You Are Here!

 

“Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.”

—Psalm 25:4-5

I used to think that only young adults had all the questions about “Where do I go next” or “What does the Lord want me to do with my life?” I have learned through painful experiences that, as circumstances change, these questions come up again and again in life. We don’t somehow get wound up like a spring in our youth and, once set in motion, run automatically until we “wind down” at the end of our lives.

God gives us times when we sense His call to consider where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going. Sometimes, it seems easier to only look at the past and the future because the present seems full of questions. In those times, we need to stand and look. As Jeremiah 6:16 tells us:

This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”

In our frenetic lives, we often fail to stop and look, to consider, to pause for a “Selah” moment. Yet therein lies the cure for our anxious questions, our confusing outlooks, our deep need for the Counselor, the Holy Spirit.

When we spend the time required to consider where we are, and where God wants us to be—and, when we pray earnestly as Moses did in Exodus 33:15-17—we receive the reassuring answer from Him:

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

One friend of mine takes an occasional retreat weekend to a favorite cabin in the woods to get her bearings and renew her commitment to the Lord. Though we cannot all do that, we can spend extended times alone with God’s written Word and in prayer to get the direction we need.

Our God waits for us to come to Him in sincere faith asking for new light on the path ahead. It pays to stand and see the sign, “You are Here!”