Where are You

Think about your Christian walk, has God ever had to say to you, “where are you?”  We have a choice to make every day, and that is that we can be so close to God that He will never have to say those words to us, or we can choose to try to hide from God and hear God say, “where are you?”  Choices have a way of hindering us or blessing us.

Wouldn’t life be easier if believers didn’t have a choice, if we didn’t have a free will?  Wouldn’t it be better if God made all the choices for us?  Just think, we would never make a bad choice and we would never sin.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be like puppets and whichever way God pulled the string we would follow?  I believe that it would make life much easier in the long run.

Just think, it would eliminate pride, it would also eliminate judgmental attitudes. There would be no competition in ministries.  I wonder how many programs would be eliminated and how much money would be saved by us not having to keep up with the Jones’ in and out of church.  I wonder how many mega churches would be around, with all the bells and whistles, that seem to be closing their doors more and more each day.  It seems to me if the world has it the church has to try to out do them, but remember it is said to be done in the name of the Lord.

One thing I think would be great is when people say they love you it wouldn’t be superficial it would be genuine not fake.  If God was calling the shots we wouldn’t lie to each other, no only the truth would be heard.  Another thing I just thought of the Bible says, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.  And love your neighbor as yourself.”  These wouldn’t be just words but they would be lived out.

When the Bible says that we shouldn’t show favoritism it wouldn’t happen.  Also when the Bible says that we should love our enemies we really would.  There wouldn’t be any phony hypocritical Christians, all would be real.

Just think we wouldn’t be worried about offending people which can’t be helped if you are a Christian and we would witness leaving the results to God.

We wouldn’t be waiting for people to come to our churches by making them user friendly, no we would be out witnessing and bringing people into our churches.  When is the last time you did that?

Think how easy it would be to praise and thank the Lord if the Lord was truly present instead of chalking things up to luck, or chance, which I don’t think should ever come out of a Christian’s mouth.  My Bible says, “the steps of a righteous man are ordained of God.”

If God was calling the shots there wouldn’t be enough churches to hold all the people that would want to be there. Instead of churches closing their doors because of lack of funds there would be an overflow of cash in God’s store houses. For sure people wouldn’t be robbing God, no the fear of the Lord would be instilled in our hearts like it should be, and people would be paying their tithes and offerings with joy and gladness.  Praise God!     

Everything would be affected even our government. The constitution would still be in effect and judges would not be legislating from the bench.  The government would be for the people, instead of trying to destroy the nation and enslave the people.  The U.S.A. would still be the nation that God intended it to be.  To be truthful much of what is going on today is not just the government’s fault but all of us are guilty in some form or other.  Righteousness exalts a nation and evil brings a nation down.

Things would be so different if God were to control everything.  Demons would be jumping out of windows, the blind would see, the deaf would hear and the lame would walk.  All kinds of diseases would be healed and I could go on and on.

But now let’s get back to reality God doesn’t chose to control everything because He allows us to have a free will to make good and bad choices.  That is why God can be called a just God.  And that is why there are consequences for the choices we make either good or bad.

When did God use the words, “where are you?”  When he spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden, in the book of Genesis the second chapter.  Adam and Eve sinned and they were hiding from God because of it, because they were afraid. Before this terrible sin took place they would walk with God in the cool of the day.  Because of their sin there was some terrible consequences that not only affected them but also the whole human race.  Sin usually affects more than just the person that sins.

When we sin it causes us to be separated from God, in many cases it makes us fear and it always ends up with consequences.  

Question can you hear the Lord saying to you, “where are you?” because of the sins in your life that you haven’t dealt with?  Has fear overtaken you so that you are hiding from God?  God doesn’t want you to hide He wants you to confess and repent of your sins.  He knows about your sin and He wants you to take responsibility for it.  He seeks the humble and contrite heart, which He will not despise. He draws to the humble and resists the proud, so humble yourself before the Lord and He will lift you up in His time.

Confess and repent and ask the Lord to forgive you for your sins and if you are sincere He will.  Don’t put it off another minute and don’t let the devil deceive you with his lies like Eve did.  God loves you and He wants a relationship with you so instead of hiding because of sin keep short accounts with God.  If you fall into temptation deal with it right away and get your sins under the blood where they can be cleansed and washed away to be remembered no more.  And then start thanking and praising the Lord, He is worthy.  God inhabits the praise of His people, in other words He loves it when we thank and praise Him. So start now ~ Praise God!