Last week in our small group, we did a study by John Ortberg called “God is Closer Than You Think.” In it, he talks about how we often think of God as being incredibly far away. I often feel as if God is so distant from me I’ll never be able to close the gap and find Him again.
Then he points to Michelangelo’s painting of the Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel. God is reaching out to Adam who is rather nonchalantly lounging with his hand lazily outstretched. What a picture of how I have tended to treat my relationship with God!
This was so convicting—I can completely see myself as Adam in this image, lying there, moaning about how God is so distant and I can’t feel Him and how He has abandoned me. Yet all I need to do is barely lift a finger, twitch the smallest muscle, and there He is, right there, straining, reaching, wanting to touch me.
All it takes on my part is a slight movement in His direction. He wants me to turn towards Him. Even if it’s just to make contact and remind myself that He’s still there. Of course, He want’s much more than that, he wants all of me, but the first step, especially when I’m feeling distant, is that finger.
What I really want to do, though, is quit just flicking that finger towards Him once in a while. I want to grab His hand, reach out to Him, let Him pull me up and embrace me. I heard another description of God once that paints a picture of a relationship with Him that at times I crave. He is our Abba, Father—the Hebrew word can be translated “Daddy.” And while God sits on the throne and He is my Lord, He is also my Daddy, and as His child, no matter how much I’ve messed up or done wrong, when I walk into that throne room, if I want, I can run right up to Him, jump into His arms, and curl up in His lap and let Him surround me and hold me and love me.
Of course there are times when I ignore Him and think I can do it all on my own. I really want to develop a relationship with God that is so close and so honest and so real that I truly feel comfortable running in and tackling Him like my kids do to me when I walk in from work (well, sometimes they do that! 
). But I keep running into consistency problems. I turn to God and I lean on Him and I build my relationship with Him and grow and get deeper in…for a while. Then I slowly drift away and turn back to my old habits and rely more on myself than on Him, until I’m right back to just shooting God a prayer once in a while when I need something or feel guilty about having told someone I’m praying for them when I’m really not.
I’m tired of that kind of relationship with Him. It’s not the kind of relationship I want with my wife or my family or my friends, so how could God possibly accept it as sufficient from me? It’s all part of why I want to build consistency and discipline myself to write about Him every day in this blog and to read scripture every day. Out of the habit will grow the roots that anchor the relationship.
Pray for me that I would last more than a few days with this….
Photo Credits: Hands of God and Adam from Wikipedia, 1/11/07
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