God Is Closer Than You Think Participant's Guide: This Can Be the Greatest Moment of Your Life Because This Moment Is the Place Where You Can Meet God (Paperback)

Chapter One

God's Great Desire for People

The story of the Bible isn't primarily about the desire of people to be with God: it's the desire of God to be with people. John Ortberg

Questions to Think About

1. It is one thing for us to talk about how much we want to experience God, but how much do you think God wants to be with us? In what ways do you know God desires a close relationship with you? 2. The Bible says that God reveals himself to us. In what ways can we see, hear, feel, or otherwise recognize God's presence? When does God seem most real to you? What seemingly ordinary things in life have made you aware of his presence?

3. Is it possible for God to be with us here on earth, every day, at every moment-and for us not to be aware of it? Explain your answer.

Video Observations

How close is God?

God looks at us through the eyes of a father

Jacob's story-God shows up where you least expect him

The message of the "bear" story: God is always with us

May the Lord's face shine upon you

Video Discussion

1. How did you relate to the scene of John Ortberg speaking from the top of the tower as being a visual image of the way many of us view God? What other visual images or word pictures would you use to describe the ways in which we view God?

2. When we think of God as being far away, how does that view impact our relationship with him?

3. What did you think or feel when John Ortberg talked about God looking at each of us with the loving eyes of a father, like the father with his son's photograph on his screensaver?

4. What if God is really all around us-and we don't realize it? What might we be missing if God, like the adult bear snarling at the mountain lion, really is closer than we think?

5. Michelangelo's fresco of Adam and God in the Sistine Chapel represents the perspective that the Bible is about God's desire to be with people rather than our desire to be with God. In what ways does this perspective change your perception of your relationship with God? What practical difference might this new perspective make in your life?

Group Exploration

1. The story of the Bible is the story of God's desire to be with people. He extends himself, reaching out to us today just as he has since the day he created Adam. Let's explore together God's desire to be with us and the impact it can have on our lives.

a. What does the psalmist David say about God's knowledge of us and his actions toward us? (See Psalm 139:1-10.) What does this reveal about God's desire for relationship with us?

b. Psalm 89 gives us a picture of the kind of relationship God can have with his people and his people can have with him. Read verses 15-17 and 19-28 and note some of the qualities of a close relationship with God. Part of this psalm refers specifically to David, who had a remarkable relationship with God, but use the images in this psalm to discuss what a close relationship with God might look like in our lives today.

2. In the video, John Ortberg shared stories that illustrate the heart, character, and commitment of a loving father-the father who kept his son's photograph on his screensaver, the story about the bear cub. In what ways do the following Scripture passages show us that God is our ever-present, loving Father?

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