Stop Running Away!

 

            This morning while listening to a podcast on my daily walk, one of the speakers made this comment, “The natural tendency of man is to run away from God.” As I thought more about that, I realized she was probably right.

            In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, driven by shame, tried to hide from God.  Despite all the miracles the Israelites witnessed, their first reaction when things got difficult was to blame God and look for another god who they thought would take better care of them.  When Jonah was given a task that he didn’t agree with, he tried to run away from God. 

            We are no different today.  When we sin, instead of running to God for forgiveness, we decide that we aren’t good enough and begin to ignore Him.  When life gets hard and we are treated unfairly, we decide that God doesn’t care about us.  In our human logic, bad things should not happen to good people, so God must be to blame.  When we disagree with the Scripture’s definition of sin, we choose to ignore those passages or, in the case of Thomas Jefferson, rewrite the Bible to suit our beliefs.

            All those actions are efforts to run away from God.  So, how do we counteract this tendency, which is caused by our sinful nature?  We know that God is relentlessly pursuing us, so the problem is not God’s.  It’s ours! 

            First, we must remember that when we confess our sins, God forgives (I John 1:9).  Yes, there may be consequences for our sins, but God wipes the slate clean.  He doesn’t stand ready to condemn our every mistake.  He stands ready to welcome us back when we are truly repentant.

            Secondly, we must accept that sin is the root of all the bad and evil in the world.  God’s plan was for us to dwell in a garden of paradise.  Sin changed that.  Still, when those bad things happen, God is there, walking with us, just as there was a fourth man in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3: 19 – 25).  We must trust that His promises still stand, and, in His time, we will be reunited with Him in that heavenly paradise.

            Finally, there may be much about the Scripture that we don’t understand or at least, don’t understand why He said what He said.  However, the bottom line is that He is God, and we are not!  I’ve been reading the book of Leviticus, and I noticed that often at the end of a long list of “do this,” “don’t do this,” there is the statement, “I am the Lord, your God.”  It finally dawned on me that this statement is God’s version of our parents’, “because I said so.”  There are some things we must simply trust because He is the Lord, our God.

            Our tendency may be to run away, but God wants us to run towards Him.  He’s waiting with open arms.  Jesus has already paid the price for our sins and stands ready to intercede for us (I John 2: 1, 2).  Don’t keep Him waiting!

I John 1 & 2

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