Turn Around

I’ll never forget the overwhelming feeling as I drove the car through a very secluded area. It was like a scene out of the movies, as trees surrounded me, and the only light was that of the moon and my headlights. Then… the road suddenly narrowed to one-lane. There was something spiritually significant in the moment, as what I thought was fear, grasped my insides telling me to turn back. I drove another quarter of a mile when I suddenly came upon a car in the middle of the road, turned upside-down, windows shattered, and the doors spray-painted. In a moment, I felt as if eyes were watching me, waiting for the moment to attack. My senses literally went into overdrive, my vision narrowed, my breath quickened, and I quickly turned the car around and sped away. I never really “saw” anything, but I’ll never forget that I sensed “something” was out there. My experience led me to share the quick story with a man that I met, a native of the area. When I described to him where I had been, the look on his face sharpened, as he explained to me that I should have never been out there. The place that I had driven that night was known by the locals to be off-limits. Behind the trees that had surrounded me that night lived tribes of people who were known to practice witchcraft and Satanism. Because of it’s seclusion, even law-enforcement often stayed away. In that area, there had been over 100 murders over time, and many of the victims, who were family members of the tribes, had been sacrificed. I realized that what I thought had been fear in me had literally been God’s Spirit alerting me to turn around and get out of there. Had I kept down that path, there is no telling what could have happened.

Isn’t life the same way? I love the story of David in Psalm 139. As I read it, I get the picture of a man who is on the run. Everywhere he goes, God is there, and he finds that he can’t escape the powerful hand of God. In verse 5 David says, “You hem me in-behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.” In David’s searching and travel, we find God “hemming” him in. It’s almost as if God says, “stop running, there is no where you can go that I can’t get to you.” It’s that same voice that spoke to me that night as I traveled down the road that told me to stop driving that direction, and to turn around.

How many of us in our life are on a path that leads to destruction? It may be a road traveled with pride, anger, lust, immorality, lying, cheating, hatred, bitterness, or divisiveness. God is telling you and me to stop running. Stop going down that path, there is nowhere we can go that His hand cannot reach.

Turn around and go the other way. That is what it means to repent. Where in your life is God calling you to stop running, turn around… repent?

Psalm 139