Your Daily Bible

Jonah Runs from the Lord

God’s word comes to Jonah, the prophet, but he decides to flee in the opposite direction. Instead of going to Nineveh, he travels to Tarshish. 

People run from God for various reasons. Maybe you are like Jonah in some sense. We tend to run from God in specific ways. It could be because of sin, habits, resentment, bitterness or anything that the Bible forbids but we hold on to for various reasons. People tend to run from God because of pain and suffering. It could be the loss of a friend, a suffering family member, personal suffering, disappointments, crushed dreams, financial crisis or situations like these. We end up blaming God and so we run. 

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Don’t let fear stop you.

Chances are, you have a lot of big things coming up. Graduation. College. A career. Adult stuff. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed—in fact, you might not feel like you know what you’re doing! 

 Joshua was in the same boat. In the Bible, Moses was the only real leader the Israelites had ever had. He was the GOAT, basically. Joshua was Moses’ assistant. Then, Moses dies, and the entire burden of leading the Israelites was on Joshua. Sounds like a lot of pressure, right?

 As God is giving Joshua instructions, He says this three different times: 

“Be strong and courageous.”

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What happens when we don’t see God’s plan? 

In the Old Testament, Jeremiah was a prophet delivering a message from God to His people who had been exiled to Babylon. This certainly isn’t where they wanted to be. It wasn’t the plan. Instead of God rescuing them right away, He tells them to “build homes, and plan to stay” (Jeremiah 29:5 NLT) and to “work for the peace … of the city where I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:7 NLT)

A few verses later, God says, … “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again.” Jeremiah 29:10 NLT (emphasis added) 

Seventy years! Most of us aren’t patient enough to wait for something for 70 seconds, let alone 70 years. 

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How do you discover God’s plan for your life? 

If you’ve ever run a race, you know it’s important to keep the right pace. If you go too slow, you’ll easily get behind and people will pass you. If you go too fast, however, you might get exhausted quickly and not have the strength to even finish the race. 

Finding the right pace while running a race can be challenging. Fortunately, when it comes to our Christian life, we have someone who sets the pace for us. 

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What should I do? 

You’ve probably asked that question a lot, especially if you have a major life decision to face, like where to go to college or what career to pick, or if He or She really is the one to marry. 

It’s a similar question a religious leader asked Jesus in the Bible: “Which is the most important commandment of the Law?” (Matthew 22:36) In other words: what should I do?

In the next verse, we see Jesus’ reply: “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

When we try to figure out what God’s plan is for our lives, we can start with these two things Jesus told us to do:

1.) Love God.

2.) Love other people.

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Are you excited about your life? Or do you feel as if you’re merely existing, drifting along from day to day without any sense of purpose or direction?

Through the years, I’ve met countless people who’re living what I call a “settled-for-life.” Somewhere along their journey, they became complacent and content in their circumstances. They settled for what they believed was adequate or satisfactory instead of exerting the effort and work necessary to living a life that’s truly excellent and outstanding.

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In every season of our life—whether as a new parent, a student pursuing a degree, or as empty-nesters— we are invited to live with intentionality. Some of these seasons seem bursting with opportunity while others feel less important. It’s important to remember that purpose does not start or stop at certain points in our life. Every moment we have is ripe for purpose-filled living.

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For many of us, disappointment, setbacks, and discouragement can make us feel like our purpose is out of reach. When we look at the path of our life, it often does not match the upward and onward vision of what we thought pursuing our purpose would look like. 

It’s natural to want to avoid the setbacks and detours we experience in life, but the truth is that most of us will experience them. It may come in the form of an unrealized dream, like wanting to be married and finding yourself single. Or maybe you just got let go from the job you thought was going to finally elevate you as a leader. Perhaps a health diagnosis is physically preventing you from doing what you thought was your purpose. 

The good news is that God does not waste any of it. In fact, He is the One who can take what the enemy meant to derail us from our purpose and use it for good. The very challenges, mistakes, and difficult circumstances we try to rush past or hide do not disqualify us—they often cultivate the effectiveness of God’s unique purpose in our life. 

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One of the biggest stumbling blocks in realizing God’s intended purpose for our life is when we feel that our purpose has been put on hold. In our culture that values instant gratification, we can easily forget that development in the Kingdom of God does not run on our timeline—it’s often a much more gradual process than we would like. 

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One of the best parts of our individual purpose is that it is unique to us. God is not looking for you or me to become carbon copies of the people around us. Do you know the unique role God has called you to play?  

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