Have you ever just wanted to just get away? Just run away and leave all your stuff behind? Have you ever just felt like the walls are closing in on you and things were just to tough?
I remember when I was a young man , I used to get in my car and drive for hours, I would turn up the music and just get away. That was my escape.
Escape Dictionary.com describes it this way;
1. to slip or get away, as from confinement or restraint; gain or regain liberty: to escape from jail.
2. to slip away from pursuit or peril; avoid capture, punishment, or any threatened evil.
There are times in everyone’s life that we need an escape from something. Many of those times are created by our own bad choices and decisions. But many times we have no control over why we are going through what we’re going through.
How do you escape?
Let’s talk about the first definition.
1. to slip or get away, as from confinement or restraint; gain or regain liberty: to escape from jail.
To slip or get away from, I remember when I was in my early 20’s I got my girlfriend pregnant and I had always said that I would never have kids. I was in a state of shock and I felt that I had lost my freedom. I needed to escape the situation that I was in, so I did, I broke up with my girlfriend, and I ran away. I began to party and sell drugs. The day my son was born I was in Mexico partying. That was my solution, I ran away from the issue but the issue didn’t go away. I began to live a life style that was so opposite of who I really was. I remember selling drugs to a pregnant woman and partying at her house, and I remember thinking that she was the scum of the earth for doing drugs. But it wasn’t her who was the scum of the earth, it was me, I was the scum, I sold the drugs to her.
You see, my need to escape reality caused me to make one bad choice after the other. I lived this way for about 5 years. After two years I stopped selling drugs but for the next three years I kept using them. I had no real relationship with my son for the first 5 years of his life. Don’t get me wrong, I was there in his life and he knew me and we did things together but my happiness and freedom was still more important than my relationship with him. In this situation my escape was created by the choice that I made as a young man, and it cost me dearly.
What about the other definition?
2. To slip away from pursuit or peril; avoid capture, punishment, or any threatened evil.
Without knowing it, I placed myself in a situation that I really needed to escape from. Because of the bad choices that I had made in trying to escape the fact that I was going to become a father, now I was in a situation that had my very life in danger. Although I was no longer selling drugs, I was now partying every night and using drugs every day. I was becoming everything that I hated and vowed never to be. I needed an escape. This time, I needed to escape from the thing that I escaped to. Where would I go, what would I do? You see now instead of me getting away from a confined situation or setting myself free from a situation, I needed to escape to avoid capture or peril. I needed to escape from an evil that threatened my life. I was headed straight to prison or to hell, which ever came first. How would I get away from this? What would I escape to this time?
I remember coming home one morning after partying all night and my mother got up, I remember sitting on the kitchen counter and saying, mom I’m done, I can’t live this way any longer. I remember bursting out in tears and sobbing like a baby, and my mother crying and saying that she and my sister had been praying for me all week. Wow. You see as I began to focus on myself in a very selfish way, I began to align my actions with the devils plan for my life. Before I knew it the devil had me in a trap, he had captured me and he was using me to punish myself and everyone who loved me. This is what James had to say about how to escape;
“Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you.”
James 4:7 (Contemporary English Version)
You see I didn’t know how to escape from the thing that I escaped to. But in that one moment on my kitchen counter God showed me that he was my escape, He was my way out.
You see we escape from all sorts of things and escape to all sorts of things, drugs, alcohol, sex, food, self-mutilation, porn, shopping, gambling and the list goes on. But how do you escape from all those things? What’s your escape?
I found my escape in these words of Jesus;
“If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28 (Contemporary English Version)
When life takes an unexpected turn don’t escape the situation by running to something that you will eventually need to escape from. Turn to Jesus and He will guide you through those tough times.