God is Closer Than you Think

John Ortberg has a way of painting pictures with his pen, leaving the reader much better off having read his books.

God Is Closer Than You Think asks the questions many of us want the answers to, and then answers them in the most realistic, understandable and sometimes humorous way. We ask, “If God is always with us, why is He so hard to find?”
Ortberg answers, “The central promise in the Bible is not ‘I will forgive you.’ The most frequent promise is ‘I will be with you’” (page 16).
Ortberg is so on to it as he writes to his modern reader. From young people or theologians, one could grasp the simple, yet real answers given. He explains that maybe we miss God because we cannot really see Him in the ordinary moments of our lives. “Maybe every heartbeat is not just the mechanism of a sophisticated plumbing system but the echo of God’s voice, the murmur of God’s love.”
Who could argue with that? This is what Ortberg does over and over again: he asks us to look at our lives and the simple, everyday things in it, and see God.
God Is Closer Than You Think takes stories we know so well: Mary and Martha, Namaan, Waldo—even the movie The Princess Bride—and helps us see Jesus through the ordinary. Finding God isn’t that hard: “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” (page 91). Ortberg compares finding God to finding Waldo on a page where everyone looks similar to Waldo.
One has to know the real thing to know what one is looking for.
In chapter 7, Ortberg discusses how we are each different and seek God in different ways. Discussing Spiritual pathways” from the intellectual pathway to the worship pathway, Ortberg challenges you to discover your pathway and be aware of how others hear God. Filled with challenging stories and thoughts, deep reflection and a new perspective, Ortberg guides the reader to the place of knowing that God is closer than you think.

God Is Closer Than You Think
John Ortberg
Zondervan, 2005
198 pages