More on Jonah

I’ve been teaching on Jonah so I am kind of hung up on this a bit. Here are a couple things I saw in Jonah 3 that I had not really noticed before.

Jonah’s recorded message wasn’t difficult. It was actually quite simple. “In forty days, God will destroy this city.” That was it. There is no indication that he even said repent. Their response amazed me. Verse 5 says, “And the people of Nineveh believed God.” My take away from this – God’s message was simple, powerful and in verse 10 we see it was merciful. God’s message changed the hearts of man and when the people repented, God relented.

It’s still true for his message today. It’s simple, powerful, and merciful. All who are followers of Christ are called to share this simple message with our world.

We all have sinned. Because of our sin, we are separated from God and in danger of being separated forever. God sent His only son to take the punishment we deserved on himself so we could be saved from the consequences of our own sin. All we have to do to receive this free gift of salvation is to believe that Jesus is God’s son, he came to the earth and never sinned, then died on a cross to take our punishment, was put in the grave and three days later was raised from the grave. He lives today and offers all men salvation if they will admit they have sinned, turn from their own sinful ways of living, and instead follow in Christ’s footsteps of living.

This is even more complicated than it really has to be probably. The truth is, God wants you to share His message. He will do the rest.

His message is simple. His message is Powerful. His message is merciful.

Things about Jonah I noticed

I have been teaching through Jonah and there were a few things I noticed this time that I don’t think I noticed before.

1 – God asked Jonah to go to the Assyrians to warn them of God’s judgment. Why is this important? Because he was not friends with the Assyrians. uThe Assyrians were enemies who would attack their towns. When Jonah heard that God’s judgment was coming, he wanted nothing to do with preventing it. Jonah had already judged them and decided he would rather them not get a heads up and a chance to change. The truth of this for today is that we live in a world full of Assyrians. Judgment is coming for those who do not know Christ but we look at them and decide we would rather not be the ones to take the news to them. Maybe out of fear- Jonah might have been too. Maybe it’s because we would have to get out of our bubble of people who look like us, think like us, talk like us, smell like us, and act like us – I’m sure Jonah knows how that feels too. Can I tell you what I think it is though…(of course you can)… I think it’s because we don’t really want reach those people who aren’t like us. The ones who don’t dress right, talk right, act right, or do right. If we reached out to those people then they might actually come to church. We wouldn’t want that because none of our friends know them so that would just be weird. I would feel like I needed to hang out with them when they came and I don’t really want to do that because I like having that time at church to catch up with my church friends. And we wouldn’t want to risk them not wearing the right thing because then they will feel out of place…

I could go on, but I will stop. Bottom line is that many of us don’t know anyone to reach out to with the gospel or at least act like we don’t. Everyday we are surrounded by a world whose judgment is coming if they don’t repent. If you aren’t sure if God is telling you to reach them, then go over to Matthew 28:18-20, and yes, it is talking to you too!

2 – Instead of going approximately 550 miles on land, Jonah took the extreme opposite route. He bought a ticket on a boat headed to the furthest place the trade route of it’s time could take him. Boats were not what they are today! They were dangerous and risky. When Jonah decided he didn’t want to do what God was telling him to do, he did the most illogical and irrational thing he could do. We do this too! When we run from God, we are leaving the only source for wisdom and truth so we become irrational and illogical and do things that when we are walking with Christ, we would never dream of doing. We become increasingly foolish.

3 – Jonah’s big issue was that he didn’t want to go tell bad people to repent. People who would regularly attack God’s people. It wasn’t that he decided to start partying, getting drunk, doing drugs, or killing people. He simply didn’t want to take God’s message to people because he felt like they deserved the judgment coming their way. For some reason we think that running from God means we are doing a list of things that we know aren’t right, but in Jonah’s case, it was that he didn’t want to do the things God wanted him to do.

Maybe it’s time that we start asking God to show us who to talk to, then be willing to do it, no matter who it is. I would venture to say that they probably won’t look like you, act like you or think like you.

Snake!

When I run, I tend to do a lot of deep thinking. I tend to think about the problems from the day, conversations I had or should have had, upcoming messages or songs that I should write one day. As I get lost in thought, I zone out completely. I’ve lost track of time. I’ve crossed streets without looking. I’ve had near misses with sign poles. Dumb stuff.

A couple days ago, I was running and found myself in this exact state… I didn’t run too far though because I now set my watch to go off when it is time to head back… While running, I was looking down, not looking further than probably 3 or 4 feet when my thought was suddenly interrupted by a small snake that I was about to step on. So I reacted quickly and became quite the hurdler. Most people in their right mind probably would have stopped and gone around, but my instinct for whatever reason was to go over it. After a few steps, I looked around to see if anyone had seen me hurdle a seemingly invisible object but fortunately, it was only God laughing.

As I was recovering, I started wondering how often I miss the danger ahead of me because I am so focussed on my own agenda, thought, goals, etc. If I had just been looking a little further down the path, I would have seen the snake before I was on top of it and would have had a better opportunity to navigate around it without looking like I was day dreaming about hurdling.

All that to say, it was a great reminder to me to keep the vision and bigger picture in front of me and to stay alert. God tells us that the devil prowls around like a lion, looking for someone to devour. There are times in life that if we will look down the road, and see where we are headed that we can identify the dangers along the way. If we will do this we can take necessary action to avoid dangers that could slow us down or stop us from progressing.

About five minutes later, I was still on edge when I heard from behind me, “on your left.” I whipped around with my fists loaded up only to be embarrassed when a nice gentleman with a warm accented voice apologized for scaring me. We both laughed and he rode on.

Don’t Pray It Safe

Tonight as my wife and I finished praying, I began to think about how often our prayers are safe prayers. Not bad prayers. Not wrong prayers. Safe prayers. You know – help us sleep well, keep us safe, help this person find a job, help this person feel better. Not that any of that is insignificant – because it isn’t. These are great prayers to pray. But how often do we pray dangerous prayers. Prayers that if answered could only be explained by a miracle or a mighty act of God. Our God is so big and mighty but we don’t pray to Him like he is. It is almost like we are afraid to pray for too much because we are scared that He won’t come through and then what? Or we pray big prayers tagged with an escape clause at the end. I know scripture tell us to pray for God’s will but I think sometimes we pray thinking that His will isn’t what we are asking for. Maybe that is the case sometimes but I wonder if sometimes we pray big prayers because it is the spiritual thing to do but with no expectation or faith that God will do it. I want to pray dangerous prayers, but it is going to take a change in the way I look at things. It’s going to take looking in a different way. Instead of looking at them and thinking about them in a human way, I need to see them from a heavenly perspective. It is scary to even write something like this because I know God has put it on my mind for a reason. I do see God work through prayer and I am blown away, but sometimes I wonder if he is saying, “You think that is good. You should see what I could do if you had faith the size of a mustard seed.” Let’s not keep “praying” it safe and begin to seek God to do big things for His kingdom and His glory.

London Reminders

Rememinders -

- I need a copy of everyone’s passport
- We will meet at 1:00 at group check-in and check-in together.  Do not check in by yourself.

Here is an update of what we will be doing. Click - Pre-trip Packet