Stop Running

 YouTube Channel Video Devo

https://youtu.be/tEF7fZt8tkQ?si=eux4PAq_xqwfHh53

“Stop Running”

Jonah 1:1-3 NIV

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.

 

Since I was a young boy, I became fascinated with the show “Cops”.  All through the years at various times, I’ve kept watching it whenever I flipped through channels at home or when we’d be at a hotel.  That show always captured my attention.  In the past several years, there’s been “Cops:Reloaded”, “Live PD” and now “On Patrol Live”.  I have to admit we watch “On Patrol Live” regularly each week.  My youngest daughter, my wife and I mostly watch it and I’ve gotten them addicted as I am. Haha! 

 

There’s something captivating about watching people do the things they do and how people react to police.  We often find ourselves shaking our heads and saying, “What were you thinking?  You actually thought you could outsmart and outrun the cops?”  I’m often amazed and impressed with how cops can easily spot when someone is lying to them and how they can spot different things throughout the stop. 

 

As I think about these people who often run on foot or speed away in the vehicles, it surprises me that they actually think they won’t get caught.  They run or speed away from what they need to face.  When I consider this, I cannot help but think of Jonah and how we so often relate to running away from things we need to face in our lives.  Jonah clearly disobeyed God and ran away.  He said, “NO”.  That wasn’t very smart at all!  But before we shake our fingers at Jonah’s situation and say, “Shame on him, he knew better!”, we so often know better as well. 

 

Friends, just like Jonah and all the people on police shows, we make decisions to run from God in various ways in our lives.  We don’t want to face what He wants us to deal with and we just decide to speed away, thinking we will get away from Him.  We all know we won’t.  God will continue to pursue us and we will get where we need to go one way or another.  But why do we want to experience more pain?  So often the cops will say to the people who run, “You would have just been dealing with a simple ticket, but now you ran and you’re going to jail!”  People don’t think.  Well, often we don’t either.  We run without thinking and somehow think we’re ok.

 

Let’s try to be mindful of our situations when we get the impulse to run away.  It’s probably better to have a heart to heart with God and get things figured out.  We need to stop running and start facing what God leads us to through life.