My children and I love to go to the park. There is a nice park two blocks from our house, and lately, I’ve been trying to take them there as much as possible while the weather is still nice (before it gets too blistering hot). My three older children ride their bikes, and I pull Jessica in our Radio Flyer wagon. We park our vehicles in our usual spot, a grassy area near a tree and a bench, and the kids head off to play.
Last week, we had played for awhile and were ready to head home. Ellie was in the lead on the sidewalk leading to the street, with Jessica and me bringing up the rear, when a stray dog loped into the park.
Ellie saw him, and she immediately got off her bike, dropping it to the ground, and ran towards me, arms outstretched, calling my name. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”
Ellie is scared of dogs that move unpredictably or quickly, and once, a large pit bull (who was actually trying to be friendly) jumped up on her to lick her, and wound up scratching her cheek with his front paw. So when she saw this dog running towards her, she was understandably terrified, and fled in the opposite direction toward me as quickly as she could.
Everything turned out fine. The dog didn’t hurt anyone, and we made it safely past him. But I learned an important lesson that day.
My daughter knows how to flee: immediately, quickly, and completely. I need to learn from her. Perhaps you do, too.
Too often, when you and I see danger coming, we don’t flee. Sometimes, the threat is something that can cause us physical, emotional, or financial harm. We know our Father is right there with us, yet for some insane reason, we don’t flee to Him. We try to meet the monster ourselves.
It’s a foolish strategy. Why in the world would we try to deal with the hazard ourselves when our Father is right there? Yet too often, we do. Maybe we’ve come to believe the proverb “God only helps those who help themselves” (which is NOT in the Bible), so we muster up our own puny abilities and deal with the problem. Possibly, we overestimate our capacity for dealing with it. Or maybe we don’t realize that God cares about our problem and wants to help us.
Whatever the reason, we confront the menace ourselves, and we lose.
Other times, the danger isn’t direct and immediate. Temptation rarely looks as dangerous as it is. We see temptation coming, and we don’t flee, because we figure there’s no need to go running. After all, we can stand our ground and refuse, can’t we? Or maybe we simply don’t want to flee the temptation. Maybe we want to do the thing we shouldn’t.
If we saw a tornado heading straight for our home while we were playing outside with our children, what would we do? Would we say, “Kids, it’s getting a little windy out here, so we’re going to go inside in about ten minutes”?
Of course not. We’d gather up our children as fast as we could and run into the house, crowd into the safest closet we had, and pray.
Why would we do any less when temptation approaches?
Whenever we’re threatened, whether by temptation, by an obvious physical danger, or by any other thing that troubles us, we should flee to our Father. Let’s admit that we don’t have the strength to fight anything on our own. We’re desperately in need of God’s assistance every single time—whether it comes in the form of His giving us strength to do the right thing, or of His slaying the dragon on our behalf.
Let’s take a lesson from my daughter. This week, let’s learn to flee.
Genesis 39:12—But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
John 15:5—Apart from me you can do nothing.