Where Are You? (Moments With Grace)

 Pastor Grace DeCuir already knows how you'll answer. You're right here. You're sitting in a chair, maybe in your bedroom, listening to her.

She asks anyway: "But where are you? On that spiritual thermometer, where are you?"

The question isn't new. In Genesis, after Adam and Eve disobeyed God and made clothes from what they had in the garden, they heard Him walking in the cool of the day, and they hid. Adam had been talking with God all along. Now God called out a rhetorical question: "Adam, where are you?"

In this episode of Moments with Grace, Pastor Grace says God is asking all of us the same thing today. The honest answer is where the way back begins.

Where have you pitched your tent?

She points to people in Scripture who lost track of where they stood, several of them right after a miracle.

The children of Israel saw ten plagues, crossed the Red Sea, and watched Pharaoh's army drown. They rejoiced for a second. Then they began to complain. Elijah watched God rain down fire that licked up the water and burned the sacrifice. Then Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran, hid in a cave, and told God he was the only one left. He began, as Pastor Grace puts it, to feel sorry for himself. After the disciples had seen the risen Jesus, Peter announced he was going fishing, and others followed.

"Have you gone back to an old trade or way of thinking?" she asks.

Maybe you're lower than that, like the widow of Zarephath preparing what she believed would be her last meal. Or maybe you're in a valley: of depression, of hopelessness, of anger and resentment, of anxiety, of quiet quitting.

The assessment you already take

Every trip to the doctor includes an assessment, whether you notice or not. Are you feeling sad? Has your appetite changed? Are you keeping up with your normal daily functions? Are there days you don't feel like getting out of bed? 

She wants us to run the same checkup on our spirits. Are there days now when you don't feel like going to church? Have you stopped getting up to pray? Are you reading the Word like you used to?

The most telling symptom is also the easiest to miss: "You're no longer getting in a hurry when it's time — your set time to meet God."

Your spirit never turns off 

We're finding out that our devices never really power down. Somehow, they're still on. Your spirit, she says, is the same. Fall asleep with the television or a device playing, and it's still feeding your spiritual man, because your spiritual man doesn't sleep.

What goes in matters every day. Stop drinking water and your body starts talking to you; your organs begin to speak up. Deprive the spirit of the Word, praise, worship, and fellowship, and it starves too. You need enough of the Word inside you that when things look hopeless, you can still speak the word of faith.

Instead, "we almost need a Holy Ghost IV." We've pushed the Holy Spirit, our teacher, keeper, leader, and guide, to the back burner and started running our own program. A few days away become weeks, then months. Then we blame our parents, the church, the pastor. Sometimes we even blame God.

Pastor Grace contrasts that with the old church she's just young enough to remember. Some of those saints couldn't read, but they knew the Bible. Some couldn't carry a note, but they sang. They showed up for prayer, Bible study, and Sunday school, and if they were in pain, nobody knew. "We didn't know if they were boiling a pot of water at home, believing God for some meat," she says. "But they came to church and they praised God with everything that they had."

The church had to evolve with technology so the gospel could reach all the world, she acknowledges, but the spirit still has to be fed. Her prescription is simple: read the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Proverbs, and pray as you read.

Take me back

 The way back starts with honesty. We can be grateful we're not where we used to be and still admit we aren't where we're supposed to be. We're slipping into old behaviors, old thinking, and things we said we'd never do.

 Then she leads a prayer that says it out loud. It borrows from the prodigal son, but it's written for someone who never left home. "Maybe I didn't go and live some ratchet life, but I was still there," she prays. "But I just don't love you like I used to."

 She asks forgiveness for being lukewarm, for anger deflected onto a spouse, children, and grandchildren, and for walking away quietly from trusting God. "I called it explaining," she confesses, "but God, I've complained."

 She asks for restoration: a clean heart, a right spirit, the joy of salvation, and a passion for God Himself rather than for a stage or a platform. It's time, she says, to get in a hurry again and run back. And she thanks God for loving her in spite of herself, and for another chance, and another, and another.

 God asked Adam where he was, and He's still asking. Pastor Grace's answer, and the one she invites you to give, is two words: "Yes, Lord."