faith) God. The soul that has more shame for sin in the presence of other humans rather than God is a person that demonstrates a lack of true faith.
A person of faith, that is, one who lives before God should form all plans and all aspects of life from regard to the will of God. While it may be thought of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6) as something we repeat, it is in fact something we are to be transformed into as we pray. If we truly pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, then we will seek His will in all we do on earth. His will is what should guide us in what we do rather than the fleshly heart and desires that we can cover over with pious sounding words. It is to the degree that we have faith that we will live in His presence and seek to do His will in all things. It is to the degree that our hearts are set on the self and flesh that we will live to do our own will in all things. But of course our deceptive hearts will seek to do our own will with pious and spiritual sounding excuses.
For the soul that loves God with all of its being (at least longing to do so), it will want to please God by doing the will and pleasure of God in all it does. This is a soul that wants to be delivered from the hands of a fool (self) and of fools (humans focused on earthly things) and to do and long for the will of God to be done. How can we claim to love God with all of our being if we are not seeking to live out of love for Him? How can we claim to live out of love for Him if we don’t want to do His will rather than our own? How can we claim to love Him if we don’t want to know what His will is, yet if we know His will how can we not seek it? Living in the presence of God to please Him is at the very heart of Christianity. After all, Christ died to deliver His people from sin and what is sin but not living for the glory of God. Christ came to do the will of the Father and for those He dwells in (all Christians in truth) He will work in them to love and do the will of the Father as well. This is something of what it means to live in the presence of God.
God Loves... Himself 
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