Where Are You?

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

WHERE ARE YOU?

Gen 3:8-10

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

NIV

Here is where we know that the LORD God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. This was his usual for he had made man in their own image to have fellowship with him. The Lord God, or Yahweh ‘Elohiym came looking for the man, Adam, to talk with him. We believe because He is the LORD God, the supreme one, the ruler of all things, Yahweh, that He already knew what had happened in the garden. It is also interesting that although Moses records his name as Yahweh, he adds ‘Elohiym to the name of the LORD God. Later in the lives of the Jewish people, they would not pronoun the name of God, the name Yahweh, which is but an English transliteration of JHHW, the existing one, which the Jews instead of saying, used the name ‘Adonay, meaning the Lord. However, here He is referred to as the LORD God, the complete name of God, the existing one, the ruler of all. We believe God has not changed and thus the LORD God whom we love and serve is the same as the day he walked in the garden he created looking to fellowship with his man. The big question of the day is that which the LORD God asked. “Where are you?”. Because Adam was ashamed and tried to hide from God in the trees, God asked that question. God knew where Adam was but wanted Adam to come forward on his own accord in response to the question, “Where are you?”. Although this was a question of the physical location of Adam, we think the LORD God asks us this same question, but in regards to our spiritual location, or rather condition. We know we cannot hide from God, in fact, the Spirit is dwelling within us. However, we do have the ability to quench the Spirit and listen to our own voice which leads us in the wrong direction most, if not all, of the time. This is when God asks us, “Where are you?” We think it would be far better to forget about the shame of our nakedness, and our sins, and simply walk with God in the cool of the day, staying in fellowship with him. But there are those times when our voice rings too loud and we want what we want and when we want it. We let someone interfere with our fellowship with God and we get those hurt feelings or get upset about someone who did not do what we wanted or did something we didn’t want, or we get jealous, envious, prideful, or gossip, or so many of the other selfish, self-centered, emotional pitfalls available to us and then the LORD God is there asking, “Where are you?”