Life On The Run From God!

Life On The Run From God!

Reading: Jonah 1v1-10

As you read the books of 1st and 2nd Kings,…you find that the nation of Israel was in a mess.

In fact,…they were in a desperate crisis.

King after king over Israel,…except Hezekiah and Josiah,…were corrupt and did not serve the LORD in the way they were supposed to.

They did not destroy the places where the pagans were worshipping, as God commanded them to do.

In other words,...it was a time of major crises for God’s people.

The Bible says,…that the Kings did evil in the eyes of the LORD,…and with that came consequences for the nation’s disobedience.

But those were also the days in which God was at work in the hearts of men and woman.

God was working through people like Elijah and Elisha,…and He was raising up servants to speak His Word with power to the people who were living in sin,…and disobedience.

…and so Jonah appears to be one of those men God raised up to preach His Word to the Nations.

In other words,…he was God’s man in his generation who was raised up for the crises of disbelief and sin,…and when you think about it,…that was not only true of Jonah,…but it is also true today that God wants to raise up men and woman for the crises of our generation.

This generation today is corrupt and full of sin,…and God has seen the crises we find ourselves in,…and He is calling you to go and preach to those people.

But,…Jonah’s problem was not that he did not understand God’s calling,…no,…he had a moral problem with going to Nineveh.

In other words,…when God asked him to go,…God’s will and Jonah’s will came onto a collision course!

In other words,…Jonah had his own desires and his own plans and ambitions to fulfil in his own life.

Jonah had his own concepts and his own ideas of how things were to be done,…and how best he could serve God.

…and I fear,…that Jonah does not stand alone in this,…even today.

Therefore I believe there could be people here this morning who don’t want to go and speak God’s Word to a people whom they despise.

I believe there could be people here this morning who are afraid where God might send them,…so they live their life on the run from God.

It like that song that goes, “Oh God please, don’t send me to China”.

…but I’m afraid,…too many people’s theme songs are, “Please God,…don’t send me at all”.

…because we don’t always understand why God wants us to do certain things,…yet

God doesn’t ask us to depend upon our own understanding or logic,…God wants us to trust Him.

So this morning I hope that God will reach out to you,…whether you are a young person or an older person,…that God will reach out to you if you think you are too old for God to make any big spiritual changes in your life,…that God will somehow reach out to you and rescue you from spending the rest of your life on the run from Him,…that you will again turn back to Him even if you have made decisions in the past that have ruined your life,…decisions that have put you into a certain system of life that is not God honouring.

…because you might already have decided that nothing is going to change you,…not even God,…and now you are like a dead fish floating down stream,…wondering aimlessly through life.

This morning I want to show you what happens to a man or a woman who lives their life on the run from God…when a person just says NO to God.

I know there are young people here this morning,….young adults even who know they are on the verge of permanently going the wrong way with their lives,…and spending the rest of their lives moving away from God.

This message is for you:…-…Stop running from God!,…and do the things that He’s has asked you to do.

I know there are people here this morning who for all practical purposes come to God with their lips but not with their hearts,….come to church with their bodies,…but do not arrive with their Spirit,…who give freely of their money,…but don’t physically want to go to another country or across town and serve God there.

You are some place else,…running from God and refusing to accept His will for your life.

...and you know you have made decisions in your life which are in exact contradiction to what God wants you to do,…just as Jonah did.

This message is for you: Stop Running From God!

And maybe your reputation is,…that you have told people that you really want to serve God on the Mission Field,…or serve Him in some other way.