Where Are You?

I loved playing hide and seek with my children when they were young. Who am I fooling? We still play the game and they are teenagers. Now that they are older it takes me a lot longer to locate them. They get impatient and tired of waiting on me and start yelling, "Mom you coming? Mom where are you?" It would seem that I should be yelling that to them since they are the ones hiding.

In life we can experience seasons when we just don't know where we are! I don't necessarily mean in a physical sense, although I'm sure that's possible. I'm referring to seasons of life when we don't know how we ended up in our current condition.

You didn't mean to get over your head in debt, but it happened. The frivolous spending and mis-managed budget resulted in consequences of lack. Or maybe it was your selfish need to win every argument with your spouse and now a few years into the marriage and the damage is done, communication is little to none and intimacy has disappeared altogether. Or perhaps you have drifted so far from your original goals of raising your children to love, respect, honor and worship God and instead you overbooked your weekends and substituted family devotions for ball games and ballet lessons. Now years later you don't understand why your teenagers want nothing to do with church.

How did we get here?

You may not know where you are, but God does! He has followed your every step watching as you continued to do it on your own. So many times He longed for you to recognize His prompting. With His still small voice He was urging you back. He's been waiting on you to get tired of hiding and for feeling ashamed because of the decisions you made.

He longs to be with you...

He loves you, unconditionally. He never walked away, you did.

Now matter how far gone you feel you have traveled away from Him, or how lost you think you may be, He would do anything to hear you say, "Father where are you? Please come find me!"

Matthew 18:12-14 "If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go in search of the one that went astray?  And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."