Who do you call?

When you are in trouble who do you call?  I loved this picture of this little guy with the old tin can phone…

Studying Jonah yesterday I came across the words in chapter 1; Get up and call on your god!  Here's Jonah on the run from God.  He runs toward a town called Tarshish, which is he opposite direction from where God told him to go.  How many of us do this?  Run the opposite of where we know God is leading us?  I've done it, maybe some of you have to…Anyway he buys a ticket to board a boat in Joppa to go to Tarshish.  He is running from God as fast as he can and he goes down below on the ship to sleep.

When suddenly he is awakened by the captain of the ship telling him, Jonah to call on his God because they even recognize that Jonah serves a mighty God.  These men had thrown everything overboard trying to save the ship from this awful storm that was threatening to tear up this ship.  They were afraid they were calling on their gods which of course were not answering.  They were in chaos and doing everything humanly possible to save this ship, while Jonah is asleep below.  Don't you know they wanted to shake him awake?  He was not just napping, he was in a deep sleep.  Jonah knew God was trying to get his attention.  He knew God.  He knew why it was all happening and yet he was allowing it to continue all because he didn't want to follow God's plans.

How often are we like Jonah allowing those around us to suffer because we don't want to call God or answer His desires for our life?  How often do we pretend that we don't hear or we got a busy signal when we called?

Do we have people in our life that will toss overboard to get our attention?  Oh, I know these men were trying to save their own skins, but they tried everything else first…they did realize who Jonah's God was during this experience we are told in Jonah 1:16 ~ At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him.  

Jonah running away reached others, but he still had to take the journey God was calling him to…What about you?  Is God calling you to a specific path that you are avoiding?  He will use wherever we are, but our hearts will not experience peace until we are in God's will.  I think Jonah was able to sleep because he knew God so well that he knew God was never ever going to leave him running the opposite direction of His desires.  So, sometimes we may sleep while on the run, but God will turn us around one way or another.

I love that God loves us so much, that HE pursues us even when we are running the other way!

Sweet blessings,

Debbie