Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Like to say a word about the mission trip.
[00:00:07] We never know what God is doing.
[00:00:13] Last year on the mission trip, a young lady gave her heart to Jesus Christ and she died this year.
[00:00:25] Her funeral was just a couple of weeks ago.
[00:00:28] Ah.
[00:00:32] God strategically got her at that mission trip, spoke to her heart, called her to himself, and today she lives in the kingdom of God.
[00:00:52] So when you think of the mission trip, it's more than a bunch of kids in our church going and painting a house and putting shingles on.
[00:01:06] It is a unique opportunity for a week long experience of God.
[00:01:14] And if God has blessed you economically, help a kid, make sure that any kid who wants to go can go. Ah.
[00:01:25] Because we don't know what God might do and we can't predict what's going to happen in their life.
[00:01:33] Amen.
[00:01:35] I'd like to thank Sari for reminding us to return to the Lord. Last week, Shay and I listened to the service in our awesome F150 truck driving back from Savannah.
[00:01:54] Our dear heavenly Father, you are at work in ways beyond what we can imagine.
[00:02:05] And it is your way to whisper to our hearts and to call us to partner with you in what you want to do in the world.
[00:02:18] And sadly, often we respond to your call out of a spirit of reluctance.
[00:02:29] We hear a voice within us that is reluctant to trust you wholly, to serve you completely.
[00:02:40] And I pray that your spirit would challenge that reluctance in our hearts and we would find a new inclination to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding.
[00:02:55] In Christ's name, amen.
[00:03:01] I'm certain that sometime in your life you've heard the story of Jonah and the whale.
[00:03:09] And we have this wonderful book in the Bible that gets turned into a cartoon because we say it's a book about Jonah and the whale.
[00:03:22] The book of Jonah is not about Jonah and the whale. It's about Jonah and God.
[00:03:29] The. The.
[00:03:32] The fish story is incidental to the message of the book.
[00:03:40] The message of the book is a divine challenge to the reluctance we feel in our heart to trust God holy and do what he asks us to do.
[00:03:55] Ah.
[00:03:56] This sermon series will.
[00:03:59] Will be especially pointed for you who have been Christians for some time and you've had experiences with God and some of them have been great and some of them have not been so good.
[00:04:18] And you've allowed reluctance to have too much influence with you.
[00:04:29] So whenever the spirit whispers to you and ask you to do something with God, you feel this internal defensiveness.
[00:04:43] You feel this internal questioning about why does God want Me, why do I have to do this? Why can't somebody else do it?
[00:04:53] And the book of Jonah is addressed to that very thing.
[00:05:01] I'm.
[00:05:02] I'm speaking to myself when I talk to you about Jonah and reluctance.
[00:05:10] There have been times in my life where God asked me to do things and I didn't want to do them.
[00:05:18] There it is.
[00:05:20] Sorry, but Billy Graham wouldn't come here, so I got the job.
[00:05:32] And I want to acknowledge that I have been reluctant and I want to confront that.
[00:05:39] And I want to be a unreluctant follower and servant of Jesus Christ.
[00:05:51] And the book of Jonah is going to teach us how to do that. So we're going to study all the way through the book. I can't remember how many sermons it is, but whatever, we'll do them.
[00:06:04] The book of Jonah probably comes from the time of king Jeroboam the second of Israel.
[00:06:11] So that would be like 793-753 B.C.
[00:06:17] to put it in context with others, the prophet Isaiah was from like 740 to 700.
[00:06:27] Elijah and Elisha, they were like 850.
[00:06:32] So Jonah is between the prophets Elijah and Elisha and, and Isaiah, Jeremiah. All right.
[00:06:42] And he wasn't a prophet to Israel. He was a prophet to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria.
[00:06:53] Now, if you've read any history of the Old Testament, you know that the Assyrian empire invaded Israel.
[00:07:05] And in 722 they defeated them. And they deported most of the people who lived in northern Israel to other places. And they imported people from other places to northern Israel and they became known as the Samaritans.
[00:07:27] So when you read the New Testament and it talks about a prejudice against the Samaritans, it's because they were only partially Israelite.
[00:07:41] So about 30 years before the Assyrians capture the northern kingdom of Israel, Jonah is sent to Nineveh, the capital city, with a message from the Lord.
[00:07:58] The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amity, saying, arise.
[00:08:06] Go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.
[00:08:15] I was shocked to learn this week that the name Yonah Jonah means dove.
[00:08:24] Ah.
[00:08:25] God sent the man named Dove to preach to a violent culture.
[00:08:36] The Assyrians were. They were violent.
[00:08:44] They had no trouble wiping out entire cities.
[00:08:49] Ah, it's interesting that God knows who to send where you get this.
[00:09:01] If God is calling you to do something, if he's whispering to your heart to do something, if he's inviting you to do something, it's not because he flipped a coin and you happen to be heads or tails.
[00:09:18] It's not because he drew your name out of a hat.
[00:09:23] When God calls us to do something, he calls us to do it out of his understanding of who we are, what he's already done in our hearts, what he can do through us.
[00:09:39] So it is my belief that God's call to each one of us is unique.
[00:09:45] He's calling you because you are the one who can best do the thing he's calling you to do.
[00:09:54] And it's not that somebody else couldn't do it. It's they couldn't do it as well as you.
[00:10:00] So God says to Jonah, you are my man.
[00:10:04] I want you to go to Nineveh.
[00:10:09] I found it interesting that the word of the Lord came to Jonah.
[00:10:13] The word of the Lord is an Old Testament way of saying a divine message or a divine task.
[00:10:20] God said to Jonah, I got something I want you to do.
[00:10:26] Ah.
[00:10:28] This probably wasn't Jonah's first ministry task, but it was the first one that he had refused.
[00:10:35] Can you hear this?
[00:10:37] Ah.
[00:10:39] I have found after pastoring this church for 43 years, God ask us to do easy tasks to begin with.
[00:10:53] But the longer we are Christians, the harder task he asked us to do.
[00:11:01] You see, it takes as much faith to do an easy task in the beginning.
[00:11:09] It takes more faith to do a harder task the far. The longer you live with God.
[00:11:18] So when I was a young man, God gave me the easiest tasks of my life.
[00:11:25] Now I'm as old as dirt, and God gives me the hardest tasks of my entire life, because that's the way God grows our souls.
[00:11:37] He doesn't. He gives us the challenges to our soul that our soul needs to continue to grow and develop. You get this.
[00:11:48] I trust God more in harder tasks.
[00:11:55] And God says without that faith, it's impossible to please him.
[00:12:02] So the harder task is God challenging you to grow. And it's giving you a richer opportunity to. To be pleasing to him.
[00:12:14] The book of Jonah might be in the histories and not in the prophecies.
[00:12:19] It does. It has one prophecy.
[00:12:22] It's got one sentence of prophecy in the whole book. And the rest of it is a narrative about Jonah's experience with God.
[00:12:31] So it might fit in the history section of the Bible better than the prophecy.
[00:12:39] So what did God say to Jonah, arise and go.
[00:12:45] Pretty simple.
[00:12:46] Jonah, whatever you're doing, put it down, get up and go to Nineveh.
[00:12:53] This is God's way of saying, jonah, I want you to initiate a new ministry.
[00:13:00] And I know that this ministry will frighten you and it'll trigger your prejudices, but I want you to do it anyway.
[00:13:10] I believe a healthy church is continually initiating new ministries.
[00:13:19] I believe it is a bad sign when the church doesn't initiate a new ministry for a long time, because that's not how I read the Bible. God is always initiating something new.
[00:13:35] He says to Noah, build a boat. He says to Abraham, leave the year of Caldees.
[00:13:42] He says to Jacob, go to Lebanon, go to Laban, your uncle.
[00:13:50] He says to Joseph, I'm sending you to Egypt. He says to Moses, let my people go. God is always initiating. And here in the life of Jonah, God said, I want the people of Assyria to know my name. And for that to happen, Jonah, you have to initiate a new ministry.
[00:14:14] I believe this year, if you will listen, God will be whispering to hearts in this church, and he'll ask people to initiate new ministries.
[00:14:27] You understand this.
[00:14:28] Some of you are going to hear a whisper from God that says, I want you to start a life group.
[00:14:35] Some of you are going to hear a whisper from God that says, I want you to mentor this young. This young person.
[00:14:47] Some of you are going to hear a whisper from God.
[00:14:53] I want you to paint a room at the church.
[00:14:58] I don't know what he's going to whisper to you, but I know God, and I know he is forever initiating ministry.
[00:15:08] And he doesn't just initiate ministry by people who are on the staff. He initiates ministry in the entire church.
[00:15:17] We are all the body of Christ.
[00:15:23] And for the first time in his life, Jonah's reluctance made him shun the call.
[00:15:35] I can hear Jonah say to himself, dear God, I've done everything you asked me to do in the past.
[00:15:45] You should be content with that.
[00:15:47] No, I'm not going to do this.
[00:15:50] It was a spiritual tragedy church, all right?
[00:15:59] But I know people in this room right now.
[00:16:02] There was a time you served God more diligently than you do right now.
[00:16:08] There was a time that you depended on him.
[00:16:12] There was a time that he was a bigger part of your life.
[00:16:17] But you had some life experiences.
[00:16:21] And now when you hear that whisper from the Almighty, something in you says, I'm not going to do that again.
[00:16:35] I'm not going to put myself on the line again.
[00:16:39] I'm not. I'm not going to go through that hassle again.
[00:16:42] And you've developed a new relationship with God, that you stay what you think is a safe distance from him instead of trusting him wholly, instead investing yourself completely in his purpose, in your life.
[00:16:59] Church, can you hear me?
[00:17:03] Are you opening your heart to this?
[00:17:06] Some of you need to rethink your relationship with God.
[00:17:11] I'm not saying you're a pagan. I'm not saying you're wicked.
[00:17:15] I'm not saying you have an evil agenda. But I am saying you have got yourself in a place where it's easy to shun the call of God on your life and it's not healthy. Church.
[00:17:34] Ah.
[00:17:35] Jonah's task was to challenge Nineveh and demand that they repent to a God they didn't know.
[00:17:44] The gods of Nineveh were not the God of Israel.
[00:17:51] They had false deities.
[00:17:54] Now God is saying to Jonah, I want you to go to a city of the largest superpower in the world.
[00:18:01] Probably a million people live there.
[00:18:05] And I want you to tell them a God they don't know expects them to repent.
[00:18:15] And Jonah said, no, I'm not going to do that.
[00:18:21] Ah.
[00:18:23] Ah. It is part of our mission statement that we do hard things. Church.
[00:18:30] Our mission statement says we want to attract people to the excellence of Christ. That's. That means we believe there are thousands of people out there who need to know Christ and we have to do church in the kind of way that these people are attracted to Christ.
[00:18:47] Ah. The second part of our mission statement is we invite people into the joy of ministry. We think every Christian should serve God in some way and in some way that they enjoy, not some job they get crammed into.
[00:19:01] The third part of our mission statement is we believe in the adventure of faith.
[00:19:06] The adventure of faith is we grow spiritually and we say yes to God when he asks us to do harder things.
[00:19:16] You see?
[00:19:17] Did God ask Jonah to do a hard thing? Yes, it was a hard thing, but God had prepared Jonah for it. Jonah was the man who could do it. Jonah was the man that the Holy Spirit was going to fill and make influential.
[00:19:37] But he said no.
[00:19:41] God said to Jonah, the reason I want you to go is because they're evil.
[00:19:47] This makes it even harder. They're pagans. They don't know God.
[00:19:52] And God said they are notoriously evil.
[00:19:57] Ah.
[00:19:59] Church.
[00:20:01] Any church can get the easy people.
[00:20:07] Hear this.
[00:20:09] Any church can get the easy people.
[00:20:12] Are there churches in the world that will say to God, we'll be your partner in trying to reach the people who are far from God and not easy.
[00:20:25] Church.
[00:20:27] Ah.
[00:20:28] I don't want our church to grow because just because people come here from another church that they're not happy with, I want our church to grow because we're finding God's lost kids and bringing them home.
[00:20:44] Because we're looking at people whose lives are broken by evil. And we're saying there is an answer for that.
[00:20:52] We're looking at people who are struggling with spiritual realities. We're looking with. We're looking at people who have bad attitudes and sinful lives. And we're saying, God has something for you. Would you give God another chance? You see, God didn't send Jonah to preach to a bunch of good people. He sent him to preach to a broken culture.
[00:21:18] I once had a, I once had a family say that they were going to go to another church because they really just, they, they wanted, they wanted less emphasis on people who aren't Christians and more emphasis on people who are Christians.
[00:21:39] They said, I'm going to go to another church because you don't speak to Christians enough.
[00:21:47] You're always trying to get the unchristians. And I thought to myself, isn't that sad?
[00:21:54] Have you read the gospels? Jesus said, I didn't come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners.
[00:22:03] He was a friend of publicans and sinners. And guess who didn't like it?
[00:22:09] The people who wanted to go to another church because he was too nice to tax collectors and sinners.
[00:22:18] Ah.
[00:22:21] Ah.
[00:22:22] I know you're looking at the world and you're seeing all that's going on.
[00:22:30] You're seeing violence, you're seeing discord.
[00:22:37] You're seeing.
[00:22:42] Somebody gets murdered every day on the news.
[00:22:46] And we get the feeling like, what's God looking at? Is he seeing this?
[00:22:55] This is what God said to Jonah.
[00:22:58] I ah, their evil has come before me. I see what's going on in the world and I have a plan to deal with it.
[00:23:12] You've heard me say, I think the world would be a better place if all of us would do what God is asking us to do.
[00:23:20] God has sent people into the world who are gifted to solve problems. The problem is he invites us into ministry and we say no, and problems go unsolved. And God's purpose is hard to see because his team is sitting in the dugout when they should be taking the field church.
[00:23:53] Can you hear the inner voice of the Lord this week?
[00:24:01] If you sat quietly and you opened your soul up, could you hear the whisper of God to you?
[00:24:15] Some of you say, yes.
[00:24:17] Some of you say, I'm not sure.
[00:24:20] If you can't hear the inner voice, are you willing to hear the external voice of God?
[00:24:30] God can speak to you in scripture.
[00:24:33] It's my firm belief that. That the message I'm preaching to you today is what God wants this church to hear today.
[00:24:43] If you can't hear an inner voice, would you let me speak in God's behalf?
[00:24:50] Would you be open to hearing a new challenge to your soul?
[00:24:56] Would you be open to me speaking in the name of the Lord and saying, what are you willing to do with God this year?
[00:25:07] What? What, What. What part of your giftedness, what part of what is absolutely best about who are you Are. Are you willing to invest in what God is doing this year?
[00:25:19] Church.
[00:25:22] Are you reluctant to do what God calls you to do because of an unpleasant experience in the past?
[00:25:34] Shay and I were driving through Atlanta.
[00:25:37] Some genius had the idea to reduce eight lanes of traffic down to two for the important work of changing light bulbs in the middle of the day.
[00:25:54] Ah.
[00:25:56] Took two and a half hours to go. What a half hour should have gone.
[00:26:00] Wasn't a good experience.
[00:26:04] I gnawed my steering wheel in half.
[00:26:09] Ah.
[00:26:11] Okay. It was a bad experience.
[00:26:13] But because I had that bad experience, I don't say, I'm never driving again.
[00:26:18] I'm never gonna. I'm never doing that again.
[00:26:21] We have all kinds of bad experiences in life, but then we still re. Engage.
[00:26:27] So why is it when it comes to God, if we have a few unpleasant experiences in serving him, we get. We permit ourselves to be reluctant to do things in the future because of a memory we have from the past.
[00:26:45] Do you hear me, Church?
[00:26:47] Ah.
[00:26:50] Ah.
[00:26:52] I want. This is. To some who can hear it, do you find that you are reluctant to do the harder ministry, but not the easy one?
[00:27:10] You say, doc, I don't feel any reluctance in my heart to do these easy things. But when you ask me to do this, it's twice as hard. And I feel reluctant to do that. Church.
[00:27:23] Jonah was not reluctant to do the easy thing and prophesy to Israel.
[00:27:31] He was reluctant to do the harder thing.
[00:27:34] And I want to speak to some of you who God has worked in in a miraculous way. You have a healthy spiritual life. You are capable of doing hard things with God. I want to challenge you this year to confront your reluctance to do the next hard thing with God.
[00:27:53] Church.
[00:27:58] Ah.
[00:28:00] So God calls Jonah.
[00:28:04] Jonah says no.
[00:28:06] But it's hard to say no to God because he shows up and asks again.
[00:28:13] So Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
[00:28:20] He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
[00:28:26] And he paid his fare and went down into it. To go with him to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
[00:28:37] Jonah's reluctance affected his thinking.
[00:28:42] Jonah said, I'm not going to do this, and God is going to keep bugging me, so I'm going to go to Tarshish.
[00:28:51] Calvin says Tarshish could be the same city that Paul grew up in.
[00:28:59] Tarshish could be Tarsus.
[00:29:03] It would just be 790 years before Paul was there. All right.
[00:29:08] But other people believe Tarshish is in what is modern day Spain. The point is, he believed if he went to a different space, he could get away from the presence of the Lord.
[00:29:22] At church. God is as close to Tarshish as he is to Joppa.
[00:29:29] Tarshish is no farther from God than any place Jonah could be in in Israel.
[00:29:39] The point is not where he was going, but what he wanted to do. He wanted. He wanted to get away from the presence of God.
[00:29:48] Ah.
[00:29:51] Ah.
[00:29:54] Is it possible that in many ways, we're a lot like Jonah?
[00:30:03] We're not getting in a ship and going to Tarshish, but we're organizing our life to be busy enough that it makes it easy to ignore the inner whisper of God in our lives?
[00:30:18] Church.
[00:30:20] Is it possible that we escape the presence of the Lord with amusement?
[00:30:28] Just keep myself amused long enough to get tired, to go to bed, and I don't have to think about this.
[00:30:36] Church.
[00:30:38] Is it possible we flee from the presence of the Lord by watching one TV show after another, absorbing every minute so that we don't have to have spiritual time where the Holy Spirit confronts us and calls us to be the people of God?
[00:30:56] Are you hearing me? Church?
[00:30:59] Ah. Is it possible that you take that extra work because it keeps you distracted from the inner things that God wants to be doing in your heart?
[00:31:16] Jonah's flight from the presence of the Lord was more internal than it was external.
[00:31:23] Basically, what he was doing, he was closing his inner self to go. God.
[00:31:30] Church.
[00:31:31] You know, you can live an external Christian life and have a closed heart to God.
[00:31:38] You can show up at church. You can be nice to people. You can do. You can. You can. You can look like a good Christian on the outside, but on the inside, you've closed your heart to God.
[00:31:52] Church.
[00:31:57] Ah.
[00:31:58] Jonah hid his soul from God.
[00:32:04] In the past, his soul had been open to God and God had made him a prophet and he had worked with God.
[00:32:12] But now he's saying to God, I'm going to have a different relationship with you.
[00:32:18] I will decide when to open the door and when to close it.
[00:32:23] I will decide what access you can have to my soul.
[00:32:28] I will decide what whispers I listen to and what whispers I don't listen to.
[00:32:34] Church. Can you see it was ruinous for Jonah if you can. Can you see it's ruinous for us?
[00:32:42] You see, ah.
[00:32:46] If you have a friend and you call them five times and they won't call, they don't answer your call, and they. You never call them back, they never call you back, you start understanding something, right?
[00:33:02] You start getting the feeling that they're just not interested in your company anymore.
[00:33:09] How many times does God have to call us before he says, I see, you're just not interested anymore.
[00:33:24] This isn't a priority to you who I am, what I want from your life.
[00:33:33] You've lowered it, and you're putting me in a secondary position.
[00:33:40] Church.
[00:33:44] Ah.
[00:33:47] Ah.
[00:33:48] I could tell you why he was reluctant, but I'm not going to.
[00:33:53] I'm going to preach a sermon on it at the end of the book. I will. I will tell you. If you want a hint, you can look up Jonah 4:2. Because it will tell you why Jonah was reluctant. You'll be shocked.
[00:34:07] Ah.
[00:34:08] Could I ask you a couple of questions?
[00:34:13] Are you fleeing from the Lord this morning?
[00:34:18] Would you say the direction of your soul over the last month has been toward God or away from God?
[00:34:32] If you had to be perfectly honest, would you say you sense a richer relationship with God right now than you did this time last year?
[00:34:46] Or would you say my sense is I've drifted?
[00:34:57] Are you hiding from God?
[00:35:01] Are you trying to avoid his whispers to your heart?
[00:35:09] Are you spiritually open to God?
[00:35:12] Could God ask you to do anything he wanted you to do today?
[00:35:17] And you would say, dear God, I'm going to try my best to do this?
[00:35:23] Or would you say, ah, yeah, I don't think I want to do that.
[00:35:29] You see, Jonah represents all of us.
[00:35:34] Jonah isn't some guy that made some mistakes and we read about him and then we pick on him. Jonah is a mirror that every single one of us have to hold up to ourselves.
[00:35:48] You know, it cost him to run away from the Lord. He paid the fee for the boat ride.
[00:35:56] Do you know it cost you something to run from the Lord?
[00:35:59] Nobody runs from the Lord without paying a big price.
[00:36:06] I have known people that God called them. He whispered to their hearts.
[00:36:13] He said, I want you.
[00:36:16] We have work to do.
[00:36:18] And they shunned him.
[00:36:21] And they shunned him and they shunned him until the Lord said, I'm just going to get somebody else to do this with me.
[00:36:33] And they have sat in my office and said, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have shunned God. Because now there is an emptiness in my life.
[00:36:47] There is an emptiness in my life.
[00:36:50] I realize what I could have done if I would have said yes to God when he whispered to me again and again, church, can you hear this?
[00:37:05] Ah.
[00:37:07] Ah.
[00:37:08] I had a friend who attended this church. He was a minister who quit the ministry.
[00:37:15] And he said, I wish I could have known you before I quit the ministry.
[00:37:24] You know what he's saying? He's saying, I shunned God, but I didn't really understand what I was doing and what the consequences would be.
[00:37:37] Can you hear this, Church?
[00:37:43] But God's a hard God to run from.
[00:37:47] And Jonah wrote, and the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea. And there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up.
[00:38:02] Jonah said, I'm running. God said, not far.
[00:38:07] Jonah said, I'm in the boat. And God said, I'm in the wind.
[00:38:12] Jonah said, I'm going to Tarshish. God said, oh, no, you're not.
[00:38:17] Isn't it a blessing that God attacks our hiding places?
[00:38:25] Listen what Matthew Henry wrote. It is a great mercy to be reclaimed and called home when we go astray.
[00:38:35] God said to Jonah, jonah, you are mine. And I know you're running. And I know you. You don't want to do this agenda, but I'm going to. I'm going to show you grace and mercy, and I'm going to obstruct your flight. And I'm going to. I'm going to get you in a place where. Where you have to trust in me wholly so that you're ready to do this incredible thing I want to do with you.
[00:39:02] What does God need to challenge in your life to bring you back to him?
[00:39:08] You who aren't as close to God as you know you should be.
[00:39:12] What does he have to challenge in your heart and in your life to draw you back to him, to recreate that longing in your soul for the reality in the presence of God?
[00:39:27] It wasn't just the wind and the waves that God used then. The mariners were afraid and cried out to each cried out to his God. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah went down into the inner part of the ship and laid down and was fast asleep.
[00:39:54] The mariners were pagans, and they were pleading with God.
[00:39:59] Jonah was a man of God. And he's sleeping.
[00:40:05] The pagans were willing to sacrifice the wealth of their cargo.
[00:40:13] Jonah can't be bothered to wake up.
[00:40:18] Ah.
[00:40:20] Ah.
[00:40:25] When we hide from God, we end up hiding from life also.
[00:40:32] You're not going to live life to the fullest when you're keeping God an arm's distance away from you.
[00:40:39] You're going to be like Jonah. You're going to be checked out in a serious way.
[00:40:47] I believe Jonah was exhausted by anxiety and depression.
[00:40:51] I believe it was the exhaustion of isa, of anxiety and depression that exhausted Jonah and he could sleep through the chaos.
[00:41:05] Ah.
[00:41:12] Do you know that your hiding from God doesn't just affect you, it affects the people around you.
[00:41:22] Church.
[00:41:24] That boat was in danger because of Jonah, not because of the pagans, not because all those other things. That boat was in danger because Jonah was hiding from God. Is it possible.
[00:41:38] Is it possible that your family would be a healthier place if you would be more open to God's influence in your life?
[00:41:50] Is it possible that part of the dysfunction of your family is directly related to you being reluctant to listen to God and do what he asks you to do?
[00:42:06] Is it possible?
[00:42:08] Brothers, are you open to the Holy Spirit whispering to you and say, you go tell your wife you're sorry, Or are you like somebody I know and you say to God, you tell her to tell me she's sorry.
[00:42:37] Church.
[00:42:40] Ah.
[00:42:42] Ladies, is it possible, ah, that your home would be a better place if you'd be open to the Holy Spirit whispering to you?
[00:42:55] Ah.
[00:42:57] Ah.
[00:42:59] Say something encouraging to your husband, Parents, might your kids be healthier if you would listen to God's whispers.
[00:43:18] And treat them in a way that he's guiding you to treat them instead of treating them the way you've just always treated them.
[00:43:27] Are you hearing me? Church?
[00:43:30] The world gets better when Christians have an open heart to God and do what the Lord asks them to do.
[00:43:40] The world gets worse when we are like Jonah. We're fleeing from the presence of God and His influence is not flowing through us into our home, into our businesses, into our church and into the world.
[00:43:58] But God's not done with him yet.
[00:44:02] So the captain came and said to him, what do you mean, you, sleeper, arise.
[00:44:13] Call out to your God.
[00:44:15] Perhaps the God will give a thought to us and we will not perish.
[00:44:23] When the storm didn't wake Jonah, God sent the ship captain to it.
[00:44:30] He said, jonah, I'm going to get your attention one way or another. If the storm won't do it, the captain's coming down there and Getting ugly in your face.
[00:44:40] Ah.
[00:44:41] Ah.
[00:44:43] Ah.
[00:44:45] Would you permit me to say Jonah was in a spiritual coma?
[00:44:53] He couldn't wake up spiritually.
[00:44:56] And God kept calling to him and calling to him.
[00:45:00] Are some of you in a spiritual coma today?
[00:45:03] Have you fallen asleep spiritually?
[00:45:07] What does God have to do to wake you up?
[00:45:11] To overcome your spiritual lethargy? To challenge you, to inspire you to live the fullest life that he created you to live?
[00:45:22] The captain asked a question and gave a command.
[00:45:26] What do you mean? You sleeper.
[00:45:30] What are you doing?
[00:45:32] This boat is in danger.
[00:45:35] What's it going to take to get you awake?
[00:45:39] Ah.
[00:45:41] If only you would open your heart today, the captain of your soul would say to you.
[00:45:48] Why are you sleeping your way through life?
[00:45:52] Why is your spiritual life so drowsy?
[00:45:55] Why is your spiritual energy so low?
[00:45:59] Why won't you see the beauty of God's great purpose for you?
[00:46:05] Why won't you trust him wholly and do the next thing he's calling you to do?
[00:46:12] How long will you be content to live in a spiritual coma?
[00:46:20] And then the command. The command. Captains give commands. And as he says, arise. Call out to your God.
[00:46:28] Wake up and seek the Lord Church. That's God's message to us today.
[00:46:35] Wake up and seek the Lord.
[00:46:39] Wake up.
[00:46:40] Life is short.
[00:46:42] The opportunities pass by.
[00:46:45] Uh, God is at work both the will and to work according to his own good pleasure. We have to be spiritually alive and alert. There has to be something spiritually restless in us.
[00:46:59] We have to have a. We have to have a nervous energy to be about the work of God.
[00:47:06] How ironic. The Lord sent Jonah to challenge the evil of the pagans in Nineveh.
[00:47:14] Now Jonah is challenged by a pagan captain.
[00:47:19] The captain, who doesn't even know God, will challenge Jonah. And Jonah, who knows God intimately, won't challenge the Ninevites. You see the irony of it all?
[00:47:34] I also find it interesting that the captain had a natural faith.
[00:47:39] Perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish. You know what he was doing? Expecting the best from God.
[00:47:49] Now, please listen to me. Some of you been dozing. I want you to come home. Wake up you that sleep and Christ will shine on you. All right, Listen at this.
[00:48:00] Ah.
[00:48:03] The captain who wasn't even.
[00:48:06] Didn't even know God.
[00:48:08] He had a natural belief that God is good and wanted to help him.
[00:48:16] You know why you have a reluctance?
[00:48:20] You have begun to doubt the goodness of God.
[00:48:24] You are reluctant because you're just not sure God will bless you the way you Think you need to be blessed.
[00:48:32] You're just not sure that God will protect you the way you want to be protected.
[00:48:37] You're just not sure that God will prosper your way.
[00:48:42] You have lost the riches of Christianity, which is faith in God.
[00:48:49] When we have an unshakable faith in God, we are not reluctant.
[00:48:55] When we have a faith. When we have an unshakable faith in God, we know that the devil is a roaring lying and but we resist him until he flees from us church.
[00:49:07] When we have an unshakable faith in God, we have the spirit of David and we face the Goliath of our life.
[00:49:17] But when our faith grows thin, it evidences itself in this reluctance.
[00:49:29] So what am I asking you to do?
[00:49:32] Number one.
[00:49:34] I want you to identify where you have become reluctant in your relationship to the Lord.
[00:49:43] I don't want you to blow. I don't want you to go out of here and forget everything we talked about. I want you to take some time and I want you to examine yourself and say, where have I grown reluctant in my relationship to the Lord?
[00:50:00] And then I want you to be able to let. I want you to be able to name it.
[00:50:06] I'll give you an example.
[00:50:09] Some of you know you ought to be serving God in some way and you're not.
[00:50:14] You hear it here all the time.
[00:50:17] But you're. You're just not serving him in any way.
[00:50:20] You've grown reluctant to serve God.
[00:50:24] All right, you can name it now.
[00:50:27] I'm admitting that I've grown reluctant to serve, to volunteer.
[00:50:32] All right, then the second thing I have to do is I have to begin to confront that reluctance. Why?
[00:50:39] What's happening in my spiritual life that I can't trust God and volunteer?
[00:50:47] All right, Now how do I. How do I.
[00:50:54] How do I Confront this reluctance? 1.
[00:50:57] Return to the Lord.
[00:51:00] You take some quiet time. You sit quietly in his presence and you say to the Lord, I'm coming home.
[00:51:10] I'm coming home.
[00:51:12] The paths of sin too long I've trod, Lord, I'm coming home.
[00:51:18] Two. The second thing you do, you open your heart to God.
[00:51:24] This is what you do.
[00:51:26] You say, I have been avoiding you.
[00:51:31] I've been. I've been. I've closed the door of my heart and now I am opening my heart to you.
[00:51:40] I'm. I'm acknowledging that I want to be in your presence instead of away from your presence.
[00:51:47] I want your spirit to have his richest influence in me again.
[00:51:52] I'm going to be open hearted to you.
[00:51:55] Then the third thing you do. You just start obeying instead of running. When he makes whispers to you, you obey.
[00:52:03] He says, write your friend a note of encouragement. You get out your pen, you get out a card, and you write a note of encouragement.
[00:52:14] He says, call your friend up and say a prayer with him. You pick up the phone and you call your friend and you say a prayer with him.
[00:52:22] He says, volunteer for the youth mission trip. And you say, where do I sign up?
[00:52:32] Ah.
[00:52:33] Okay. This is only if you like teenagers. If you don't, do not go.
[00:52:39] All right?
[00:52:41] Nobody wants somebody grouching at the teenagers all week long. All right?
[00:52:46] All right. Hear these three things again. Church number one, you return to the Lord. You say, I'm coming home. Number two, you open your heart to him. You seek his presence. And number three, you just start obeying again.
[00:52:59] Ah.
[00:53:00] Jonah is a call to every one of us to reconnect with God in a deep, holy and trusting way and to release the follies of our reluctance.
[00:53:19] Our dear Heavenly Father, I do call upon your name.
[00:53:26] I'm sorry for all the times I've been reluctant to do what you asked me to do.
[00:53:32] I'm sorry for the times I shunned you.
[00:53:35] I'm tired. I'm sorry for the times I hid from your presence.
[00:53:41] Sorry for the pain I caused others because I was hiding from you.
[00:53:45] And I pray this morning for myself. Everyone who's here and everyone who's watching online.
[00:53:51] I pray that your spirit would do for us what you did for Jonah. And you would meet us and wake us up out of our spiritual lethargy and inspire us once again to be people who know you and serve you holy in Christ's name, Amen.
