Traveling Into A New Year with Jonah: Escape or Obedience (Part II)

January 21, 2026

God is ready to use you…unworthy and unable as you are…to change the world, to impact this community, to help this church reach people for His Son, Jesus Christ.  Take the focus off the task at hand…off the fear…and PUT IT ON GOD.  This is what prayer does…prayer puts our focus on God.

There are many times I do not FEEL like being a pastor…I do not FEEL like taking the next step, fighting the next battle, making the next phone call, or going on the next visit.  These are difficult battles and times of anguish.  Certainly nothing like what Jesus went through in the garden of Gethsemane; but, nonetheless, they are moments of stress. 

Sometimes I fail and I give into my feelings, and I pray for grace from those I let down.  Sometimes I don’t fail and I pray, asking God for strength, and I go, whether I feel like it or not.  And every time I obey…every time I go…I am blessed.

Jonah 3: 6-10 (NIV) - When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust.  

This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink.  But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.  Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”  

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

The Ninevites listened to Jonah and repented…

“When God saw that they had put a stop to their evil ways, he had mercy on them.” 

Because of Jonah’s willingness to go, his obedience to go to the Ninevites and preach the word God gave him…an entire people, an entire community was saved…was blessed…

What if you don’t obey?  What if you don’t go?  Who will not be touched, not be shown the love of Christ, and not be connected to a body of believers because you chose escape rather than obedience as you live out your walk with God in this New Year? 

What if Jesus had not been willing to obey? 

What if Jesus had given into His fears and escaped the soldiers, the beatings, the nails?  Where would we be?

I Peter 3:18 (MSG) - That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.

As Charles Swindoll writes, “To be "in Christ" is to place one's trust in Him for salvation from sin. To be "in Christ" is to trust His goodness, not our own; to trust that His sacrificial death on the cross paid the complete debt of death we owe for our sin; to trust that His resurrection gives us eternal life instead of relying upon our own ability to please God. To be "in Christ" is to claim, by faith, the free gift of salvation. To be "in Christ" is to enjoy a completely restored relationship with our Father in heaven by virtue of His Son's righteous standing.”

Such faith in Christ pushes us not to run away, not to escape, but to obey. 

C.S. Lewis explains, “[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already...Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” 

When a mother eagle builds its nest…it starts with thorns, broken branches, and sharp rocks…then it adds thick wool and feathers, soft fur from animals it has killed. As the babies grow up in that nest they become comfortable. The nest itself is comfortable, soft, and the meals are free, brought to them each day. They don’t want to leave…the mother eagle sensing this reluctance to leave out on their own begins to pull out the thick wool and feathers, the soft fur from animals it has killed until the young eagles are nesting upon thorns, broken branches, and sharp rocks…until finally they leave the nest.

Often God removes the soft and comfortable things in our lives that are holding us in one place and allows the thorns, broken branches, and sharp rocks to appear…

Romans 5: 3-5 (AMP) - Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.

And we need not run…we need not be afraid…

Paul tells us, Romans 8:28 (AMP) - We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.

Each of us are called to get out of our comfort zones…to leave the nest…discovering another…only to soon leave that nest as well…moving from one degree of glory to the next…until that day that we are like Christ Jesus…until that day God “gloriously completes what He has begun” in us.

Let us choose obedience over escape. Let us choose to rely on God’s strength instead of our own. Let us choose God’s plan over our plans. Let God push you out of the nest you have gotten comfortable in that you might grow, through your many trials and experiences, into the likeness of Christ.

Let God lead you into a great, big, huge world where you can make an impact for Him.

Escape or Obedience.  Which will characterize your behavior, your actions, your walk with God in this new year?