Live Free with Josh Howerton - Are You Running From God? | Ep. 186 | Monday, October 23, 2023

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Are you a runner? Jonah was. Instead of going in the direction God called him to go, he ran the opposite way. No matter how fast we are or where we go, we can never hide from God… and that is a really good thing! Tune in today for the first episode of the Greatest Fish Story Ever Told. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. Church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive. I'm Mike Bro, and it's so great to be back with you. And I'm so grateful for our guests to stop by from time to time.

Every now and then, I need a break, and you definitely need a break for me. Hey, anybody binge watching a series right now? One of those, when you want to go to bed, you see the next episode prompt and you go, all right, one more. The first series my wife and I binge watched was the old series 24 with Jack Bauer, had that ticking clock, you know, tink, ding, ding, ding, ding, it'd be three o'clock in the morning,

and we would look at each other, go, man, you got another one in you? For the next few weeks, I want to binge watch a few stories from the pages of the Bible, and we're going to break them down into watchable, or in this case, listenable episodes, and we'll try to knock out each series in a week.

Y'all be up for that? Okay, so today I want to click on episode one of a series about the greatest fish story ever told. Now, everybody's got a fish story, right? You got one? I went to Alaska one time, and I caught an 80-pound halibut. And as I was reading it on the end, the guy who took me goes to the back of this small boat we're in, and he gets out a pistol. And as the fish was coming up, he shot it in the head to keep him from flopping around and thus capsizing the little boat we were in.

And I'm thinking, man, I am fishing with Jack Bauer, you know? Now, I'm sure that some of you have amazing fish stories that can top that one. But there is this one guy named Jonah. who's got us all. Now, we're going to get into his fish story in an upcoming episode, but episode one is called On the Run. Anybody love to run? Anybody do marathons, maybe 10Ks, 5Ks, half marathons?

When I was in high school, I was like Forrest Gump. I was running everywhere for no particular reason. I ran all the time. I loved to run. I ran the 800 meters in a mile, occasional 400 meter relay in high school. I ran all the time. Not so much anymore. But this guy Jonah was a runner, not a track star, not a weekend marathon, or not a morning jogger.

He was a prophet of God by trade, someone who would speak on God's behalf. But when God asked him to do something that is outside of his comfort zone, he becomes a runner. You ever done that? Jonah was this guy who possessed a whole lot of nationalistic pride and patriotic zeal for his own people, the nation of Israel. So when Jonah gets the call from God to go to a place called Nineveh, it does not set well. with him. It says in chapter 1, verse 3, but Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. Now, Nineveh was about 500 miles east, the little town that Jonah grew up in, and it was the capital of Assyria, which happened to be Israel's most dreaded enemy. Assyria was the big bad

bully on the global block at that time, a vast evil empire, and Nineveh represented everything bad about it. I mean none of a sins were the in your face flagrant kind? According to the prophet Nahum and others they had this enormous and arrogant military force involved in serious types of war crimes,

cruelty, plundering, and they were totally sexually unrestrained prostitution, sex trafficking, witchcraft, commercial exploitation, you name it. Plus they saw themselves as strong and absolutely untouchable. And God

had enough of their evil arrogance, enough of their exploitation of other people. He was about to expose just how corrupt, how weak, how pitiful, how unprotected they really were. And he was going to take them down himself. So he tells Jonah, go and warn them, to tell them that they need to turn around. And Jonah responds, listen, God, I don't mind working with your own people, but I'm not doing that. I wouldn't touch those people with a 10-foot pole. And so he runs. He goes down to a marina and Joppa and buys a ticket on the ship going in the opposite direction.

It was like God said, I want you to go to L.A., but he buys a ticket to Boston. He's on the run in the opposite direction. And it says he ran, hoping to escape from the Lord. Have you learned the futility of that yet? I can remember playing hide-and-seek with my kids when they were little. I'd walk down the hall and where are they? And I could see my three-year-old hiding behind like a pole lamp. I mean, they thought they were really well hidden.

David writes this really cool Psalm, Psalm 139. He's not writing this Psalm like, oh, creepy God who stalks me, but rather he writes with a spirit of, I'm so grateful that I can't hide from you, that I'm never out of your sight. He says this, oh, Lord, you've examined my heart, you know everything about me. You know when I sit down and want to stand up,

you know my thoughts, even when I'm far away. You see me when I travel, and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know that I'm, you know what I'm going to say even before I'm going to say it, Lord. You go before me and you follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand. I can never escape from your spirit.

I can never get away from your presence. I cannot hide from you. To you, the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. He's just saying it's futile to hide. It's futile to run to try to fake God out. It's like hiding behind a pole lamp. And it will suck the life out of you.

I'm telling you to it. Attempting to cover your tracks, live in two separate lives, it takes enormous energy and brain power. It's useless to run from God. And besides, as many of us now know, why would you want to run from someone who knows everything about you and still loves you with this crazy, relentless love? But like you and me, Jonah had to try.

Well, guess what? God runs after him, pursues him with a relentless love. He does that with us, you know. and God gets his attention by sending a storm, a big-time storm, so big that the sailors on the ship are worried. And like many sailing crews today, these guys from all over the world, so they worshipped all kinds of different little G gods. So as they're crying out to their gods, it's revealed that Jonah is the whole reason for the storm, and they ask him, why has this awful storm come down on us? Who are you?

What is your line of work? What country are you from? What's your nationality? And Jonah answers, I'm Hebrew. and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea in the land. The one I worship is actually the creator of the whole universe, including this ocean. See, in the religions of the ancient Near East, the supreme God was usually the god of the seas. If you could control the sea, then you were like the big daddy god in their eyes.

It says in verse 10, the sailors were terrified when they heard this, for he'd already told them that he was running away from the Lord, and they say, oh, why did you do this? I mean, even these guys know. You shouldn't do that. They didn't know his God. But they knew better than the run from him. You see, these guys spent most of their life outside in nature. These weren't corporate types glued to a spreadsheet in an air-conditioned office all day. These were sunburned, wind-burned, callous, craggy-faced tough guys. Think Discovery Channel's deadly as catch-crew. These were men who tasted the salt. They live with the spray of the surf on their face. They experienced the power of the crashing waves. They battle the fury of the deep. They witnessed majestic sunsets over the world. water, they had seen the skies fill up with lightning, they knew that the heavens declared the glory of someone. They just didn't know who. But one thing they did know, you probably ought not to mess with him. So they say, what should we do to you to stop this storm? It's your fault. He's ticked at you. What do you suggest? Jonas says, throw me into the sea. It'll become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault. Well, they resist doing that because they're saying,

We're sailors. We're not pirates. But again, these were men who had seen their share of storms. They knew that this was one that was just too strong. They knew that they were not going to ride this one out. So they cried out to the Lord, Jonah's God. They pleaded, O Lord, don't make us die for this man's sin. And don't hold us responsible for his death, O Lord. You have sent this storm upon him for your own good reasons. We hate to do this. And then as a last resort, they picked Jonah up and throw him into the raging sea. and the storm stopped at once. And that's the end of episode one. And let me say to you as a former runner,

stop running from God. Run toward him. Whatever he might be asking you to do right now, take some courage and do it. Don't go in the opposite direction. And just know this. If you do continue to run from him, he's going to pursue you.

He loves you way too much to let you go. Tune back in tomorrow for episode two, into deep. Hope you have a great day. See you. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point,

visit lakepoint.compt.combe.combe.com slash daily drive.