14 September 2005 Devotion for Today "Running from God" Jonah 1:1-3

14 September 2005  Devotion for Today “Running from God”  Jonah 1:1-3

                ¹ The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: ² "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."  ³ 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. (Jonah 1:1-3)

The Lord put a conviction on Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach repentance. Instead, he started running from God and the conviction that God has put on his life.  Of course it would have gone much easier on Jonah had he only submitted to God’s call in the first place.  But Jonah didn’t want to hear it.  He was disobedient, and he was a bigot.  He was deeply prejudiced against the Ninevites and thought the world would be better off without them.  There might have been some justification for Jonah’s hatred.  The Nineveh was the capital of Assyria- possibly one of the most brutal, bloodthirsty empires that had ever dawned before the advent of Adolph Hitler.  Their cruelty and terror were well-known.  Rather than take God’s message to them to affect their conversion and turning from their barbaric ways, Jonah chose instead to run away.  He didn’t want Niniveh to be saved- probably because Jonah wasn’t even saved himself, or if he was he wasn’t acting like he was.
            You hear many testimonies of people who finally have given their life to the Lord after years of running from him.  Without a doubt I believe that some are reading this right now.  I talked about Eutychus last week and how he fell out of church.  Some fall out.  Others drop out.  Still others shut out God and His influence on their lives. Why? Because they are afraid that they might just get saved and have to change their way of acting and thinking. They see the preacher coming and man, they run.  “Can’t have him coming around here!  I might just get saved and have to give up my drinking that’s about to wreck my marriage and ruin my family.  Can’t have that going on!  Uh oh here comes that church lady around here again, she’s got a Bible as big as a Sears and Roebuck catalog!   She comes around me she’s liable to get me saved and I might just have to give up my cigarettes- even though I only got one lung and about to go on oxygen!  You all better run here comes that deacon over here again telling me got to get saved!!!  Can’t have that even though I’m about to lose my job because I can’t be depended on and my wife’s about to leave me because she says she can’t trust me.  Wouldn’t it be a terrible thing to have those religious people coming around me, telling me how to run my life and this and that.  And Lord, have mercy I might just get saved!  It amazes me the times I start praying and people start taking off.  Now what about that?  Its because the spirit of conviction is working hard on them!  They can’t stand it.  They are under conviction and they know it.  

            If you are running today and you don’t know what you are running from, let me tell you that you are running from God. Some people put feet to their running like Jonah did. Some people use mind altering drug and alcohol to run from God. Some people fill that emotional void by stuffing all the things of this world into their life and yet still come up empty.  Are you floundering today, cast adrift without any purpose or direction?  Submit therefore under the mighty hand of God. I Peter 5:⁶Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.”

Have a blessed day!

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@earthlink.net

 

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