Skip to main content

Closer to God

At the risk of alienating a percentage of my readers, (OK, reader) I’d like to say that I have always felt close to God.

For the last week or so I’ve been reading Michael Raiter’s Stirrings of the Soul. Apart from an interesting survey of Western spiritual topography (which might possibly include a church out past Dubbo) the book talks about people, even evangelical or ‘Bible-believing’ Christians yearning feeling spiritually ‘dry’, distant from God and yearning for a deeper, more spiritual experience of God.

It would come as no surprise to Evangelicalism’s critics that some Evangelicals have had enough Bible study and want to try something more touchy-feely. Evangelical Christians are sometimes characterised as unfeeling, dogmatic automatons who wouldn’t know a spiritual experience if it landed on their doorstep accompanied by a myriad singing angels. In fact, some people might say, if the angels did turn up they’d be likely to denounce them as being too Charismatic and go back inside to read the next chapter of Calvin’s Institutes.

But I’ve been an Evangelical Christian for as long as I can remember —well over 30 years now—and I’ve never felt distant from God. In fact I’ve found that the more I read, understand and know about God, the closer I feel to him. I even belong to a particular brand of Evangelicalism which is usually characterised as especially book-bound, dogmatic and unfeeling, but I’d have to say that I’ve always been very conscious that God’s love for me, and more so as I’ve learned more about him.

I’m wondering if all this spiritual distance comes about because we take God for granted. We forget or even suppress the truth that we only exist because of God. We forget that it’s his breath in us that gets us out of bed and on the train every morning.

You don’t have to go far in the Bible before you’ve got plenty to thank God for: The world we live in, the beautiful animals, plants and lands, our family, our friends and so on, and so on, and so on. I haven’t even got off the first page and I’m already awestruck by my Father’s love and care for me and I haven’t even begun to think about him sending Jesus to die for me.

Admittedly I live in Australia (which, even if it isn’t God’s own country, is pretty close to it) where we have peace and prosperity and I have plenty to thank God for. But even when times have been much bleaker than they are now, God has always been there, a very present help in trouble. And I know, because Jesus died for me and because the Bible tells me so, that he will always love me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The unforgivable sin as expressed by Andy Prieboy

“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” Jesus Christ, Mark 3:28–29 I caught Andy Prieboy’s Tomorrow Wendy on the radio on the weekend and it’s been an ear worm for me for the last few days. I really like the song, but when it gets to the third verse I’m afraid I can’t sing along. I told the priest - “don’t count on any second coming. God got his ass kicked the first time he came down here slumming He had the balls to come, the gall to die and then forgive us - No, I don’t wonder why I wonder what he thought it would get us.” … But God says “jump”, so I set the time ’cause if he ever saw it it was through these eyes of mine and if He ever suf...
9 comments
Read more

Unmarked

It’s nice to see the Australian Federal Police getting in on the whole black, unmarked SUV thing. And their weapon of choice? Ford Territory Turbo . Mmmmm … Territory Turbo. Updated: They also have white ones.
1 comment
Read more

Pink rules!

When I told my little girls (aged 8 and 3) that there was a campaign to stop pink for girls there were howls of dismay. Noo!", "We love pink!", "Pink is the bestest colour for girls!" I would have much preferred that our girls didn't wear pink. I'm not that fond of it as a colour and I thought other colours suited them much better. My favourite dress for our little girls was a smart navy-blue dress with a silver star on the front which I thought looked very nice. They didn't. Given the choice they'd wear almost anything pink. Or with ribbons. Or pink with ribbons. I gave up and let them be girls. Which is exactly the point. As I see it, part of my job as a parent is to let our children make their own choices and to be confident with their decisions. My job is to make sure that those choices are safe, appropriate to their age and right, according to God, everything else is not important. So if they want to wear pink, they can wear pink. If ...
Post a Comment
Read more