After God speaks to Jonah and tells him to go to Ninevah, Jonah 1:3 says this: “But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”

Jonah was a prophet. He had direct communication with God. But he still was not consistently obedient to God.

Sometime we are just like Jonah. We have the Spirit of God living in us. We are closer to God than he was, and have more of God’s Word revealed to us through Jesus.

Yet we still run from God’s presence.

Our tendency to avoid God and chase after our own desires shows us that we need the gospel every day.

The book of Jonah is about the LORD preaching the gospel to Jonah again and again. Jonah is dead in the water, and God saves him by grace. Jonah is dead in the desert, and God saves him by grace. It is not Jonah’s goodness that causes thousands to be saved in Ninevah, it is the grace of God.

We were dead without Christ. We ran from God. He saved us by grace. We need reminded of that every day. And every struggle we have and every blessing we have is given by God to point us to the grace that he gave us through Jesus.

Evangelism proclaims to those who do not yet trust Jesus to come to Him for grace and life. It tells us as believers to come back to Jesus.

We need to share the gospel with believers, including ourselves. We run from God, and we need the gospel to bring us back.

If it is not the gospel of grace in Christ that brings us back to God, but rather attempts to fix our life by our own effort, we are in the same place of running from God. We don’t need to fix our lives. We need reminded that we can only be fixed by Christ.

Think of Peter: the main disciple, the most outspoken, the one named after a rock by Jesus. He still failed and ran from God. Yet after he is reminded of the gospel through the resurrection and Jesus words of forgiveness, he preaches a sermon and thousands believe. It is the same as Jonah. It is the same as us.

The power to live a holy life and share the gospel of salvation does not depend on us. We fail every day.

How does the gospel of grace in Christ apply to your life today?

2 Peter 3:1 says, “This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.”