JONAH

WE CREATE OUR OWN STORMS!

Jonah ran away from God!

We are so like Jonah!!

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach to them about their "wickedness," about how they were destroying their lives and each in the process. 120,000 people living self-destructive lives, and hurting one another in the process--"wicked."

And Jonah said, "No!" And ran away. Straight into the teeth of a storm.

Seeking to avoid God and His specificly stated will, Jonah ignored the people of Nineveh. But in running away, he took a shipload of people into his own storm.

Jonah's refusal to carry out God's purpose for his life resulted in dragging others into his problems, to say nothing of the people he could have been helping.

We, too, say "No!" to God, go our own way, create and add to the problems of our families, friends, and associates. We, too, deny the strangers in our lives and all who we will meet in the future from receiving the grace that God wants us to have and give to the troubled, poor, and needy of our generation.

Jonah is shown as blatantly rebellious.

We would never do anything that bad. Just worse!

We run from God and His purpose for our lives in this generation of this nation by "praying" for people.

We pray, "God bless the people. Save them. Send them missionaires and witnesses. We commit them to You. In Jesus Name. Amen."

And we then go on our merry way, having done our job and "left it at Jesus' feet."

Jonah was filled with anger, resentment, and bitterness; probably a lot of fear of what people thought about him; a consuming desire for personal, selfish pleasure; and, the stupid, foolish audacity to rebel against God and His direct commands.

The strength of our selfish, sinful nature and desires for personal pleasure and self-will is incredible!

How hard is it to "Deny yourslef, take up your cross daily, and follow Me"?

Luke 9.23

In runnning away from God and the people of his life, Jonah ignored and disregarded the hardship, difficulty, pain, shame, lostness, and destructiveness of the Ninevites.

He callously led a shipload of sailors into a storm and saw them throw the treasures of their cargo "out the window."

He hid out in the bottom of the ship, wishing he could die and blaming God for it all.

Amazing.

But we do exactly the same thing.

We know we are not following Christ's will for our lives.

We know we are not seeking His will and way for us.

We know we do not love Him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And we certainly don't love our neighbors, the strangers, or even our families more than we love ourselves.

We want to "trust God" to take care of and "fix" their problems so we don't have to be troubled about anything.

To "go" to the people Jesus has put us here to take care of is not in our "play book."

To "Lift up our eyes, look at the fields and pray to go seek lost sheep who are weary and burdened, helpless and hopeless, lost and undone," as Jesus directly commands us (Matt. 9, 11, 28; Luke 15) is something we avoid and run from and rebel against.

We become angry when things don't go our way.

We panic when people we do care about get into trouble and need help.

We know we are failing God and the people about us are failing and falling into great and awful trouble every day.

We wring our hands in dispair while our hearts turn way from God would have us do.

We say "No" to God and turn our eyes away from people all around us who are hurting themselves and each other.

We say "No" to God so we can avoid the problems of others and do what we want, without regand for what is happening to the people all about us.

Like Jonah, we know we are to do something. And this "something" is not hard.

God asks us to love Him so we can love others.

It is so simple.

With all His heart, Jesus says, "Come. Follow Me."