Adam, where are you? God’s question in the garden is still His question today, and this message explains why. The pastor teaches that God created every person, like Adam, full of His hope, faith and love, but life’s failures, hurts and condemnation cause people to back away and simply cope. Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted and restore what was stolen, and the way back starts with humbly bringing your need to Him instead of hiding.
Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scriptures he uses (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for stepping out of hiding this week.
Sermon at a Glance
This message was shared at NTC Ministries and posted in August 2024; it appears to have been preached at an outdoor service, since the pastor jokes about the picnic-table seating. It runs about 48 minutes and includes a salvation prayer, a prayer for the Holy Spirit to pour out God’s love, and an invitation for anyone needing healing to come forward.
The sermon moves from creation to the fall, then to the ministry of Jesus in Luke 4 and Isaiah 61, the hope of Hebrews 6, and the humility that brings us to God with our need. Its question is personal: if God asked you today, as He asked Adam, where are you, what would you say?
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Speaker | The pastor (not named in the recording) |
| Series | Single message |
| Main text | Genesis 3:8–10 with Luke 4:18–19 |
| Key theme | Jesus restores what life has broken when we stop hiding and bring Him our need |
| Length | About 48 minutes, ending with prayer for salvation and healing |
Created to Thrive, Not Just Cope
The pastor begins at creation. God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). That means, he says, that Adam had all the faith, all the hope and all the love that God has. God did not create him, or us, to start out wide-eyed and full of promise only to end up dismal and hopeless.
He asks the church to remember childhood. Children imagine being a firefighter saving people from a burning building, a police officer protecting the community, or a doctor or nurse helping people get well. No five-year-old dreams of eating cold beans down by the tracks. That kind of hopelessness is not even comprehensible when we are young.
But life happens. We make mistakes, go through hardship and failure, and some people are misused or abused by others. It adds up, everyone has a breaking point, and we lose hope, vision and dreams. We decide this is as good as it gets and learn to cope. There are whole books on coping, he notes, but God never intended us to cope. He intended us to thrive, excel and achieve.
The good news is that the real you is still there. The same dreams, goals and excitement God placed in your heart as a child remain. Something is masking them and holding them back from the presence of God, which wants to make them grow. He pictures it as a suitcase God packed for your journey; now let Him unpack it.
He gives a workplace example. You start a new job ready to go, and soon you hear “slow down” or “you’re making us look bad.” Over time it wears on people until they do nothing extra. That, he says, is a person separated from the purpose God intended for everyone who comes into this world.
Jesus Came to Heal the Brokenhearted
One reason Jesus came, the pastor says, was to restore what was lost and recover what was stolen. In Luke 4:18–19 Jesus read from Isaiah: the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
Every group in that list, he points out, is lacking or in need, and Jesus says He came to restore them. He defines the brokenhearted as people shattered or fractured by life. They are not bad people. They have simply reached the place where they no longer believe life can be better, and they plan to pay their taxes and die.
To heal, he explains, means to set free and to release from the destructive effect of a fallen life. He rejects a religious attitude that waits for everything to be fine one day in heaven. Scripture says now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Now is when we should receive from God and let Him fulfill His purpose in us.
God says He is doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19), and He does not want to leave anyone with a deficit. He wants to give new passion, new vision, new strength, new health, new dreams and new opportunities. You have not yet seen the best version of you, he says, and we are called to run the race (Hebrews 12:1), not sit on the couch.
The prophet Joel gives the promise of restoration. God will send the former and latter rain, the threshing floors will be full of wheat and the vats will overflow, and He says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (Joel 2:23–26). And Romans 5:5 adds that hope does not disappoint, because the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
He shares a dream of his own. He felt the Lord dealing with him about becoming a pilot, and he talked about it for eight years. Then Pam brought him a newspaper ad for lessons at the local airport and told him to go do what he was supposed to do. He went through school, became a pilot and flew his own plane. God wants not only to restore, he says, but to fulfill.
Adam, Where Are You? How Condemnation Makes Us Hide
To receive that restoration, the pastor says, you cannot sit idly thinking your life is over or that your mistakes are too many. You have to stop rehearsing the people who wronged, neglected or misused you, because a defeated mentality keeps you stuck without hope. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Behold, he notes, means look and see the new.
Then he turns to the garden. God used to walk with Adam in the cool of the day, but after Adam sinned, God called, “Where are you?” In the pastor’s words, Adam answered, “I heard your voice and I was afraid so I hid myself” (Genesis 3:8–10). Condemned by what had happened, he backed away from God, his purpose and his life. Everyone goes through this, the pastor says, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
Before the fall Adam had everything: a garden God Himself planted, a wife who left him in awe, the greatest mind ever created and a promise to rule the world. Yet he hid. The pastor, who teaches college courses in Israel from time to time, recounts being shown a cave said to be where Adam and Eve lived, and hearing the tradition that Adam lived out his days there in depression because he could not handle what he had done.
What would have happened, he asks, if Adam had said “God, forgive me” instead of “I hid from you because I’m afraid”? He would have been forgiven. But he had to humble himself. Failure is not the problem with God; we are all subject to mistakes. The problem is our unwillingness to go to Him. Condemnation makes us hide, and Satan uses it to disengage people from the source of life.
He notes how condemnation can even attach to innocent people, such as children who hear their parents fight and assume it is their fault. And it does more than make us hide; it makes us reject blessings. When Peter caught so many fish that the boats began to sink, he did not run to Jesus in thanks. He fell at Jesus’ knees and asked Him to depart, because he was a sinful man (Luke 5:4–8).
The table below summarizes the contrast he draws between hiding and returning.
| Hiding from God | Returning to God |
|---|---|
| Adam: “I was afraid, so I hid myself” | “God, forgive me,” which would have brought forgiveness |
| Peter: asking Jesus to depart because he was a sinner | Receiving the blessing God sends |
| A proud look that pretends to need nothing | Humbling yourself under God’s mighty hand |
| The multitude: stay quiet and cope | The blind men: cry out louder |
| Settling for a mediocre life | Abundant life in Christ |
The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came to give life more abundantly (John 10:10). Many say they know Jesus yet live in despair; maybe they lack knowledge of God’s will. Humble yourself under God’s mighty hand, and He will lift you up (1 Peter 5:6). He adds that the manifestation of the Spirit is given for everyone’s profit (1 Corinthians 12:7), to lift us over this fallen world.
Hope as an Anchor for the Soul
The pastor reads from Hebrews 6:17–19. God wanted to show clearly that His purpose never changes, so He confirmed His promise with an oath. Those two things cannot change, because God cannot lie. They encourage us to hold on to our hope, which is an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast.
What changes, he says, is that we run into the corruption of this cursed world. We were never meant to fix our eyes on it or become part of it. We were meant to live from His kingdom. Jesus told His disciples, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Some refuse it because they feel undeserving or fear being mocked, but it is God’s good pleasure.
Still, you need to stir yourself up. He tells how Paul wrote to Timothy, who pastored in Ephesus during the persecution under Nero. As the pastor tells it, the church dwindled dramatically, and Timothy came to a breaking point where he wondered whether he wanted to keep following. Paul’s answer was to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on eternal life (1 Timothy 6:12). Lay hold of the promises and the dreams God placed in you, and resurrect them.
He is honest about his own struggles. As a pastor, he says, he gets kicked in the teeth about a dozen times, and he has reached the place of thinking “forget this.” Then he reminds himself that he is living for Jesus, not for himself. Life isn’t about him, and that is where the soul has to be anchored. We have to return to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls (1 Peter 2:25).
The way forward, he says, is not fighting to get rid of the old but accepting something better. He pictures a mother whose child clings to a dirty, germ-infested toy. Rather than wrestling it away, she hands the child something bigger and better, and the old toy drops on its own. Take hold of what Jesus offers, and the rest falls away.
He also warns against isolation. The devil wants to separate you, telling you to stay home from church and spend all your time with people who never inspire hope. Believers need fellowship with others who help them hope again.
God Responds to Need, Not Pride
The pastor then reads Proverbs 6:16–17: there are six things the Lord hates, yes seven, and first on the list is a proud look. He explains it as someone miserable inside who wants everyone to think they have it all together and need nothing. God wants people to humble themselves and tell Him they are broken, asking Him for the fire, the joy and the peace again.
Why would anyone need a miracle worker if they never need a miracle? He tells of a day, after 21 years of college study, when he told the Lord he did not want to know only the author of a book but the God who put the stars in place and built his frame. People who never admit a need never see miracles, and then they conclude miracles are not for today.
God responds to need. In the feeding of the thousands with five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14:17–21), twelve baskets of fragments were left over. The main character, he says, was not the apostles, the boy or even the food. It was the fact that the people had a need and were willing to bring it to Jesus. If you don’t want anything from God, he says, you won’t get it.
In Matthew 20:29–34, two blind men by the road near Jericho cried out, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David!” The multitude told them to be quiet, but they cried out all the more. The crowd, he says, had settled into coping; the blind men refused. Jesus stopped and asked, “What do you want Me to do for you?” He touched their eyes, and immediately they saw and followed Him.
He applies it to the workplace and the church. Even when everyone around you says to stop trying so hard, the Lord has need of your demand on Him, so He can reveal His glory. Many churches, he says, have broken hearts that have not let Jesus heal them. Yet God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). He never takes them back, and God needs the whole you.
Returning to Isaiah’s fuller wording in Isaiah 61:1–3, he notes that the day of vengeance is against the enemy of your soul, not against people who wronged you. God gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, so that we may be called trees of righteousness. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6).
He closes with a story that still grieves him. A young woman visiting for the first time raised her hand, in tears, to give her life to Jesus, and the older man beside her pulled her arm down. She left with her head bowed, and he never saw them again. Like the blind men, he urges, do not let anyone keep you from Jesus.
Adam, Where Are You? Stepping Out of Hiding This Week
God does not begin by asking about our ability, the pastor says, but about our availability. In Revelation He stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20). He prays for every broken heart to be healed, echoing David: He restores my soul (Psalm 23:3). Here are practical steps drawn from the message:
- Answer God’s question honestly. Hear Him ask, “Adam, where are you?” and admit whether you have been hiding from Him.
- Trade condemnation for confession. Instead of “I was afraid, so I hid,” say “God, forgive me,” and receive His forgiveness.
- Dig out an old dream. Write down a dream or calling God gave you earlier in life and ask Him to unpack it again.
- Drop the proud look. Tell God plainly what you need; He responds to need, not to pretending.
- Cry out louder. When voices around you say to settle and cope, keep calling on Jesus like the blind men did.
- Anchor in hope and fellowship. Read Hebrews 6:17–19 this week and spend time with believers who stir your hope.
Timestamped Outline
- 0:00 Created with God’s hope, faith and love
- 1:15 Childhood dreams and life’s breaking points
- 2:32 Created to thrive, not cope
- 3:42 Luke 4: healing the brokenhearted
- 5:52 What heal means; now is the day
- 7:11 The suitcase and Adam’s hiding
- 9:43 Joel 2: restoring the years
- 11:55 The pilot’s dream
- 13:03 A new creation: 2 Corinthians 5:17
- 15:20 Hope as an anchor: Hebrews 6
- 16:29 Timothy and stirring yourself up
- 18:43 Adam’s cave and humility
- 19:56 How condemnation makes us hide
- 21:21 Peter and the great catch
- 23:35 Abundant life: John 10:10
- 27:12 The dirty toy and the proud look
- 28:27 Knowing a miracle-working God
- 29:44 Five loaves and two fish
- 32:03 The blind men of Jericho
- 35:40 Isaiah 61: beauty for ashes
- 38:00 A young woman held back
- 40:43 Salvation prayer
- 42:52 Availability, not ability
- 45:24 Prayer for restored souls
Frequently Asked Questions
When God asked “Adam, where are you?” did He not know where Adam was?
The pastor does not treat Adam, where are you, as a question about location. He reads it as an invitation. God used to walk with Adam in the cool of the day, and the question exposed that Adam had backed away out of fear and condemnation. His point is that God asks each of us the same question today, giving us the chance to answer honestly and return to Him for forgiveness and restoration.
Why does the pastor say coping is not God’s plan?
He teaches that God created people to thrive, excel and achieve, not merely survive. Coping, in his view, is what happens when hurts, failures and condemnation pile up until people settle for less than what God placed in them. He points to Luke 4, Joel 2 and John 10:10 as evidence that Jesus came to restore what was lost and give abundant life now, not only in heaven.
What does a “proud look” have to do with miracles?
From Proverbs 6, he describes the proud look as someone who is struggling inside but wants everyone to believe they need nothing. He says God responds to need, as in the feeding of the multitude and the healing of the blind men who cried out. If people never admit a need, they never see God meet one, and they wrongly conclude miracles are not for today.
Scripture References
All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:
- Genesis 3:8–10 — Adam hides from God
- Luke 4:18–19 — to heal the brokenhearted
- Joel 2:23–26 — I will restore the years
- 2 Corinthians 5:17 — a new creation
- Hebrews 6:17–19 — hope as an anchor of the soul
- Luke 5:4–8 — Peter’s great catch
- Proverbs 6:16–17 — a proud look
- Matthew 20:29–34 — the blind men cry out
- Isaiah 61:1–3 — beauty for ashes
How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.
Watch More Messages
If this message spoke to the dreams God placed in you, there are many more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep stepping toward the life He created you for.
