God is Closer Than You Think

By John Ortberg

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God is Closer than You Think

By John Ortberg

FOUNDATIONAL TRUTHS OF MY LIFE WITH GOD

  • God is always present and active in my life, whether or not I see him.
  • Coming to recognize and experience God’s presence is learned behavior; I can cultivate it.
  • My task is to meet God in this moment.
  • I am always tempted to live “outside” this moment. When I do that, I lose my sense of God’s presence.
  • Sometimes God seems far away for reasons I do not understand. Those moments, too, are opportunities to learn.
  • Whenever I fail, I can always start again right away.
  • My desire for God ebbs and flows, but his desire for me is constant.
  • Every thought carries a “spiritual charge” that moves me a little closer to or a little farther from God.
  • My path to experiencing God’s presence will not look like anyone else’s.
  • Straining and trying too hard do not help.

FOUR TYPES OF DAYS

Rainbow Days

  • God’s presence is hard to miss. Your life is filled with too much goodness and meaning for you to believe it is simply by chance.
  • God seems to speak personally to you through Scripture.
  • One of the dangers is that we may start to think we’ve earned them, that they are reflections of our spiritual maturity.

Ordinary Days

  • During some eras of spiritual life we fall into a kind of maintenance mode. Life becomes routine. There is no major crisis, no obvious problems, but no major gains either. We feel somewhat comfortable.
  • One of the greatest challenges of life is drifting into acceptance of life in spiritual maintenance mode.
  • When life is on spiritual autopilot, rivers of living water do not flow through it with energy and joy.
  • Spiritual autopilot is in some ways more dangerous than spiritual depravity because it can be so subtle, so gradual.
  • Whether we are aware of it or not, at every moment of our existence we are encountering God who is trying to catch our attention, trying to draw us into a reciprocal conscious relationship.
  • It’s very helpful to “review the dailies” with God. Do this by walking through your day and asking where He was present and at work in each scene. What do you think God wanted to say to you in that moment?

Spiritual Hiding Days

  • Sometimes we don’t want God to be around.
  • It may be the most common prayer – the one that we acknowledge making – is simply this: Don’t look at me, God.

When God Seems AWOL

  • Sometimes it seems God cannot be found even though we really want to find him.
  • Not feeling God’s presence doesn’t mean you’re condemned to anxiety; rather, not knowing calls for trust, and trust is crucial to finding God.

HOW TO FIND GOD

God Where You Least Expect Him

  • God wants to be known, but not in a way that overwhelms us, that takes away the possibility of love freely chosen.
  • You’ll never know when he’ll turn up, or whom he’ll speak through, or what unlikely scenario he’ll use for his purpose.
  • God is often present but he travels incognito. He often shows up in unexpected ways. He is the master of disguise.

The Art of Letting Go

  • What keeps us from living in the presence of God? Sometimes it’s worry, as if we’re still in control of our circumstances that are actually completely out of our hands.
  • We need to learn to let go. Letting go is not passivity. It means recognizing he is present here and now, and we don’t have to pretend we control the universe any more.

When Waking Up

  • Acknowledge to God that you depend on him. I won’t live through this day banking on my own strength and power.
  • Tell God about your concerns for the day, and ask him to remove any fear in you.
  • Renew your invitation for God to spend the day with you.

Interruptions During the Day

  • It is possible that what we see as an inconvenient interruption is a divine appointment.
  • What would Jesus’ ministry have looked like if he had never been allowed to be interrupted?

Other Thoughts on How to Find God

  • Try this “with God” experiment on an ordinary day. Because if you can spend an ordinary day with Jesus, you can spend every day with him. One day at a time.
  • In our culture we talk about “embracing the moment” and “seizing the day.” We are not meant to embrace moments because they can be filled with bad news. We are meant to embrace God in the moment whether they are good or bad.

OUR BEAUTIFUL MINDS

  • The mind is an instrument of staggering potential. For it is in our minds that we live in conscious awareness of and interaction with God.
  • We as believers are called to listen. Jesus said that he is the Good Shepherd and that “his sheep follow him because they know his voice...”
  • Throughout history, those who have practiced God’s presence most have insisted they hear his voice. They have learned to program their minds to be constantly receiving the divine channel.

How We Hear God’s voice

  • He can speak to us through Scripture or through the words of another person.
  • But he also has direct access, through the Holy Spirit, to plant thoughts directly in our minds. Thoughts happen. And some of those thoughts come from God.

I Cannot Control His Speaking

  • I cannot force God to give me guidance or the help I think I need. There may be good reason for his remaining silent.
  • The author during major life decisions (vocational crossroads, marriage, etc) has never received a “postcard with directions from God” though he wanted to.
  • We cannot force God’s speaking, and it is not wise to try.

Things We Can Do To Make Our Minds Increasingly Receptive To His Thoughts

  • Every thought holds the promise of carrying me into God’s presence.
  • Each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.
  • In time, if we listen carefully, we can learn to recognize his voice. Not infallibly, of course.

Saying “Yes” When He Speaks

  • Our job is to be ruthless about saying yes when we believe God is speaking to us.
  • Every time we do, we will get a little more sensitive to hearing him the next time.
  • On the other hand, when we say “no, I’d rather not ______”, we make ourselves a little less likely to hear him in the future.

How to Make Your Mind the Dwelling Place of God

  • The goal is to have a mind in which the Holy Spirit gradually crowds out every distorted belief, every destructive feeling, every misguided intention.
  • You will know when your mind is increasingly set on God when love, joy and peace dominate your inner life.
  • Whatever repeatedly enters the mind occupies the mind, eventually shapes the mind, and will ultimately express itself in what you do and what you become.

Listen to Godly People

  • Often God uses other people to help us discern his voice. There are certain people in your life whose words consistently guide you toward truth and joy and love. Be sure you make time for those people.
  • The spirit of Jesus speaks through the community of Jesus. When you are not sure about a voice, go to some trusted friends and discuss it.

Learning to Listen

  • If we are serious about interactive awareness of God, it means we will have to spend more time listening for him.
  • Listening can involve a variety of practices: reading, solitude and silence, conversations with him, observing the beauty of nature, listening to great music. Perhaps the oldest and most powerful practice is meditation on Scripture.
  • How well do I do looking for God’s presence and listening for his messages in all the mundane, non-glamorous interactions with people (believers and non-believers) in my life?

SPIRITUAL PATHWAYS

  • Often we fail to realize that our individual uniqueness means we will all experience God’s presence and learn to relate to him in different ways.
  • A spiritual pathway has to do with the way we most naturally sense God’s presence and experience spiritual growth. We all have at least one spiritual pathway that comes most easily to us.
  • Types of Pathways
  • Intellectual – people draw closer to God as they learn more about him. You love to study Scripture. No one wants to go to a bookstore with you.
  • Relational – people who have a deep sense of God’s presence when they’re involved in significant relationships. Small groups become indispensable.
  • Serving – God’s presence seems most tangible when they are involved in helping others. Jesus’ command that “whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” is a truth they experience viscerally.
  • Worship – People on this pathway have a natural gift for expression and celebration. Some of their most formative moments occur during times of worship.
  • Activist – they have a passion to act. Challenges don’t discourage them: they energize them. When someone says, “This can’t be done,” they smile and say, “Watch me.” If you’re an activist, you need a cause.
  • Contemplative – they love large blocks of uninterrupted time alone. Reflection comes naturally to them. Images and metaphors help them as they pray.
  • Creation – they have a passionate ability to connect with God when they are experiencing the world he made. Being outdoors replenishes them.
  • Why discuss spiritual pathways?
  • Accept and embrace the unique way God created you.
  • Avoid following “one size fits all” approach to spiritual growth.
  • We need to spend adequate time and activity pursuing the pathways that most help us to connect with God and that deep satisfaction in Him.
  • Your specific pathway is the way that God wants to connect with you and it’s when you most sense his presence and his delight in you.

AS YOU WISH

  • For many centuries, those wisest among us about the spiritual life have insisted that a freely submitted will is the door that opens the heart to the presence of God. There is no greater expression of love than a free submitted will.

THE SURRENDER OF OUR FAILURES

  • Sometimes we refuse to surrender to God cutting us off from the current of God’s presence.
  • The most important thing about failure is this: Even when we have failed, the flow of the Spirit can be restored in our lives at any moment. Right now. All we have to do is ask.

WHEN GOD SEEMS ABSENT

Winter of the Soul

  • We need a way of holding onto God when it feels as if God has let go of us.
  • The hardest part of spiritual winter is that God seems gone. As the psalmist said:

“I cry out to you for help, O Lord;

in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Why O Lord, do you reject me

and hide your face from me?”

Pain and Suffering

  • The question is, can a human being hold on to God in the face of suffering?
  • Some Christians make people’s suffering worse by their bad theology
  • “You’re going through this trial because of spiritual warfare. If you engage in spiritual warfare, Satan would be defeated and you’d be delivered.”
  • “God promises to heal – if we have enough faith. If you just had enough faith – just prayed boldly enough – you’d be healed.”
  • While God hates pain, he can also redeem it. It does not mean he is absent. It’s when we are in pain that spiritual growth can happen.
  • In the summer of the soul, I’m tempted to think that because of my success, wealth, reputation, virtue, faith, I’m in control. My life will unfold how and when I want it to. In winter I learn I’m not running things after all.
  • Somebody once said that the biggest difference between God and man is that God doesn’t think he’s you. In pain, we get very clear about not being God.

The Gift of Complaining

  • Scholars sort out the psalms in four different categories:
  • Psalms of thanksgiving
  • Wisdom psalms
  • Enthronement psalms
  • Psalms of lament or complaints
  • Psalms of complaint
  • The most common type of psalm
  • Without parallel in other religions at that time
  • They were often frank and quite rude
  • When we are passionately honest with God we are asking Him to create the kind of condition in our heart that will make resting in his presence possible again. And God will come. But he may come in unexpected ways.
  • The central question in the book of Job is, “Can a human being hold on to God and faith and love even in the dead of spiritual winter?” Job did. So can we.

WHAT’S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE

The Hedge

  • We are living in temporary housing that gets a little grayer and more wrinkled every year. Sooner or later we will be evicted.
  • Outside our door is a backyard called the Universe. And at the border of the universe is a hedge. The hedge is a veil that keeps me from seeing the universe.
  • Those who believe that Something lies behind the hedge must struggle with why the Something stays so hidden?
  • Those who believe that Nothing lies behind the hedge must struggle with what to do during our brief time in the backyard.

What the Good News Means to Us

  • There is a fundamental misunderstanding. The Good News is NOT primarily about how to get ready for life on the other side of the hedge.
  • The Good News IS about experiencing God’s presence in our lives here and now, not when we die.
  • The good news Jesus announced was simply this: God has invaded our backyard and is making his presence and power available to anyone who wants him. Right here. Right now.

Two-Fold Purpose of Jesus’ mission

  • He came so that he could reconcile God and man through his death on the cross.
  • He came so we could be conduits of his presence to other people. He invites us to join him in making things down here the way they are up there.

Our Purpose

  • Victor Frankl once said, “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.”
  • Start by asking yourself this question: “Where do I want to see God’s presence and power break into this world? Where would I especially like God to use me to make things down her run the way they do up there?
  • Someone has come from the other side of the hedge. And he uses you and me. He lives in our backyard now.