Daily Devo:Aug 7 Where are you?

How many times have you said, "If God would just give me a giant neon sign" or "If God would just tell me really loudly then I would know what to do"?  We so often think to ourselves, it's not faith in God that we lack it's faith in ourselves that we struggle with! We are struggling to break free from the stuck we are in and we are looking frantically for a sign, any sign that will tell us how to find that peace we so desperately long to find. Yet, the more we look, the more we just see panic and stress and to-do lists.
I was reading Genesis 3: 9-11 and the words God spoke to Adam and Eve in the Garden stuck out to me.

But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

 I laughed to myself and thought, "That is us!" Right, there, that is us! Here we are stuck in the muck of our own making and crying out to God and He's asking us the same questions. Just like when He called out to Adam and Eve. He calls out to us is our muck and asks us "Where are you?" not because He doesn't know, but because He is calling us OUT. Most of the time we don't know where we are. We are so busy being busy we haven't bothered to take a look around and actually look at where we are and notice we aren't even on the right path. He is calling us OUT and back to Him. The same way we redirect a young child who has stopped doing something we have asked, He is redirecting our attention to the path we should be walking by asking us a simple "Where are you?"
But that is a loaded question and like Adam we will hopefully end up in a place of humble repentance. Notice God's next question though. "Who told you that?" He didn't just say, "Oh good I'm glad you realized your mistakes. Ok now run along and don't do that again." God got right to the heart of the matter. If we are seeking the Kingdom first, there is no room for validation or purpose from anywhere else.  God point blank called Adam out on it. Who told you something other than what I have told you? He didn't ask any question that He didn't already know the answer to but He gave Adam the chance to answer these questions for himself. Adam and Eve needed to confess their sins in order to realize for themselves that they had disobeyed their Maker and strayed from His commands. I hear sternness in His voice, but there is a deep, Fatherly love there too. God directed them to see their mistakes for themselves rather than just obliterating them with His anger and disappointment like I am guilty of doing with my own children sometimes.
When we are stuck, God calls out to us the same way He did Adam and Eve. He is calling us out of our own chaotic mess. He's asking us the questions that call into question the mess we have created by straying from the path HE created in order to follow the path WE created. He's calling us back to Him. Where are you? And when you hear all those negative things swirling around in your head that keep you stuck telling you that you can't move or that you aren't worth coming back or that it's too late or that you have to do all these important things first and on and on...Who told you that? If God has not spoken the words, you should not listen to them. Those are words to live by. Our lives today get so complicated that it's hard to figure out how we fashion our lives into godly ones in the midst of such a busy world. So I leave you with this excerpt from The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa

"This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because, like slaves, we servilely fear punishment, nor to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some businesslike and contractual arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful, and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire."