Jonah  3:5 “Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.”

STOP RUNNING

Can you just picture Jonah? He ran from God after being told to go to Nineveh. He got thrown overboard from a sinking ship (that miraculously survived afterwards), got swallowed by a large fish, spent three days in the belly of that fish, got vomited up on shore, went to Nineveh, preached one of the shortest repentance messages ever, the whole city repents, he gets mad, runs away to “die,” sits under a vine, it dies and then God speaks to him. Wow! He could have saved himself a whole of lot trouble if he had just gone the first time God told him to go.

But aren’t we just the same? How many times have we “run” from God? How many times has He told us to do something, and we decide to ignore it or do the exact opposite? How many of you would like to spend three days inside a fish?

TEACHING MOMENT

Our children are going to disobey us. They will outright rebel sometimes. What a perfect story to read to them when they are rebelling. Do you think Jonah ever thought he would repent inside a fish’s stomach? I bet not. Our children might not like what God uses to get their attention. But they have got to decide to obey. You can’t obey for them.

Jonah had no idea how God would one day use the Assyrians, which included Nineveh, to judge the nation of Israel. And Jonah had no idea at the time how their knowledge of a forgiving God would shape how they treated Israel. You see, our children need to know that God sees the WHOLE picture, not just the immediate. He sees years, decades, even centuries down the road.

What are you running from? What has God asked you to do for Him? Why are you running to Tarshish instead of Nineveh? Stop and turn around. It is so much easier doing it His way!