He Stays

Tracie Mark

 “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runs to it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).

A few days ago I posted about running. I used the analogy of my running a 10k to the spiritual race we all are running in this journey called life. But what I failed to mention in my story was that sometimes I run for the wrong reasons…I run away.

There’s not much that scares me. For someone who used to be afraid of her own shadow, I have traveled light years to become someone who often runs alone in the dark. Someone who will kill a spider with her bare hand and someone who can address hundreds of people without a drop of sweat. But there is one thing that has always scared me to death and that’s to be left alone. Rejected. Left in the dust because I’m not good enough.
And because it’s the one thing that has happened to me over and over and over again, I have often run from something before it can run from me.

Abandoned. Orphan. Unwanted. Unloved. Forsaken. Alone. Flashing neon signs that go off in my head when I get hurt, reminding me of who I am. Who I’ll always be. At least that’s what the enemy of my soul tells me. What he’s told me this entire last year of my life that had me running for my life. Well, trying to run away from the reality of my life. Honestly, I ran like hell.

Did you know that if you’re not running to something, you’re actually running away from it? There’s no standing still with God. But that’s exactly what I tried to do. Instead of standing on His Word and all His precious promises about who I really am, I quit standing altogether. Sat right down, crossed my arms, turned my back and refused to seek His face. Oh, I may not have backslidden into my past sins, but I turned my face from the Truth and wallowed in my present reality. I might have physically been laying in my pit, but I was emotionally running away from God.

But don’t we all know that God loves us too much to let us run forever? Although He didn’t actually physically stop me from running, what He said to me one night as I laid on the ground here in the woods looking at the stars, stopped me dead in my tracks. He didn’t call my name, He didn’t bring conviction, in fact when He spoke it was so clear and so profound it made me jump.

He simply said…”I stay.”

I sat there in the dark, staring up at the North Star and I finally got it. It doesn’t move. It’s always there. No matter where I go, how far or how long I run from Him, the Truth remains as constant and as certain as the heavens, I run under…He will never run away from me. The truth about who I am is in Him. Not in what I do or what others do to me. Not about where I go or what I’ve done. It’s not in who loves me or who leaves me. I may be rejected, abandoned, discarded or even be disgusted with Him. But He is the Only One who will never do those things to me.

“I stay,” He said.

And He will never do those things to you. Are you a runner, too? Are you running away from God because of something you’ve done? Or because you’re mad at Him because He let something happen to you? Whatever your reasons are, take it from me…you can’t outrun God. Psalm 139:7 says
“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?” He is everywhere and He sees everything. He’s the Only One that can fix the thing that you’re running from. He will let you run though. Until you utterly and completely exhaust yourself only to discover you never really went anywhere. You can have all the evidence in the world and all the facts staring you right in the face and still not have the truth. Stop running from your perceived reality and finally face the real truth. There is only One Truth..Jesus Christ and you don’t have to hunt for it, you only have to accept it.

He was. He is. He always will be. And He loves ME. And He loves YOU.

“I stay,” He said.

#Nomatterwhat
#POLARIS