RUN TO HIM "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 1:3 (NIV) As a child, I thought the story of Jonah and the whale was a bit strange. After all, how can anybody be dumb enough to try to run away from God? Well, the Lord told me while I was hiking that not only do people run away from Him all the time but I myself was guilty of it right this very moment. Okay, I admit it, I haven't been spending much time with the Lord for the last few days. I fell into sin and feeling guilty because I continued to do it, I avoided God because I didn't want to be a hypocrite by asking Him to forgive me for my sins when I knew I would do it again. Sound familiar? Or am I the only fallen saint around here? Well, the Lord said to me, "When my people fall into sin, instead of running away from me, they should run to me." I realized, right then and there that many children of God don't leave the church or God because they stopped believing but because they were running away. Like children who have done something wrong, we hide from our Father in heaven by avoiding our pastor and our church. We even stop praying in a vain attempt to hide from our big Daddy. Only guilt and the devil keep us separated from Christ because guess what? Christ already knew we were going to sin and our sins were nailed to the cross with Him. The Lord showed me something amazing during my few days of "separation". I lost my very expensive, state-of-the-art, uninsured cell phone that contained every single phone number I needed. For a day, I hunted everywhere for it. I had a fleeting thought. God was punishing me. Second fleeting thought, I had opened the door to the devil by sinning and now the enemy was launching the first attack. I didn't feel worthy enough to ask God to help me because I wasn't repenting. Now let me explain to you how I feel about repenting. It was impossible for me to repent for something I knew I was going to do again because that made me a class A hypocrite. I wanted to wait to repent until I knew that I wasn't going to do it again. So what did I do, brilliant, holy saint that I was? I didn't pray for three days so that I didn't have to face God with a phony repentance that He would see right through anyway. But I was so desperate, I quickly murmured, "God, help me find my cell phone, please." I suddenly felt that I needed to start thanking God for finding my cell phone. Deep within me, though, I thought, "God isn't going to answer my prayers because I have closed the door to Jesus doing miracles in my life and given permission to the devil to harass me." However, with my mouth, I began thanking God for finding my cell phone. Within a couple of hours, I found my cell phone in the most unlikely place. God just popped the location of my cell phone into my mind. Hallelujah! God answered my prayers even though I was in sin. The Lord reminded me of that while I hiked. He said, "My grace and mercy is so great, you cannot even begin to fathom it." Saints, the Lord wants us to know how much He loves and cares for us. He wants us to run to Him in every circumstance, not away from Him. Nothing is too bad that He won't love us still. He wants us to run into His arms so that He can help us become overcomers. Maybe you won't conquer your flesh and stop sinning right away. Maybe it will take you a really long time to get it right. But don't run away from the Lord. He's holding His arms out. He wants us to run to Him and not from Him. Let God be God and accept the gift of the cross. Carole Schutter
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