Jonah: Running from God

Have you ever wanted to run away? Perhaps you looked out the window this morning, saw the snow and wanted to take off for warmer weather down south! All kidding aside, there are often times in which we do want to run away and start over: things are tough at home; we have too much work to do, and not enough time; bills are piling up; there’s a hard conversation that you need to have but just don’t want to. Whatever the reason, we’ve each faced a time in our lives in which we’ve thought about leaving for what seems to be greener pastures on the other side of the fence. And perhaps some of you have actually done just that. But there’s one from whom we can never run — God.

In Psalm 139, David asks the question, “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?” And the answer is, nowhere. There is no place that we can run to that God cannot find us, in fact, He’s already there! It doesn’t mean we don’t try. We ignore God. We turn our back on God. We fill our lives with other things in order to drown Him out. But He is relentless, and He will “find” us.

The short book of Jonah in the Old Testament (after Obadiah and before Micah) tells us about one of God’s prophets who wanted desperately to flee from God but couldn’t. It’s a familiar story, but one that has a lot of relevance to us today. We’re going to look at it for the next two weeks at The Centre. Read it over, along with Psalm 139 and John 13:31-38, 18:15-27, 21:15-19. Hope to see you this Sunday at 6 pm. Remember, we’ll have prayer before the service from 4:30-5:30 for all who’d like to come out.

Hope you have a blessed week in the Lord!
Pastor Mike