The Danger of Fleeing God's Call in our Lives

I’m a firm believer that God has a specific call for every one of us who follows Him. I need to be careful here. I’m not referring to those who make sure we’re at Mass every Sunday morning and then push God to the side Monday through Saturday. I mean those of us who wake up every morning with a desire to grow closer to Jesus than we were the day before. 

It’s not that I believe this calling is a reward or something we have to earn. God has a calling for every single one of us. The thing is, we have to be close enough to Him to discover the details. There has to be a desire to use this calling to glorify God instead of draw attention to ourselves. That doesn’t happen if we only give Jesus an hour of our time every week.

I was introduced to Jesus in a way I’d never met Him before back in 2012. Sure, I knew that He was the Son of God. I knew that without what Jesus accomplished through the cross, salvation and spending eternity in God’s presence wasn’t an option for me. I grew up attending a private Catholic grade school. I knew the prayers, the feast days, and when to stand and kneel at Mass. I learned a lot about Jesus. I just didn’t know Him.

That all started to change in September of 2012. Jesus and the Bible became a part of my daily life. Within days I discovered a passion for writing about Sacred Scripture that had never been there before. I hated writing until then. I didn’t even journal, let alone write about something as essential as how applying Scripture to how we live. But, the closer I grew to Jesus, the more He made sure that I knew this was a calling, something that I would spend my life doing. Any doubts I had about this were taken away when a blog post I’d written led to me receiving a full-ride scholarship to study theology at Aidan University. 

Life quickly started changing from that point. I started writing about the Bible professionally. I went from being a single man living at the beach in Florida to a married man with a daughter on the way in Texas. I knew that I could write. I just needed to find something to write about that paid the bills. The content quickly changed from writing about Jesus and His Word to sports and politics. 

Not overnight, but over time, God became less and less important in my life. As my writing career shifted from Him to grown men playing games, studying statistics and betting trends became more important than waking up every morning and putting my nose in the Bible. Once Israeli and Middle Eastern politics were thrown into the work schedule, prayer became something I tried to do at night before falling asleep. I became less interested in growing closer to God and His calling for me. I was too busy. I made more and more money and became known in the sports betting industry as the handicapper who was good with words. 

I wish I could say that this happened once, and I learned my lesson. Instead, there have been several times in the previous ten years that God has had to get my attention. Just trust me on this. God is going to get your attention one way or the other. It’s much easier just giving it to Him. 

I stopped writing about the Christian faith altogether for a few years after my divorce. I had chosen to use my writing career for something other than God’s purpose. He had a direction for me, and I did everything I could to go as far as possible in the other direction. As a result, I’ve spent the last year and a half trying to find my way out of the dark forest I’ve put myself in, fleeing the presence of God and any calling He still might have had for me. 

I realize you didn’t start reading this post to learn about the last ten years of my life. This is my first post with Missio Dei. I was hoping that maybe someone would stumble along the post who knows they’re heading in the opposite direction of where God wants them to go. I know how alone that can feel. It’s not something you just snap or write yourself out of, and everything is better. The only thing more difficult than following God’s call in your life is wishing you had. 

I’ve spent a lot of time studying the Book of Jonah this last week for a podcast and blog series I’m getting ready to do on my website. The first three verses perfectly align with what I’m writing about today. If anything I’ve written so far has grabbed your attention, if you know that you are purposefully going in the opposite direction of where God wants to lead your life, I want to share this passage. Then I’ll share three tips from my personal life that will hopefully inspire you to follow wherever God wants to lead you. 

Jonah 1:1-3 “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.’ But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Jappa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.”

It’s more of a struggle to flee the Lord when the Word of God is important to us.

Writing and speaking about the Christian faith has been a part of my life for the last eight years, especially with men who are newer to following Jesus. One of the questions I’m most commonly asked is if I ever hear from God? My answer is always the same, “Of course, I hear from Him all the time.” It’s incredible how wide some of their eyes will get when I say this. The second question is always if I hear from God audibly, or is it silent in my mind? I always answer, “It depends. If I read my Bible out loud, God speaks to me audibly. If I’m quietly reading to myself, I’m the only one who can hear Him.” 

We read in the first verse of this passage that “the word of the Lord came to Jonah.” No, we’re more than likely not going to hear from the Lord the way that Jonah did. Still, God’s Word comes to us every time we read our Bible. For the record, if the only time you read or hear the Bible is at Mass on Sunday, I’m willing to bet that you have no idea of God’s call or purpose in your life. 

It is difficult to live on fire and with a purpose for God if His Word is not a part of our daily lives. Whether following the daily readings of the Catholic Church, a reading plan you do with a group, or studying Sacred Scripture on your own, time with our noses in a Bible is one of the greatest ways of spending time with Jesus. 

As a writer, when my career focussed on writing about Scripture and developing a more intimate relationship with Jesus, I was always studying something from the Word of God. From the time I woke up until I was done with work that night, if I was at my desk, I had at least one Bible and commentary open in front of me. 

As sports and politics became more of my focus as a writer, my first 30 minutes of the day were wasted reading news headlines and SportsCenter instead of spending time alone with God. As the Bible became less and less important in my daily life, it was much easier to walk away from any plans God might have had for me. 

There’s always a ship waiting to take us to Tarshish.

We read in verse three that as soon as Jonah was willing to flee the presence of the Lord, there was a ship in Joppa waiting to take him to Tarshish. Whether you’re ready to admit it or not, as followers of Jesus Christ, we battle a real enemy every day. Any time we operate on our own without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Satan and his goons are always three steps ahead of us. 

Opportunities seemed to come from nowhere when I decided I was done with writing about the Bible and wanted to write about sports and politics full-time. Every day I would receive emails from a sports handicapping website telling me they were looking to add writers. Looking back, I’m not sure I even had to spend time putting a resume together. One writing sample was all I needed, and I had all the work I was willing to take on. 

The enemy will always make sure we have an easy means of fleeing the presence of God. All Jonah had to do was go to Jappa, and everything he needed was right there. The ship he got on was headed five times further away than if Jonah had just followed God’s call. Still, he found a way to head further in the opposite direction, and it didn’t take nearly as much effort. If you’re fleeing from what God’s calling you toward and things seem too good to be true, there’s a reason for that. You either follow God, or you follow the enemy. There’s no in-between.

There’s always a fare to be paid.

Verse three ends by telling us that Jonah paid a fare to board the ship that would take him to Tarshish. Obviously, this is common sense. One trip to the gas pump is all we need to remember traveling isn’t free. But, when our destiny includes fleeing from God’s call in our life, the fare will always be much more than we bargained for. 

As amazing as life is starting to be for me again, things got pretty dark for a couple of years. My marriage ended in divorce before I converted to the Catholic Church. I became a person I hated. I can look back through journals from six and seven years ago and see where the more effort I put into fleeing God’s call in my life, the more dark things became. 

Because of how much God loves us, He will not sit back and watch us walk away from the blessings He has in store for us. God will always pursue His loved ones, regardless of how far our sinful desires take us away. He loves us so much that He’s willing to hurl a storm at us just to ensure we end up in the belly of a fish that will lead us where He wants us to be. Don’t take my word for it. Read what goes on to happen in the Book of Jonah.