“Where are you?” It’s the first question that God ever asked of man since the creation. Adam had disobeyed God and hid from Him. At the beginning, Adam had a perfect relationship with God. He had heard God’s voice many times before in the garden, and it had been the sweetest sound to him until that day. But that awful day, the voice of God sounded like a rolling thunder to Adam. He was terrified and tried to hide himself. That is the story of every man born of Adam since the fall. Every sinner is trying to hide from the presence of the Holy God.

Adam couldn’t hide from God, and neither will any man succeed. There is a day coming when we all have to come out from our hiding places and meet the Holy God face-to-face, give a full account of where we stand in His presence. God is asking this question from every man and woman, whether Christian or non-Christian. It is a universal question to every sinner to this day. It’s not about your physical location, rather it’s about your spiritual condition. “Where are you?” Where do you stand in regard to Christ, in regard to eternity?

Every wise businessman likes to know where he stands financially at the end of the year. He carefully takes inventory of his stocks, prepares final accounts and evaluates his performance. He devises new plans, makes corrections, and avoids pitfalls as he guides the business to achieve his goal. Many have made shipwrecks in business and plunged into financial ruin through an unwillingness to assess where they stand.

Every man wants to know where he stands physically. I for one want to stay healthy. I try to eat healthy, exercise regularly, and visit my family physician for an annual checkup because I want to know where I stand physically. I may appear healthy, but I won’t know until my physician performs all the tests and evaluates the results. If there are any concerns, he might suggest changes to my diet, changes to my daily activities or prescribe medications. I know of many people who died prematurely because they have neglected to check their physical condition and act accordingly.

Every man on a roadtrip should take time to know where he is along the journey. I remember an incident that happened while we were coming back home from Indiana after attending a funeral some years ago. I set the destination in GPS and started driving. We’ve been driving for almost 3 hours but no sign of the Detroit US-Canadian border. Generally, it should only take about 3 hours to the border from where we started. It was dark and the surrounding was not familiar either, so we took an exit and stopped at the next town to check where we were. To our dismay we realized that the GPS was taking us via I90 around the Lake Erie to Buffalo US-Canadian border instead of I75 to the Detroit Border. It appeared that I had taken a wrong turn at some point because I hadn’t paid much attention to the road signs. We took some time to rest, reset the GPS, fix the route and drove back to our destination.

It is the same with every man’s spiritual condition. We should take time to know where we stand. We may be sailing across a perilous sea, toward an eternal port where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. We should consider this question, “Where are you?”, seriously, honestly, prayerfully and scripturally. When it comes to the salvation of our soul, heaven and hell, we must not treat them as a joke. No point in deceiving ourselves or others; and we cannot deceive God anyways. Human heart is deceitful by nature about its moral and spiritual condition. Men are naturally blind to their own faults unless their hearts are brought near to God through prayer and scripture. We must examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith; we must ask God to show our real condition; and test ourselves against the scripture. God has given a safe chart and compass to guide us on our voyage through life toward eternity. That chart and compass is the Bible. If we steer our course according to the biblical principles, we will be able to reach the destination that we long for.

A crucial and spiritually beneficial question to ask yourselves regularly is, “Where am I?” First of all, ‘Are you really saved, or are you lost?’. Unless you have been definitely saved by the acceptance of Jesus Christ, you are definitely lost. Secondly, ‘Are you a mere professing Christian who is trying to hold on to Jesus Christ with one hand and to the world with the other?’ A profession of attachment to Jesus Christ is a necessary part of true and saving faith but the mere profession of attachment to Christ is no proof of true and saving faith. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Thirdly, ‘Are you a true Christ follower but sidetracked by the cares of this world?’ “Be on your guard, so that your minds are not dulled from carousing, drunkenness, and worries of life, or that day will come on you unexpectedly” (Luke 21:34).

Our life journey will end up in one of the two eternal destinations -heaven or hell. Where we will spend the eternity will very likely depend upon where we are right now. Staying away from God is a dreadful thing, it is the eternal death sentence that God pronounces on the Day of Judgment – “Depart from me”. Also, the true salvation is not mere profession; it is not an external identity; It is an entire commitment of life to Jesus Christ. Admiring Jesus, being impressed by Jesus, watching Jesus from a distance, making superficial commendations about Jesus is not sufficient to grant eternal life. It puts a person, in the end, in the same hell as the person who hates Jesus, and who rejects His invitation for Salvation. As the prophet Jeremiah called people to honest self-evaluation and repentance: “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD” (Lamentations 3:40).