Don't Run

Photo by Kyle Loftus on Unsplash

What I do, God, is wait for you, wait for my Lord, my God - and You answer - I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you. -taken from Psalm 38:15 and Hebrews 13:5

It is so comforting to know that God will never walk off and leave us.  How many times have you wanted to walk away from someone or something in your life?  Did that person come looking for you?  Did that situation hunt you down and bring you back? Has anyone ever walked you through a tough circumstance?  God will do all of this, find you, guide you back and give you victory, if you will allow Him.  

Abram and Sarai decided to take matters into their own hands.  They were unable to conceive a child so Sarai decided to give her mistress, Hagar, to her husband so he could sleep with her in hopes of giving him a child.  (Why on earth they didn’t think that one through is beyond me.)  Of course, the two conceived a child which caused tensions to flare.  Sarai was angry at Abram and jealous of Hagar and began making her life miserable.  Hagar could not take the abuse and she ran away.  (Genesis 16)

We have all been there.  All of us have felt like running away from something or someone in our life.  I have left.  I have walked right out of a room avoiding the pain and conflict I knew would come if I stuck around.  I have run from people in my life who hurt me.  I have also run from my faith.  When it was harder to stand firm in my belief I ran and compromised.  In fact, as I type this, I want to run.  I had this blog near completion, all typed and ready to post before I erased it from my computer without saving it......yes, I could easily run away right now.  We are all familiar with circumstances that make us want to give up.  Like Hagar, who was facing emotional abuse, we have all been in a situation that got too hard to live with.             

If we don’t ask God what he wants us to do in these tough circumstances and we decide to run, I’m telling you now, He will find us and send us back.  God doesn’t want us running without first consulting Him!  In most situations, He doesn’t want us running at all.  God did not create us to run from our problems unless that problem is our own sin, of course.  Instead, God urges us to go to our problem, stand up to it, and face it head on.  God is our strength in times of trouble and when we are in a situation, such as Hagar, He expects us to trust Him enough to endure.  He says to submit to our troubles. 

Then the Angel of the Lord said, “Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.” -Genesis 16:19 

How could anyone possibly submit to the very person who is condemning her?   By closing her thoughts to a worldly answer, and loving like God, Hagar was able to return and withstand her abuse.  When we claim God’s perspective towards people and life’s situations then we are able to see past the hurt and the mistreatment.  We better understand that our fight is not with flesh but with the unseen dark rulers of evil (Ephesians 6:12).  When this is our perspective we can love those who hurt us and pray for them, even submit to them when appropriate.  In a relationship with God we begin to understand that we are not ever alone, we can stay around and do the godly thing, or  stand up to that illness with a positive attitude.  When temptations arise, instead of running from our faith, we can stand against the sin that compromises that faith.  God wants complete trust from us to stand up to our problems with confidence that He is standing there with us, even holding us up in the really hard times.