God Evaders

 "But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction in order to get away from the Lord." Jonah 1:3...."Toward evening they heard the Lord God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees. The Lord God called to Adam, 'Where are you?' " Genesis 3:8-9

Pastor and writer Mark Buchanan once wrote about "Jonah and the company of the God evaders." I think it's a very large company, and Jonah wasn't the first, and will certainly not be the last. I think to some degree, all of us have kept company with Jonah. Maybe you're keeping company with him right now.

Jonah had been charged to go to Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian nation, and the great enemy of God's people Israel. God commanded Jonah to take a message that called for their repentance, and a turning away of His judgement upon them. Jonah didn't want to do this. He much preferred that they be destroyed. So, he ran from God. Where in our lives have we been doing the same, evading God because He has pursued us with a purpose, one that we don't wish to carry out? Perhaps it's His call to become the husbands, wives, fathers and mothers that we know we should be in Him, but aren't. Maybe it's the call to cease our life on the spiritual fringes of the Kingdom and enter fully into the life He saved us for. Perhaps it's His call to no longer limit our participation in the Body to one of attending and giving a tithe, to that of truly fulfilling the call of being a "priest" in the Body of Christ and cease looking at our walk with Him as being a Sunday thing instead of a 24/7 one. All of these involve one thing; surrender, and you're running from that. We're running from that.

I said that Jonah was not the first God evader. He wasn't, Adam and Eve were. They'd disobeyed God, and through their disobedience, sin entered not only the human race, but the universe. Both are fallen as a result. God knew what had happened, and He came to them. Coming to those lost in sin, blinded by this fallen world, and with no idea of how to escape from it, is what He does. It's what He still does. We're all born in the place of Adam, and the Father continues to come for us in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Maybe you're in the same state as Adam and Eve, but you, like they, seek to hide yourself from Him. You can't. He knows where you are. The question is, do you?

Whatever our spiritual state, if it isn't in the fullness of Him, it isn't where we must be, and His question to us is, "Where are you?" We need to come to grips with where we really are, and not where we'd like to think we are. We humans are masters at evading and hiding from God, but blind to the fact that we never can. He always finds us in one way or another. Is He finding us, you, right now?

Is there something in your life, our lives, that's caused us to seek to evade Him by hiding in the trees? If so, the whisper of His voice calls to us. "Where are you?", though a whisper, just seems to grow louder all the time. At some point, we have to answer. At some point, we have to come out of the trees and leave the company of the God evaders. Have you reached that point yet, or, do you try and stay in the trees?

Blessings,

Pastor O