The God You're Running From

For most of my life, I was running from God. I want to be honest about that, because I think a lot of people are doing the same thing right now and calling it something else. I was not an atheist. I believed God was real. I was just convinced He was against me. And here is what took me decades to understand: the God I was running from was never the real one.

The God in my head was a harsh judge with His arms crossed. A disappointed father shaking His head. A scorekeeper sitting up in heaven tallying every failure and waiting for the right moment to drop the hammer. Who would run toward that? I spent years running from it, and I do not blame the younger version of me for running. If that God were real, running would be the only sane thing to do.

You inherited the face

We do not invent our picture of God out of nowhere. We inherit it, and most of the time we inherit it from the people who were supposed to love us and did not. Without ever realizing I was doing it, I took the face of every man who failed me, every authority that crushed me, every harsh voice that told me what I was, and I handed all of it to God. So the God I imagined had the eyes of the people who hurt me most.

That means I was not actually running from God at all. I was running from the worst people I had ever known, wearing a mask with His name on it. And this matters more than almost anything, because you will never run toward a God you are convinced is against you. Never. So getting the picture wrong does not just mess up your theology. It keeps you at arm's length from the one relationship that could heal the very thing those people broke.

He was already running

The turn came when I finally stopped telling God who He was and let Him show me. I was at my absolute worst, drowning in addiction and in everything I had built to numb myself, and the real God was not keeping a safe distance from the mess. In my book I wrote it exactly like this: even while I was drowning in addiction and destruction, He was already calling me Home. Already. Before I cleaned up anything. Before I prayed a single real prayer. Before I was anywhere close to deserving it.

There is a story Jesus told about a son who took everything his father had, wasted all of it, and ended up in a pig pen. When that son finally turned around to start home, the father did not wait at the door with his arms crossed. He saw him while he was still a great way off, and he ran to him. That is the God I actually met. He did not wait at the gate for me to get presentable. He ran at me while I was still filthy and a long way off.

Grace found me in pieces

For years I kept trying to get presentable enough for God before I came to Him. Clean up a little, string together some good days, stop being such a mess, then approach. He kept showing up long before I got close. In my book I wrote the sentence that captures the whole thing: grace did not find me polished. It found me in pieces. Not after I assembled myself into someone respectable. In pieces. Mid-collapse. At my least deserving.

The reason I kept trying to clean up first was a scoreboard I had invented in my head. I thought God was running a tab on me, and I owed so much by now that there was no point even trying to come back. The real God was not keeping that score at all. His own words dismantle the whole lie in one sentence: God commends His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Not after we cleaned up. While we were yet sinners. At our worst. That timing is the entire point of grace. A love you could earn would not be grace. It would be wages.

Near, and with power

If you feel a thousand miles from God precisely because you are broken, hear what He says about Himself. The Lord is near to them that are of a broken heart. He does not say He is near the ones who have it all together. He says the brokenhearted. The crushed. The broken heart you are certain disqualifies you is the exact address He gives for where He can be found. I tested that at the lowest point I ever hit, on a cell floor with nothing left, and He was as near as the verse promised.

And when I finally turned to Him in that cell, I braced for a lecture. For the disappointed sigh and the long list of everything I had done wrong. Instead I got power I still cannot fully explain. I had been on heroin for twenty years, and when I surrendered and got clean, the withdrawal that was supposed to come never came. Not one symptom. The only explanation I have ever had for it is that it was not my strength that carried me through, it was God's. The real God does not just forgive you and leave you to white-knuckle the rest of your life alone. He shows up with a strength that is not yours.

Meet the real One

So let me ask you the question that quietly changes everything once you let it in. When you close your eyes and picture God, whose face does He actually have? And where did that face really come from? Because you might be running from a God who looks exactly like the person who hurt you most, and that is not Him. If God chased a man everybody wrote off all the way into a maximum security cell and refused to quit, then He has not given up on you either. You are not the exception to the God who pursues. There is no such exception.

If this is you, I would love to hear it. What is the picture of God you grew up with, and the lie about Him that has kept you at a distance? You can share your story with us, or if you know someone still hiding from a God who is not even real, they can write to us directly. And if you want to read how a man who was certain God had written him off found out otherwise, the first chapter of my story is free. Sometimes you can only face God once you watch somebody else find out He was never the enemy.