January 2023… as the New Year dawns, I peer down the road brimming with uncertainties and possibilities and wonder, what will this year bring? As I reflect back on 2022, I ponder the past and wonder, what lingers?

Ann Voskamp’s recent bookThe Waymaker, inspires me. Early on, she includes a reminder of “history’s first good question” posed by God after the Fall.

Genesis 3:9:  But the LORD God called the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?'”

Is it possible that omniscient God, maker of heaven and earth, had no idea where Adam was physically? If God is almighty and knows literally everything about us, why ask Adam this question? Is He asking me the same?

Ann Voskamp replies:

When an all-knowing God asks a question—”Where are you?”isn’t He only asking so you will begin to know the answer? [ … God isn’t asking for Adam’s or anyone’s coordinatesHe’s asking me to seek out and coordinate my heart with His. The disappointments and delusions, the dreams and desperate hopes, these are already known to an all-knowing God. He asks you where you are in your life because He wants you to name the place, see the place, sit with it even befriend it.’

Pastor Kyle Norman explains:

Where are you?” speaks to Gods ever nearness and heartfelt desire to be in an intimate relationship with us. By merely asking the question, God declares that nothing is irredeemable; there is nothing that cannot be forgiven.

Identifying where I am spiritually and emotionally does not come naturally to me. I must work to look beneath the surface into the murky recesses of my soul. But drawn by His own beautiful, broken heart, I accept.

I am not one to take on momentous New Year’s resolutions. But I believe that God is at the door of our hearts right here, right now; He whispers tenderly, Where are you?” He is waiting for us to stop, to reflect and come to him with our truth: our sorrows, our joys, our guilt, our questions, our fears, our cold or indifferent hearts…So this day with the Spirit as my guide, I choose to open my heart, recognize all that is there, and reveal all to Him.

 May this be your greatest desire this January: To know yourself as you seek to know Him, to present yourself authentically to the One who longs to receive all that you are in order to shape you further into the image of His dear Son.

 Behold, Jesus stands at the door of your heart, and He knocks. If you hear His voice and open the door, He will come into your house, He will sup with you, and you with Him.

A prayer for 2023:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me and know my anxious thoughts;

And see if there be any hurtful way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way. Amen

–From Psalm 139:23 and 24

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