Key Words: But Jonah rose up to flee...from the presence of the LORD
Every first grader can tell you the story of Jonah. Jonah is a perfect picture of a disobedient prophet, running from God in chapter one. In chapter two we see him as a praying prophet running back to God. He is a faithful prophet in chapter three running with God; and in chapter four he is an angry prophet running ahead of God.
For Jonah to attempt to flee from the presence of the Lord in chapter one is astonishing to me. Certainly Jonah would have known the Scripture which said, “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Psalm 139:7) – and the answer, of course, is you cannot flee from God!!
Jonah fled from God because he felt that if he obeyed he would be in danger; but need I remind you that some things that appear dangerous are actually much less hazardous than their safer-looking alternative? Commercial airline travel, for instance, is thirty times safer than transportation by car. It may not seem that way to the person who would rather fight rush hour traffic on the ground than ride a solitary Boeing 747 at 35,000 feet. But out of five million scheduled commercial flights in 1982, only five resulted in fatal accidents. Being carried by tons of metal thrust through the air by huge jet engines is actually safer than being pulled along in an eight-cylinder machine that never leaves the ground.
The moral is that we are safer in the most dangerous of places in the will of God than we are the safest of places out of God’s will.
So let me challenge you to never flee from God but to God.
Remember, you can never be safer than when you travel with God.
What to do:
✞ Remember, you can never be safer than when you travel with God.
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