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loving others

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Jonah 1:3-14 But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

⁴But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. ⁵Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. ⁶So the captain came and said to him, “What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish.”

⁷And they said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. ⁸Then they said to him, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” ⁹And he said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” ¹⁰Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.

¹¹Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. ¹²He said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.”

¹³Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. ¹⁴Therefore they called out to the Lord, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.”

When you run from God things get complicated.

The journey away from God at first appears harmless on the outset. Jonah goes to the port, finds a ship going to Tarshish and pays the fare. It may have appeared way too easy, there just happened to be a ship and he just happened to have the money. It all seemed like the right thing to do for him. Which proves the point, when you really want to disobey the Lord there is always a way. You don’t have to look hard to find an alternative path to flee from the presence of the Lord.

But as I mentioned in an earlier post, if you choose to take that alternative path, there is a cost. The fare Jonah paid to get a ride was only the beginning of what he would have to pay for running from God.

1^st It hurts you.

The Bible says he was fast asleep in the ship. He was so distressed, rebellious, depressed, and freaked out that he had no interest in life and no energy to face his circumstances. You could say he was dying in his sleep trying to escape his troubles. The captain comes down to where he was sleeping through a crazy storm and shouts at him, “What are you doing, you sleeper!?”

Have you ever been so depressed like Jonah that all you want to do is sleep your problems away? Men and women who have spent time in jail or prison know this feeling very well. There are countless stories of inmates who were released after some time of being locked up whose sleep schedule is totally out of whack because they slept through most of their sentence. When they get a job, they struggle to make it on time because of their wrecked sleeping schedule. Depression, specifically brought on from rebellion, might begin as only a mental state, but it costs a person physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.

And it all happens because God has wired you in a specific way. He has a plan for you, and when you choose to follow your own plan, it’s like a lion choosing to cage itself. The lion needs to hunt and roar. Those caged lions at the circus all look depressed because they’re not getting the adventure they’re wired for.

That’s exactly what happens to us when we try to do things our own way. Sure it looks a lot like freedom and it might even feel a lot like freedom. But only for a while. Soon you’ll slowly begin to realize you’ve put yourself in a cage and you’ll find yourself increasingly unsatisfied with the life you chose. That’s when depression sets in. But your stubborn sin nature will continue to fight it. Forcing you to run further and faster in search of something satisfying, not realizing that the only thing that can satisfy you is waiting just behind you with His arms wide open.

The personal cost of running from Christ is great and it’s not worth it. If you don’t want to take my word for it, you’ll find out soon enough the hard way. But you need to understand, it doesn’t just hurt you.

2^nd It hurts others too.

The storm of Jonah’s consequences brought trouble upon a lot of innocent people. The storm was so great that the most experienced sailors were terrified. Remember this…

We don’t get to sin for free.

When I was about 18 years old, I went on a mission trip to the desert lands of Utah to do some work at a ranch camp. On one of the days there we got to have a little fun on a horseback adventure. We were told to meet at the barn where the horses were, and they would help us get saddled up.

So once we were all saddled up we set off on our adventure, my friends all leading the way with me and my dusty steed, Billy, taking up the rear. The trail just took us around some rocky hills and through a couple fields. It was a pretty simple trail really. But Billy, the old horse, didn’t really like to follow in the line and he didn’t really want to listen to me. Instead he wanted to walk into the field and eat the wheat. Several times we were just walking along and he would lose his step and stumble just a little and my heart would jump into my throat. I was fully expecting this old boy to fall over on my leg and crush me and I would have to whisper my final words before I died in the dessert like a western movie. But he always caught his footing, and we kept moseying on behind everybody.

I also soon found out that this old, clumsy horse didn’t like other horses either. The reason we fell into the back of the line was because he didn’t like having another horse beside him. Once or twice we would end up beside the next horse and he would swing his head and try to bite the other horse. This made me fear for my life and start pleading with him to love his neighbor like he should.

Eventually we all wound up on top of a hill to catch an astounding view of the sunset. Sunsets in the desert are stunning to say the least. We all sat there gazing in wonder from the top of this tall hill. We could see far across the desert and watch the shadows growing. That’s when I realized… what goes up a hill must also go down a hill. Right then the tour guide, sitting on the precipice looks back at us and says, “Just lean back!” and he and his perfectly graceful horse plunged over the ledge.

One by one all of the others started slowly downhill, leaning as far back as they could, and their horses elegantly tiptoed down the hill. And then it was just me and Billy... “Billy, I know we’ve had our differences. But I ask, that just this time, you please follow the rest of them.” But Billy is old and Billy is clumsy. And Billy doesn’t like other horses. So with all of my faith in this horse, I lean back and he starts down the hill. All is going well. Billy is behaving like a true gentleman. Until the clumsy old man stumbled.

He quickly caught himself, but it sent us down the hill at a slightly quicker trot. It wasn’t long until we came up alongside the rider in front of us. Which Billy doesn’t approve of one bit. So Billy does what can only be expected from a grumpy, stubborn, clumsy horse. He starts bucking, kicking, and running down the hill full speed. Rocks are being kicked up in the air. We’re nearly beginning a land slide. We’re whizzing past all of the other riders. And all I can feel is my spine being whipped back and forth like a maraca.

No amount of pulling, tugging, or screaming would stop Billy. He was on a rampage. Over my own screaming and the laughing of all the others I hear the voice of the tour guide. “Pull back!!!” So for the sake of my own survival I pull back with all of my might on the reign and Billy slides to a halt at the bottom of the hill. Dust clouds swirling all around me. Knuckles white. Heart beating like a jungle war-drum. Prayers still echoing through the hills. And a justifiable anger in my heart towards Billy the grumpy horse. I didn’t talk to him the rest of the trip.

Billy basically made his own life miserable. He was unhappy and couldn’t get along with other horses. He refused to follow the path that was set before him. And every time he tried to take his own route, things got uncomfortable. But it wasn’t just Billy who suffered. The other horses suffered from his grumpiness and the rider most definitely suffered from his stubbornness.

Your rebellion doesn’t just affect you. Others are hurt when we try to forge our own trail. It happened with me and Billy. It happened with Jonah and the sailors. And it happens with you and those closest to you. So this is the final cost of running from God: The pain of sin and correction enter your life. Not only do you have to deal with the consequences but those around you, most often those who care for you the most, have to deal with the pain as well.

The good news is, there is a person who took the ultimate consequence of your sins so you could be restored to your Heavenly Father. Next month, we’ll examine the cure to running.

Jonah 1:1-3 “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ²‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’ ³But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”

There are several questions I believe the passage above answers for us. You might not have asked these questions yourself, but God apparently believes they are important questions nonetheless. The first question that needs to be answered is “What does it mean to run from the presence of the Lord?” Once that question is answered we can ask, “What causes us to flee from the presence of the Lord?” I want to answer those two questions in this article, and next month we’ll answer the question, “What’s it going to cost me if I do run?” After that we’ll see, “What is the cure for running from God?” But first, what does it even mean to run from God?

Understand this, you cannot leave the literal presence of the Lord. He is omnipresent, which means He is everywhere all the time. When Jonah ran from the presence of the Lord, what’s really happening is he was refusing to seek the face of the Lord. He was actually running from the relational presence of God. For instance, I am close to my dad, but he lives 20 hours away. What I’m really saying is, physically he’s far away, but relationally he’s close. Our physical closeness with God cannot change, He’s always here. But our relational closeness with Him can.

Now, Jonah was a prophet in Israel, a person of tremendous influence who had a long history of prophesying before we’re introduced to him in this whole story. We’d expect Jonah, this servant of God, to have it all together. So why then did He run from God when he knew better? Why would a man of God, who had served Him for so long, book it out of there? What’s the cause?

There was a popular, arrogant view in Israel, that all the nations around them that had wrongfully taken their land should be conquered and destroyed. God had killed many, many people for Israel before. So these Israelites were getting a little cocky. They started thinking everybody who treated them wrongly should be taught a stern lesson. In other words, and this is very important, they thought they knew what God wanted. Jonah was influenced by this racist worldview, and he thought his plan was better than God’s. When God told him to do something that did not fit with his worldview and personal plan he took off running. “Thanks, but no thanks, God.”

Sometimes, we can get so caught up in our culture’s idea of what God’s will is that when God actually shows us what He wants we often hesitate, stutter, and/or completely reject it. Jonah fled because he rejected the clear voice of God, “Arise, go to Nineveh” And we Christians have a word for that: sin. Sin is when you choose to follow your plan rather than God’s.

Remember this, the longer you run from God the further away you get and the harder it is to come back. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it is more difficult. Because when you are living in sinful disobedience you are building a life (your identity) apart from God. You are erecting walls between you and Him and the road back to a relationship with Him stretches longer with more and more walls built in between.

It’s important that you stop for a moment and do some introspection here. Check your own life and ask some questions. What has God spoken clearly into your life from His Word? Are you willing to submit your cultural assumptions and ideas to God? You are either obeying, and therefore remaining close to God, or you are disobeying, and running from His presence. In the next two months we’ll look at the cause and cure for running. But for now take inventory of your life and reflect on how the culture is influencing your beliefs about God, the world, and yourself. And always remember, God’s grace will redeem and restore even the most distant rebels.

I have a friend who came to America from Haiti many years ago. His name is Franco Wakhisi and he is an incredible runner. Which, makes sense since he is Haitian. About two years ago, my then girlfriend/ now wife, Jessica, came down to the Keys to visit me one summer, and it just so happened that the week she was there was the week the Keys Ultramarathon was taking place, and Franco was running in it. So we get this phone call and my dad says, “Hey, Franco is going to be passing by our house. A bunch of us are going out to cheer him on, you should come too!” So Jessica and I went out to where our group of friends were waiting by the road to cheer on Franco. As he passed by us, he stopped to give sweaty hugs to everybody, eat a banana, put some lotion on his feet, and change his socks. He thanked everybody for coming and then shot off again. This guy, along with over 100 other runners, started that morning before the sun came up and kept running until the sun went down. My friend, Franco, finished a 100 mile ultramarathon that took 22 hours to run, and got 11th place out of 105 runners!

Talk about an incredible act of athleticism! This guy is a serious runner with serious determination! But really, we’re all runners, aren’t we? Just in a different way. At some point in our lives every one of us has done, or is doing the same thing as Jonah: Running from God’s command. At first, it was probably uncomfortable. You felt the conviction of it and you felt guilty. But that selfish nature inside of you wants you to keep going. And soon it started to get easier. And you began to have a selfish pleasure about it. But this kind of running doesn’t lead to healthier living. This kind of running, like with Jonah, leads to personal destruction.

Here’s the saddest part of it all. Jonah didn’t just run from God’s command to love people. When he fled, he ran from the very presence of God. You need to remember that. When God calls you to something, and you choose to run, you’re not just running from the call. You’re running from God Himself. because you cannot stay in His presence if you are disobeying His command. You can’t choose to rebel against his commands and still believe you two are on good terms. It doesn’t work like that.

When temptation comes, you’ve got to determine now that you will not run from the command. Determine now, that you will choose to stay by God’s side.

But why? Maybe you’re asking what the big deal is anyway. I mean, you’re comfortable with your spirituality now, right? At least you’re not as bad as most of the others kids at school, right? But that’s the thing about your relationship with God; He’s not comparing you to the other kids. Your relationship with Him is personal. So while you may think you’re ok because you’re better than so-and-so, God isn’t feeling the same. It’s like a husband saying his marriage is amazing while the wife says they’re just barely surviving.

Next post we’re going to jump into the first verses of Jonah’s story, and I’m going to explain the why: Why should I even want to stay by God’s side if He’s going to command me to do things I don’t want to do? And why is it so difficult for me to do what’s right and stop running away when it gets tough? For now, you just need to take some time to define your relationship with God, not by what you like to think it is, but by the way He defines it. Have you remained close by His side even through the difficult commands?

I’m going to be honest with you. I never liked running. It never made sense to me. Especially track running. What’s so exciting about running around in circles? It’s exhausting and you always end up right back where you started. It’s like a race to see who can be first to get back to where you already are. I don’t get it! I never liked running.

Until my senior year of college.

My suite mate was a runner. This guy would run ten miles a day! And he didn’t even run track. He just did it because he liked it. And I just thought he was stupid for doing it. But seeing him always running and sweating kind of hurt my ego. I was lazy. I didn’t run unless I was late for class, and then I would show up all wheezy and sweaty. It was a little embarrassing. I realized that year that I should probably try running more often.

So I tried it. And for the first two weeks I hated it. I was sore, and it wasn’t even fun. Totally not worth it. But just shortly after those two weeks, I stopped being so sore. And I got used to running. In fact, don’t tell anybody this, but I actually started to like it. I liked pushing myself. That feeling of accomplishment was nice every time I beat my own distance. Feeling the wind fighting against me was a challenge I enjoyed. The sense of freedom I got while running full speed was invigorating. And best of all, I had a new sense of healthiness. During that year, I got used to running, and I liked it.

God is passionate about people; sinful people- those that are religious sinners, like Jonah, and those that are rebellious sinners, like Nineveh. Now, we’re all sinners, and we were all lost at some time. But He is relentless in running after lost, sinful people. Actually, He specializes in it.

Throughout the story of Jonah, there is a theme of running. God tells Jonah to run to Nineveh, but Jonah runs from God. Then Jonah gets convicted and chooses to run to Nineveh. It’s all throughout the book. But the whole reason of this running is because God cared deeply for the sinful city of Nineveh. But he also cared just as much for the runaway missionary, Jonah.

The story really has the same features of anybody reading this book. Either you haven’t yet completely understood the Gospel and let it have its saving grace implanted into your soul, like Nineveh. Or you’ve heard it, maybe even put your trust in it, but you are still trying to do things you’re way, like Jonah. Both are running in the wrong directions.

So as we walk through the story of Jonah, you’re going to see some very obvious comparisons between this story and your life. There are some things that will jump out at you and be so obvious that you can’t ignore it. But also certain treasures that require a little digging and a little more introspection. So let’s start with the main character of this story.

Interestingly, contrary to the popular children’s Sunday School belief, the book of Jonah is not about the fish, which is only mentioned three times. It’s not about Nineveh, which is mentioned only nine times. And it’s not even about Jonah, who is mentioned eighteen times. It is about God who is mentioned a whopping 38 times in the 48 verses of the book. It’s about His endless grace in pursuing the religious and rebellious sinners like you and me.

So the story is about God, and more specifically the character of God, who is both loving and merciful and who relentlessly runs after His people. If you think about it, it’s the same message as the rest of the Bible: Jesus loves people.

But that’s just the beginning. There’s a second part to this theme. Yes, Jesus loves people, but He also calls us to love people. And this part is really what we struggle with the most. We all love to say, “Oh, Jesus loves me! Jesus loves you! Jesus loves everybody!” And He absolutely does. But He calls us to love everybody too. That’s not as easy and acceptable as just letting Jesus love us.

Jonah vividly displays the hesitation to love people. God commanded Him to love a specific group of people with a specific truth, and Jonah was not willing to obey. At least, not at first. He was happy to let Jesus love him, but he wasn’t so happy to love people himself. So he did what so many of us have done at some time. Run.

What about you? We'll look a little bit more at this question and study the cause of running, but for now I simply want you to do an honest gut-check: Have you been sitting comfortably in God’s unconditional love for you without reflecting that love towards others? Have you been running from God’s command to love others like He loves you?

Faith | Hope | Love

Run Pt. 4 | The Cost of Running