Long Tunnel God

"Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she'll call her friends and neighbors: 'Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!' Count on it—that's the kind of party God's angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God."

Luke 15:8-10 MSG

For a long time I thought that God was down a long tunnel. I felt prayer was like calling out into the darkness. Those echoes may reach the powerful Being in the distance, but they just as surely might be lost in the noise of the darkness in which I ran.

Some times I felt like I was running through that tunnel searching for Him. And sometimes still that God seemed like a light at the end of the tunnel. My life was a journey, alone in the darkness, heading ever towards that distant, ever allusive light.

God was there. He was real. But He wasn't close enough to reach me. He wasn't available to touch me. He wasn't personal enough to end my emptiness, to stop my running, for me to ever reach Him. He was the end of an endless tunnel.

For most of my life this was my God. But what I discovered was that I was running down an endless tunnel and God was in there too. He was in there running just behind me. He was running after me. He was chasing me. He was calling me. No matter where I went or how far I tried I tried to distance myself from the truth, God was ever chasing. God never gave up. He never slowed down. He was behind me the whole time.

The god in the distance turned out to be a god of my own invention. A god shoved into a box by people afraid of a powerful God that really cares and really lives everyday for you and I. It is packaged nicely and neatly and delivered in churches across the country every Sunday. This God is like a pill. Its a weekly dose of medicine and its easy to swallow and its easy to go about your daily routine with your god-pill and your simple answers and your distant god and your tunnel and your running. You run for the rules. You run for the safety. You run because its the boxed-in god that you've been handed your whole life. Its simple, its safe and its easy.

The hard thing is to quit running. To stop running down the tunnel of our own invention and stop. And take a slow look around and seek the true Living Lord. He is alive. He is accessible. He is powerful. He is real and He is waiting to not just bark orders down a long tunnel or receive a prayer-echo. He is there to embrace you, walk with you, light your world and make radical life change in your heart. God isn't just chasing you to hear a prayer or to give you a set a rules. He's doing all that running because He loves you, a real meaningful endless love. He wants to move into your life and build something amazing.

Stop running. Turn around. Embrace the Living Lord. It is time to get personal.

You'll take me back... always

Even when my fight is over now

You'll take me back