26
Run But Can’t Hide
John TiltonJonah 1:1-6
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord. Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
The account of Jonah is very clear of he running from God so as not to have to obey God’s command to go to Ninevah and preach against it. He probably thought that physical distance from where the Lord called on him would suffice for him to evade the call. But then the Lord caused a great storm to ravish the ship Jonah was on, as well as give others on the ship knowledge that it was indeed Jonah who was the cause of the storm.
Perhaps you are in a place of hearing a call on your life from the Lord, or perhaps like many of us, hearing from the Lord about heeding His call on our own lives in terms of how we should live our lives in obedience following His will. I believe the situations are one and the same … a call on our lives by the Lord. However, do we like Jonah run from the Lord in terms of obedience, often incurring stormy situations because of disobedience as the Lord tries to get our attention? We then sometimes get mad at the Lord as to why He would allow us to confront such stormy situations, not realizing that we’ve brought it on ourselves with our disobedience. We often go to sleep by tuning the Lord out and falling more into things of the world. Like Jonah could not run from the Lord by distancing himself physically, neither can we, as the Lord is omnipresent. Heeding God’s call on our life, whatever it is, including obedience to His will, plan and therefore call, is the key to God anointed, God guided and God protected life.
Dear Lord, I thank you for your call on my life. May I follow through in heart, knowledge, strength and tenacity to walk in obedience to your call.
