Thought of the Day !!

     The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: "Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are."
     But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the LORD by sailing to Tarshish.
                                                 Jonah 1:1-3 (NLT)

Here we see a conflict of wills.  God's will was for Jonah to go Northeast to Nineveh and preach to the people there.  But Jonah didn't want to go.  He probably hated these people, who were wicked Assyrians.  So his will was to go anywhere but Nineveh.  This led him to go down to Joppa and head west...the opposite direction of God's will.  

How often is it that we're like Jonah?  How often does God have a will for us to live, behave, give or receive differently than what our own will is?  I'd say that this could be often for many of us.  The question is, what will we do about it?  Jonah decided he could do whatever he wanted, no matter what God's wishes were for him.  If you already know the story of Jonah, you know that he created a mess for himself (If you don't, check it out in the Old Testament for a good short story).  When we are so stubborn as to continually do things our way instead of God's better way for us, we create a mess for ourselves just like Jonah did.  

God's will is for us to have a more abundant life.  Even when we don't understand how this works out with what He's calling us to do or who He's calling us to be, we can be sure that His way will lead to a better life for us. 

So will you be like Jonah and run from God's will for your life?  Or will you be like Jesus as he prayed at Gethsemane "Father not my will, but yours"?

In the love of Christ,
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