If you are a street cop, every so often you will have a pursuit. You attempt to pull over a car for a minor traffic violation and someone decides to run. The drivers can range from being a dumb kid in his parent’s car to a full-blown felon on the run.

One evening while on patrol, I tried to stop a car and off he went. It was about 2:00 a.m. so the streets in the residential neighborhood were vacant. After about 3 minutes into the pursuit, the suspect turned down a dead-end street. When you are running at high speeds your vision becomes overly focused on a small section of the road immediately in front of you. The driver did not see the Dead End sign. I began to slow because I knew what was coming.

At the end of the street was a wooden barrier. The road was elevated about four feet above the orchard that began at the end of the street. The kid must have been doing 75 mph by the time he hit the wooden barrier. He went air born and began to chop off the prune trees in the orchard in a descending arc before he finally came to a stop in the soft soil of the orchard.  He took out about 5 trees on his ill-fated flight.

I tell this story because if you are running from something in your life you will be so overly focused on your escape that you will not see the signs that tell you the choice you are making will lead to a crash at the end of your dead-end decision. I could list a lot of dead-end decisions.  These dead-ends come from an unforgiving heart, prideful ambition, self-promotion, self-hatred, a fear of the future, and many other things.

What are you running from? That is one of the most important questions you will ever ask. The only running a believer is called to do is to run away from sin or run to the Lord. All other forms of running will take you to a dead end where a crash is awaiting your arrival.