We have just come
through a season of intense spiritual growth. For 6 weeks, most of us have
asked and answered the most important question of life: “what on earth am I here for?”
We’ve read,
discussed, studied and prayed about our life’s purpose, and now that we have
come to the end of the campaign, we stand at a crossroad.
Will we remain how we are; will
we remain where we are; or will we move forward?
We learnt what our purpose is, but
will we fulfill that purpose? Will we continue asking God for the great things
that He has in store for our church and people?
The book of James
gives us a warning: “…don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says.
Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.
23 For if you listen to the
word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24
You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.
25 But if you look carefully
into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t
forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it” (James 1:22-25, NLT2)
Life
comes to us, not only when we hear the word of God, but when we live the Word
of God.
I want to encourage you not to put the last 6 weeks of
your life on the shelf, and forget about it.
I want to encourage you to keep
trusting God for the greater things that are happening in our church; to keep
trusting God for changed lives, for we’ve got a job to do, and that is to reach
one more for Jesus.
Now as we move on from our 40 Days of Purpose, and I would like for
us to spend the next few weeks looking at an Old Testament story.
This story speaks to God’s plan and
purpose, and what can go wrong if we fail to obey God’s plan and purpose.
-PRAY-
For the next few
weeks, we will be looking at the really big book of Jonah. Actually, it’s a
“Whaley-Whaley” short book.
Jonah is a story
that mostly everyone has heard about. It is just as popular as Noah and the
ark, and David and Goliath.
(God tells Jonah to go; Jonah says no;
the fish swallows him ho.)
Jonah is a small book jam packed with
huge themes:
·
The
calling of God;
·
God’s
mercy on a wicked city.
·
Jonah’s
running from God’s direction.
·
There
is also disobedience, forgiveness and mercy.
At the end of the book, Jonah goes all
Whaley on God because God kept His word and saved the people Jonah didn’t really
care for.
If I could pull one major theme from
the book of Jonah it would be deliverance. The reason God spoke to Jonah in the first place was
because Jonah needed deliverance.
Sure, Nineveh was messed up, but Jonah
had issues of his own.
Besides his personal issues, he needed
to be delivered from the storm; he needed to be delivered from the whale, and
he needed to speak deliverance to the people of Nineveh.
Jonah didn’t want to deal with his
personal issues, nor did he want to give the people of Nineveh a chance, so he
took offà he ran from God.
You know, when you or I run from
things, they often become big things and they will eventually consume us.
When you run away from the issues and
problems and the things that God wants you to deal with, those issues get
bigger and bigger until you can’t see anything but those issues.
When we’ve had enough, we jump ship:
we bail on God, we bail on our spouses and we bail on other important relationships.
If we would simply stop and listen to
God and deal with the small things and live in obedience to God, we could save
ourselves from looking like we were spit out of a fish.
The Bible says in Jonah 2: “Then Jonah prayed
to the Lord his God from inside the fish.
2 He said, “I cried out to
the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land
of the dead, and Lord, you heard me! (2:1-2, NLT2)
Jonah’s life at
this point stinks. He’s in way over his head. He ran from God, and now he has
to face the consequences of running from God.
Sometimes God
will go to great lengths to get our attention. Sometimes He will allow us to endure circumstances that
leave us in deep water, to help us realize our need for God.
Jonah was, at
that moment, praying a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” prayer. He came
to his senses and realized that going his own way probably wasn’t the best
thing for him to do.
A little later on
in this chapter he says: “When my life was ebbing away, I
remembered you, LORD, and my
prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that
could be theirs.” (Jonah 2:7-8,
NIV)
When we find
ourselves in over our heads, it’s good to take stock of what we know to be
true; as Jonah does here.
He’s got no place to go; so he
remembers how God had a purpose and a plan for his life, and those who cling to
worthless idols, miss God’s grace.
Jonah remembered what
we have been studying these last 6 weeks.
We
are not an accident. We were created for a purpose. God loves each one of us
and has a plan for our lives.
We were not created to take up space,
just to live our 70 or 80 years and then have some preacher lie at our funeral
telling everyone what a great person we were.
God
has created us for a reason, and that reason is for us to become just like
Jesus.
You see, we exist to Glorify God and to
bring others into His family. And when we live in obedience to God; He will use
our lives to bring other people to Him.
Before his fishy situation, Jonah had
issues. There was a Nineveh in his life
that had to be dealt with.
God wanted to redeem Nineveh; God
wanted to open it up and bless it, but Jonah wasn’t ready to go, so he ran the
other way.
I wonder how many of us are running away.
God has been trying to get us to deal with our Nineveh for years, God has been
trying to get our attention, but we are running from Him, refusing to deal with
the issue.
An
entire city would have been changed if Jonah was willing to go and share. An entire
life can be changed if you are willing to stop running.
Any issue that is keeping you from
becoming like Jesus is a big issue and it deserves immediate attention.
Disobedience blocks God from working
and moving in your life. If
you are settling for less than God’s best, then you are selling yourself—and
God—short.
I believe with all my heart that God
wants to move in on us in ways that we’ve never experienced before.
But before God does this, we’ve got to
stop running. We’ve got to let go of the past, and let go of the things that
are keeping us from moving forward, and we’ve got to turn to Jesus.
I just don’t understand why
we—believers and churches—settle for less
than God’s best. God is calling us to move forward in faith, but we can’t do that if we
are constantly on the run; so we’ve got to stop running.
From Jonah’s darkest moment—inside the
belly of the whale--- he decides to call out to the Lord.
The Bible says: “...Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from
inside the fish.” (Jonah 2:1, NLT2)
It is interesting to me that we all
know what to do when things go wrong. We all know where to turn to when we are
in deep water.
Jonah was in a dark spot, so he looked
up: “I cried out
to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the
land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!” (Jonah 2:2, NLT2)
ILLUSTRATION- I’m going
to use this cup as an illustration, (not because they won last night…..)
Let’s say that this (excellent) cup represents God’s will
for my life; this cup is what God is asking me—or in your case, you—to do.
This cup represents something you know you need to do and
you are not doing it.
Or this cup represents something that needs to be addressed in
your life and you are holding out on doing what needs to be done.
The further I walk away from this cup, the further I get
from God. Our relationship will not be the same.
If I keep walking away from the cup, I will eventually be
in no man’s land, a dark place where there is no light. I will feel very much
alone.
This is where
Jonah found himself. He had walked out
on God and he was alone. He realized that his running from God had alienated
him.
You realize church, that your running
from God is alienating you, right? Your running from God will leave you alone,
in the dark.
When
we move in the direction that God wants us to move in, we will be right where
God wants to be.
When
we listen and obey and give God every area of our life, and surrender to His
plan and purpose, we will be walking in the light.
The Bible says: “…if we walk in the light, as he is in the
light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son,
purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7, NIV)
David reminds us in Psalm 119: “Your word (God) is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”
(Psalm 119:105, NIV)
Following God’s plan and purpose for
your life will keep you from going all Jonah. Walking in God’s ways will keep
you from sin.
David prayed: “Direct my footsteps according to your word;
let no sin rule over me.” (Psalm 119:133, NIV)
When
we get away from where God wants us to be, when we try to block
Him out of our lives, when
we don’t deal with issues that are messing us up, we end up in great trouble
and in the land of the dead.
Fortunately, you don’t have to stay
there. If you are in a heap of trouble today, I want you to know that God hears
your cry.
Maybe you feel completely overwhelmed
by your situations or surroundings; I want you to know that God hears you!
How do I know this? Jonah was inside
of a whale, and God heard him, so no matter where you may find yourself today,
God can rescue you.
I wonder if today is the day that you
will turn and run to God. I wonder if you will stop running from God and start
running to God?
I want you to know that God hears your
cry, God sees your junk and He wants to remove it. He wants to redeem your
life.
The
story of Jonah is all about deliverance. It’s a story about God’s desire for people
to live in freedom.
The Bible says: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us
free….” (Gal. 5:1a,
NIV)
Know, church, that God can handle
anything that you bring to Him. God wants you to come to Him and experience the
freedom and joy that you will only find from running to God, not running from
God.
Remember Jonah’s words from inside the
fish: “As my
life was slipping away, I remembered the Lord.” (Jonah 2:7a, NLT2)
Do you feel like your life is slipping
away? God wants you to experience freedom. He wants you to experience mercy.
You don’t have to sleep with the fishes any longer.
If you need to experience the freedom
that only comes from God, the same freedom that Jonah needed, I want to
encourage you to slip out from where you are and come to the front and talk to
Jesus.
If you are carrying a burden or pain,
this is the time and this is the place for you to give it to God.
If you have a sin, or habit that you
can’t seem to break, you can find freedom at the feet of Jesus.
No one is going to judge you for coming;
they will simply pray that you will find the grace of Jesus that we all so
desperately need.
By coming to the front, you are
admitting that you are in need of God’s great light to shine in your darkness.
Don’t run from God one second longer.
Run to God instead.
Play-“What
have you got to lose” by Third Day
Church, the
question that was asked was “what have you got to lose?” What might God
asking you to give up?
Whatever it might be, I want to assure
you that what God has to offer you is a million times better than what you want
to hang on to.
If you need the
freedom that only Jesus offers, you will only find it at the Savior’s feet.
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