Quote for the Day

“…to flee from the Lord.”

Today's Prayer

This week pray that God will be direct about His plan for your life. Ask Him to also give plans and direction to those on the road as they work to execute the plan God has given each of them.

Jonah 1:1-3

Jonah 1:1-3 (NIV)1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.

Message

The Lord had a big job to do, and He chose Jonah to be part of the plan. A town with over 100,000 people lost sight of God and was living in wickedness. God asks Jonah to travel to this town and be His special messenger to remind them of God’s love and mercy. What is Jonah’s response? “Not me, God! I refuse to tell your story to those people. In fact I am going to run from town AND you and go as far away as I can so that I do not have to talk to these people OR to you.” While I do not think Jonah really believed he could run from God, he was running from God’s plan for his life.How about us? When we get clear direction on what we should be doing, what is our response to it? Do we move quickly to execute the plans and goals God has set before us? Or do we, like Jonah, flee from God? As we will see it is God who will win in the end, so it seems best to both start and end with His plan.