🌿BREATHE TRUTH🌿
“But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went aboard, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish.” —Jonah 1:3
🌿LIVE THE REAL TRUTH🌿
Running late and realize you need a shortcut? Slowing of traffic due to an accident so you take a detour? Street construction blocking roads?
Shortcuts, detours, and blockades alter our plans. God does the same.
God changes the expectations we have for our lives. Regardless of how much concrete we set around them, God will break through our preconceptions of how our life should and will look like.
Jonah has a picture of how his life would turn out. Then God has an unexpected surprise for him. Unfortunately, it isn’t a surprise he desires.
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Playing games with God.
Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord.
We play games with God. Not fake games, but real games. On the game board, there are often more than one direction to move. When we disagree with God’s instruction, we maneuver our game piece as far away as possible from God’s will. To compound the problem, in our limited understanding, we think we can actually win.
In the game of life, two directions of movement exist: God’s way or the harder way. God calls Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, Assyria’s most populated city. The Assyrians, known for their horrific violence to their enemies, are a despised nemesis of the Israelites. Ministering to people we like is much easier than to people we don’t.
Jonah’s answer is to repudiate God’s mandate. Our reaction of rejection to God means choosing the harder way. Jonah chooses the harder way. As we follow Jonah flailing in the opposite direction from God (all the way into the whale’s belly), the harder way becomes harder and harder. Our journey of fleeing from God will only turn harder until we turn back towards God’s way.
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Running from God’s will.
He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish,
Ample means abound when we want to run from God. The world has copious corners and plentiful places to flee, to but in the long term, is disastrous and detrimental to our faith. Unstable psychological, emotional, and social platforms that pull us away from God and position us distant from Him. The reality is when we run from God, we are really running from His will.
Jonah finds a boat to take him as far away from God’s will as possible. Multiple modes of worldly transport exist, including indulgences in pleasure, people, and purposes apart from God. Jonah doesn’t partake in these indiscretions of the flesh, but he is unwilling to submit to God’s plan for his life and ministry.
When Jonah arrives at the Joppa port, he has no Plan A, Plan B, or Plan C of where he is heading. Here lies the danger of running from God. We risk being at the mercy of whatever venue the world is offering. We may not care in the heat of the moment, but we will later when we get so lost, we cannot find our way back home to safer shores.
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Jonah is like us. He struggles to agree with God when he doesn’t concur with the contents God is giving him to handle. Be encouraged, God will not give us more than we can pack in our suitcase. Jonah doesn’t want the package God is giving him to deliver and Jonah doesn’t like the people he has to deliver it to. Yet God is patient with Jonah, and gives him opportunities to work out his dilemma (Three days to be exact). No matter how much we struggle or how stubborn we are, the Real Truth never gives up on us. The Real Truth waits for us to see the truth.
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