For this month’s edition of Prayer Corner, Kathy will be sharing with us on how our relationship with God is a conversation in which we ask each other, two key questions: “Who are you?” and “Where are you?”

August ’22: A Relationship in 2 Questions
By Kathy Jung

For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
—Zephaniah 3:17

Our relationship with God is a conversation in which we ask of one another, two key questions.

“Who are you?” is the question we ask of God. We search His love letter to us sent in the form of His Word, and sent in the form of living breathing believers, for the answer. At church and outside of church, we work out and test the answer to this question. “Are you, God, who I think you are? Are you less than that? Or are you more?” We work out and test the answer until we can declare it and the truth of it is knit into our flesh, the flesh that now walks out what we believe about God. In asking God to show us who He is, we deepen our trust and hope, we fall in love with Him, and we embody the courage of the obedient faithful. Asking “who are you, Lord?”, is the question of a lifetime of seeking and following.

“Ayekah?” is God’s question to us. Ayekah means “where are you?” in Hebrew. It is not the question “Eifoh?” which in Hebrew is the generic word, that was used when Saul sought David, and when Joseph tried to find his brothers. Ayekah is a more intimate question that is like saying, “Where are you in relation to me?”, and, “Where have you gone if you are not here with me?” It is the question God asked the first sinners, Adam and Eve.
From a God, Emmanuel, who promises He is always with us, and from a God who cares to know the state of our heart, it is a question that invites us to self-reflect. “Where am I, if I am not centred in Him?”, and “How did I get here and what will it take to get back to where I belong, where I am known, where I face the truth about myself, and where I am not alone?”

When God asks us “Ayekah?” he is inviting us to exercise what we know of Him, that we might not hide from Him, as Adam and Eve hid. If we would be fully transparent, vulnerable and therefore receptive to His love for us, we might truly be transformed.

Will you ask God: “Who are you Lord? Show yourself to me. I’d like to get to know all the facets of who you are, that I might know you as one knows a friend, someone who lifts up, and inspires and is cherished.

And will you listen and answer as God says to you: “Where are you?”  “Are you near and leaning in and thus in Shalom (tranquil, at peace, and untroubled)?”  “Or are you far away from me right now?”  “Do you remember what it is like to be near me? I have never left you. I will never stop seeking you.”  “How might you experience feeling centered by being centered in Me?”

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
—Psalm 139:23-24 ESV