God Is Closer Than You Think

Have you ever wondered if you were alone? No. Not in the horror-movie-sense, where you are pretty sure you're alone but can't escape that nagging feeling there's someone in a hockey mask right around the corner.

Alone in the sense that life has no meaning. That we're all just random chance. That if left to our own devices we'd amount to nothing more than re-runs of American Gladiators.

I think that's a common question. It's hard to believe what Christians claim - that God is a loving, personal God who wants to know us.

"How can that be?", we wonder, when our lives are filed with betrayal, mistrust, and pain. It seems so much easier to believe we're alone, than to trust that there really is a God.

Fox Mulder may have been right when he said, "they are out there." Of course he was talking about aliens.

But he was onto something. He knew that things weren't exactly as they seemed. Yet, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't quite find the evidence he was searching for.

In God Is Closer Than You Think John Ortberg argues that not only is God real. But he's also actively pursuing us. He's the one who is desperately reaching out to us, in an attempt to get our attention.

Well if that's true, that God is trying to get our attention, why isn't he more obvious?

The central message of the Bible according to Ortberg. The Bible's main promise isn't "I will forgive you" or "you will go to Heaven." Although, as Ortberg points out, those are in there. Instead the central message is God saying "I am with you."

And when you start looking at the story of the Bible that becomes a pretty compelling argument. Even in the very opening pages of Genesis, God is searching for Adam. Why? Because Adam is hiding from him.

Frankly I don't think things have changed that much. We are still hiding from God.

Somewhere along the way we've given up the idea that we can have an open, direct relationship with God. And instead we've come to believe that God can only be found in mystical places. That somehow drugs, incantations, or a suit and tie are required to meet God face to face.

But is that what the Bible teaches?

Not at all. Quite to the contrary, the Bible emphasizes all the ordinary places we encounter God. But to do so, we must live in the present. Or as Erwin McManus puts it - we must seize our divine moments.

We can't allow ourselves to be stuck in the past, or enthralled on the future. We have to live for the present.

"Once you see God in an ordinary moment at an ordinary place, you never know where he'll show up next." (p. 21)

God has always been searching for us. God still is reaching out for us. And that's the choice we have to face.

In the short time Jesus walked the Earth, he relentlessly pursued people to enter into a relationship with him. Everything he did was to get people to make a choice. Sometimes this was through a miracle, other times it was through empathy, and sometimes it was simply by engaging in someone's life who society said was worthless.

But in everything God did, he pursued us. And he still does.

1. Rainbow Days - those days when God does something miraculous and unmistakable. Think the day Noah finally saw land after the flood.

2. "Today I would like to be covered in the dust of my Rabbi." - What opportunities do you have, every day that you can seize? Or are you, like the apostles, going to sit passively back and watch Jesus wash the dust off your feet?

3. We should be willing to stop, respond in the moment, and meet a need. This does not mean attention deficit disorder is a higher form of spirituality!

4. "God's primary concern for me is not my external situation - it's the kind of person I'm becoming." (p. 88)

5. Sin isn't creative, it's just insidious