Every time I turn on the news and see a high-speed chase, where someone is trying to escape the police I always think to tell the person that is running … stop! Just surrender you’re not going to get away, this is not going to end well. Sometimes they look over their shoulder and see no policemen and they actually think that they’ve pulled it off only to discover a few miles away the police are up ahead waiting to apprehend them. But there is something in the mind of the person who’s running that makes him think that he will get away, that things will end well. They never get away and things never end up well.

The same is true for those who are running from God, they’re never going to outrun Him, and they’ll later discover that God was up ahead waiting for them. The thing is that we’ve all done it, thinking that we’re going to get away. Some have been running since their youth, for others it was a stage in their lives. Some run in a specific area of their lives, but we’ve all been guilty of trying to outrun God.

God Intervenes In the Life Of The Fugitive.

Jonah 1:7 NIV
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.

If you read the story of Jonah in the Bible, you will fin a man who thought he could escape from God. God called him to go one way and he boarded a ship going in the opposite direction. Initially everything was going well, so well that Jonah went to the bottom of the ship and went to sleep, thinking that he had left God behind. But while he was fast asleep God caused a violent storm, so violent that the ship’s sailors realized that this wasn’t just any storm. There had to be a connection between this storm and one of the passengers on the ship. So they awakened Jonah thinking that he might be the reason that God had caused this storm, and they discovered that they were right. Jonah was the reason for the storm. I can only imagine that when Jonah was awakened he thought to himself, this can’t be happening, this must be a coincidence. But yes it was happening, and no it wasn’t a coincidence. Often times the storms in our lives are not coincidental, it’s that God is an expert at creating the necessary storm to attract our attention.

God Does Not Chase After Us, God Is Always Ahead Of Us.

Jonah 1:17 NIV
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah thought he had outsmarted God and that he had gotten away from God. He boarded the ship, looked over his shoulder and God was nowhere in sight. The thing is that God was not running after him, God was way ahead of him, waiting for him. Not only with a violent storm to catch his attention, he also had a new form of transportation to take to him right back to where he was supposed to go in the first place.

It’s simple, you’re not going to get away and God will not go running after you. He will be waiting for you.

Heavenly Father I don’t want to be a fugitive! Quite the contrary, I submit to your will and from the word ‘go’ I’ll do what you tell me, because I don’t want to go through the pain of fleeing from you only to realize you’ve gone ahead of me and sent a storm to take me where you had sent me in the first place.