A Distant God

Sometimes, we hear something preached for so long that we just take it as truth without really considering it. I found myself on the verge of saying one such thing the other day, and then I stopped...because I don't think it's true all the time, even though it's often been presented that way. 

Here's the thought: 

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So if one day, in your life of faith, you look up and God seems distant, He's not the one who moved. You are. 

And that sounds well and good if your goal is to convince a wayward soul to come back. 

But...

I'm not entirely sure that's what Scripture teaches us. 

Moses looked up and saw a burning bush...and that was God calling him to come and see. 

When Israel fled Egypt in the Exodus, God led them by a pillar of cloud during the day and fire at night. The entire pattern was that God would move first, and they were supposed to follow. If God didn't move, they didn't move. 

Even Jesus spent a lot of His time going places and then having the people not know where He went and searching to find Him. "Hey, we saw Him in the boat. Maybe He went to the other side of the sea!" And then, they show up and see even more miracles and hear even more teachings and are convinced of even more grace. 

The truth about God is that God has been moving from the very beginning. He was walking with Adam in the cool of the day in the Garden. And He hasn't stopped moving since. 

Which means that if you look up one day and God seems distant, maybe you haven't turned your back; maybe He's beckoning you to follow. 

And this is important. 

Because I think it's too easy for us to think we know what our faith is supposed to look like. We think we know what we're supposed to do and what God wants from us. So if we think we've become distant, we're likely to try to return to the status quo and call it a day; go back to faith as we always knew it and claim we've come back. 

But if we're not where God has actually called us, we may have come back, but we haven't gone forward. We haven't grown. That's why there are so many Christians stuck in this really baseline kind of faith that prays, reads the Bible, goes to church, tithes, but doesn't understand what the outworking of God actually looks like in the world or how they factor into it. Because they aren't going to where God is to meet Him in the new places He's moved to....they're going to the last place they knew where He was and figuring it still kinda smells like Him there, so He can't be far. 

Then all of a sudden, here we are in temples made of shiny things but empty of spirit and wondering where our faith went, feeling like maybe we have turned away after all. 

But maybe we haven't. 

Maybe...we just haven't followed like we were supposed to.