Not What I Signed Up For !!

Amen, aen, you may be seated. Look at your neighbor and say: say not Jonah, not Jonah, try it again. Try it again. Y, that was really lame.

Look at your neighbor, say not Jonah.

We're not trying to be like Jonah in this place, right? So if you know the story of Jonah, let's just say that Jonah is the embodiment of how you don't want want to be when it comes to your relationship with God. I want to spoil, I wanton to spoil it for you. We're going to be spending the next 9 to 10 weeks.

Whoa yo trust me, it's going to be fun, it's going to be real fun.

It's only four chapters. Somehow we're going to make it, make it stretch, but I think I might. I might be so bold as to say that Jonah is my favorite book in the Old Testament. There's a lot of books like in the Old Testament.

I'll be very clear with you.

It's all good, right, it's. It's the Bible, it's God's word to us, and if we look at it and read it and ponder it and meditate on it, then God can speak directly to us. It's all good, but Jonah is one of my favorites because it is a very short excerpt, from a much larger context that when I look at it and study it, it helps me understand more and more about, in a lot of way, how not to be in my faith with God. Jonah is not only relevant to your personal walk, as I hope to prove to you over the next few weeks.

Jonah is also used by Jesus in an argument ument with the Jewish leaders who are frustrated with him about the way that he is operating his ministry.

They ask him for a sign that he is the Messiah or the Lord, and he says: the only sign I'll give you is the sign of Jonah. This is what he says. Now there's a whole lot to unpacked with Jesus's statement there, but suffice it to say Jonah is a very important book in the way that we understand not just the Old Testament, not just the Bible itself, but our calling from God to live in a particular way. So over the next few weeks, not Jonah is going to be the series, that we're in, and if you have your Bibles, I hope that you do.

If not, hope you got your phones with a Bible app is super helpful, handy, dandy.

It'll be great for you if there's one day that the technology goes out or one day I decide to put words up here that are heretical and you don't know it because you have your Bible right. I'm not going to, I don't want to do that. But point is, it's good for us to have our Bible. We're going to In Jonah, chapter 1, we're only going to cover the first three verses, not.

Jonah is kind of a mental model or metaphor, for the way that we operate at church.

I, I'm looking around. I can't necessarily see anyone. Last January we had our first ever meeting as a church. I was still in Missouri, it was like 25 degrees outside and cloudy.

I was super depressed.

But we had our first meeting over Zoom with the people, people who had committed to move out to, Buckeye with us, and one of the things that I told him is: we're going to be like Jonah, but not bad at what God's called us to do, and so I' I've condensed that down. I didn't say that. I said not, not stink, but I didn't say stin. Anyways, I'm, I'm being clean on stage here today.

We're g, we're going to be not Jonah is how I would condense that down.

You're going to see how Jonah lives and I think we're going to live if it's, if it's good, right. The opposite of that, it's also a book about the human tendency. Jonah knows who God is. He's an Israelite Prophet.

He's talked about in Second Kings like he's a man in history who was a part of the occupation that they called prophets way back in ancient Israel.

So he knew God. Yet in his knowledge of God he became comfortable, and complacent in a mindset that had nothing to do with God. And we'll see today, when God calls him, he doesn't respond in a way that God would intend. So, without further Ado, let me go ahead and read the first few verses for you guys.

Jonah, chapter 1, verse one: the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of amiti.

Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah, look at your neighbor, say. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for tares. He went down to japa where he found a ship Bound for the port, for that port, after paying the fair, he went aboard and sailed for tares to flee from the Lord.

I want to give you my sermon title today.

It's called not what you signed up for, not what you signed up for- anyone ever signed up for something- and then they jump into that very thing and they realize it wasn't what you expected or signed up for anybody. Raise your hand if you're going to be honest in here today. We've all done it. I was a freshman in college.

I'll never forget there was like a hundred businesses and organizations- all of them- maybe not all of them- wanting me to join.

You know, for sororities they didn't want me, but anyways, there was a whole lot of organizations in my freshman. Year was like the first week, and I was like, oh my gosh, look at all these free pens and all these free squishy things that I'll never use and it'll just be trash for me later. Look it, I'm going to sign up for this and maybe, in signing up for this, they'll raffle it out and I'll get myself an iPod. They had those back when I was in college.

They didn't have barely had iPhones at that point, and so I looked at all that stuff.

I signed up for a bunch of things and then they started calling me and I realized it was more than I signed up for. For many of you had. You had hopes, dreams and Ambitions, goals, right, how many of you, want, want, wanted to get married when you were younger and maybe you're married now? How many of you who are married wanted to get married before you got married?

This is really bad.

This is, I'm ask. I mean, your husband or wife is sitting there looking at you not raising your hand and they're like: uhoh, how many of you, before you got married, wanted to get married? Everybody in this place who got married there- probably just a lot of young people. You're single, it's okay.

You know, single it's a gift from God.

It's a gift U, but you're going to date someone and you're going to decide to get married. I sure hope that you want to get married if you decide to marry them. Right, most of us who got married, we wanted to get married and then we stepped into that marriage and, I, I want to be I, Hannah, are you back there? I love you, sweetie, with the love of Jesus and my own love.

Like, yeah, I love you, but it's not exact.

It's not exactly what I signed up for. You know, I love her. It's better. That's what soone in every way.

It's better than I ever thought it would be, which is true in some ways right, sweetie, that's good, but in other ways it's different.

It's not exactly what I signed up for. How many of you, if you have kids before you had kids, you wanted kids? There may be a cavey out there. Maybe you didn't want them and it happen anyway.

It is what it is, but how many of you just are two, two good parents in this room?

How many of you wanted kids before you had your kids? It's past 11:00 right now. Y'all can participate, before I had kids. I didn't initially want kids, but then I did and then we had kids, so it worked out proper order and then I had said: kids, and I it's.

It's not what I expected.

It's everything that I signed up for, plus all this other stuff I didn't sign up for, I just. I just signed up for the parent teacher conferences. You know, I signed up for for a kid who, like, looks like me, acts like me in the good ways, not the bad ways. I signed up for a kid who could, like, grow up and then maybe provide for me in retirement.

That's, that's what I signed up for.

I didn't sign up for the no boy. I didn't. I didn't sign up for that. Some of you, you went to college or you got out of high school and you said I'm going to get the job of my dreams, a millennial.

I'm a millennial, so I can say this: Millennials and younger, we have like we sign up for stuff and we have warped expectations about what a job is going to look like.

So when we step into the job and we realize we actually have to work, we're like now what I? I set up for a paycheck. I didn't sign up for a person to directly report to. You know, I didn't sign up for that level of resp.

Everyone has been in that position where they signed up for something or stepped into something with dreams and Ambitions and excitement, only to find that, yeah, there's some good stuff attached to it, but it's also hard.

It's difficult to be a parent. It's difficult to be a, a husband or a wife. It's difficult to step into a full-time work week when you're not used to it. It's difficult to step into your faith, like I stepped, like I became a Christian, partially CU.

I didn't want to go to hell and many of us- I'm just being honest- we stepped into it and I was like, yeah, this D sold me, sold me a good bill of like I was.

You mean, I can go to heaven if I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead. He said, yep, your sins forgiven, you can step into a walk with God. I sell you guys that line once in a while. And then you step into your faith and all of a sudden, stuff isn't all like like you thought it would be.

It's like: okay, cool, eternity with God.

Now go back and do what I was doing. No, no, no, no. Hold on. Family members don't like your new Faith.

Some of the people in your life don't like you changing.

They want you to stay the way that you were. You step into that and you realize that it might not be persecution, like no one's trying to kill you, no one's trying to injure you, but they're hurting your feelings. Once in a while you invite them to go to church. Hey, come check it out.

Good stuff's happening.

They're like: nah, why would you believe that stuff? That's like a fairy tale. Or you step in and you realize that some of the thing God wants, some of the things God wants to redeem you from are harder to get rid of than you expected and- and God wants to be, help you to beat some addictions. God wants your marriage to look better, wrapped around him.

God wants you to be a better parent.

God wants you to be a better employee. God wants you to step into this life that is being transformed by the renewing of your mind. God wants you to change and be transformed in that transformation process. It hurts, is difficult, and many people they step into their faith with the excitement about heaven, the excitement about peace, the excitement about the reduction of their anxious ways, the excitement about a new community group or people to hang out with.

All to step into a cross that you have to bear and you realize it's not.

It's not what I signed up for. This is Jonah. Jonah stepped into a life of being a prophet. I know it sounds crazy.

You would think Jonah should have his Stu together.

He's a prophet, but it was an occupation. It was a normal thing back in the day in Israel and in Judah you would have prophets whose almost solders job was to be the political commentators. Almost right, they would talk mess about a king who's not doing what God would want him to do? They would preach the character of God to those very people who are, you know, not honoring his ways in the country.

There's a guy named Amos is one of the prophets he's, he's close to in the Minor Prophets, with Jonah Amos.

He, he's one of those prophets. He's a Shepherd from a place called tea and he goes in. He's prophesying to a King. He's a good old boy from the backwoods.

He's coming to a King and he's just talking mess to him, said: you're not honoring God, it's not going to work out well for you.

This was an occupation and, just like anything else, there's a culture that comes with that occupation. With other prophets, you've got Isaiah. He had a whole school of Prophecy. There were people who would follow in that way.

You've got Jeremiah.

You've got prophets Galore in the ancient world. So Jonah stepped into, he signed up for something that would offer him blessings, maybe a little bit of clout in the community. The text doesn't tell us this, the context tells us this, and so God speaks to Jonah, and I want to talk to you first about the call. The call, that's my first point, and it says this: the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of amiti, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because his wickedness has come up before me now.

I've looked in the Old Testament and I've looked at the prophets that we can read about, and almost all of them were called to Israel or Judah.

Jonah was not called to his homeboy. Jonah was not called to the temple. Jonah was not called to his hometown. Jonah was not called to be just another prophet.

Jonah was called to go to neveh.

Nineveh is a city that is 550 Mi away from where he would have lived. Nineveh is a City full of people called the Assyrians, who had invaded the northern portion of Israel and ransacked it. They had taken some of the people captive and Drew them up to even the city of Nineveh. They were not a group of people that, if you were Jewish at the time, you would have appreciated, and so Jonah had signed up for being a prophet.

But the call of God, the word of the Lord, came to Jonah, and you know that some of you know the story.

He's not going to like it. The Lord called him to do something that was maybe out of his comfort. The Lord calls each of us to do something that is not comfortable. Amen.

I know I stand up here.

Say: come all who, you who are weary, heavy laden, and the Lord will give you rest. Jesus says it. He's quoting it from Isaiah. Like this is a good faith, guys, if you, if you don't want to go to hell and go to heaven and spend eternity with God, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

But then, but then God calls you into that very transformed life and it's a break, almost God.

I'll give you an example. When I first got married- I like marriage because y' all get it, or a lot of y'all get it, y'all, young people, you see it with your parents, you know they argue too. And so when I first got married, it was all good. We call that the.

You know what phase?

We call that first couple of years of marriage honeymoon phase. You call it the honeymoon phase. I don't even get it, but like it was fine. But then you step in and you get to know each other a little better.

She's more herself, I'm more myself, and we start.

You know she, she Clips her toenails one way, I clip mine a different way. Do toilet paper rolls one way, she does it another way. Fold towels one way, she folds it another way. She's better at laundry, I'm better at dishes.

And, she's bad at dishes and I'm bad at laundry.

You know, there there are a lot of things that we're different. And the goal of marriage, at least if you do it in Christ, is to become one in Christ. Christ Jesus, right to love one another consistently, to sacrifice when the other person has a different style of doing things. Sacrifice my preferences because I love her more than my own preferences.

Right, marriage is amazing, but when I stepped into it and started to realize these differences, I recognize there's an abrasiveness to this call of God in my life.

I'm called to be married. I'm called to stick with my spouse. I'm called to be a parent. I'm called to raise my kids the best that I possibly can in the Lord.

And whatever you're called to, if God called you to it, he wants you to stick with it, even when it gets hard.

The call might be difficult and take you out of comfort. So, as much as I want to sell you a faith that says you can have peace, which is 100% true- I'm selling you a p. I'm selling you a faith that Jesus even says might bring the sword once in a while. It is hard to live your faith out in a world that doesn't care about it.

Amen, it's hard.

Let me. Let me bring it down here, cuz I'm, I'm, I'm talking in like non-tangible words and you know phrases. It's hard to attend church on a Sunday morning. It is, because when you've been living life, getting all your stuff done on the weekends, then Sunday comes around and you feel like the Lord has called you to show up at church, because church is the outlet through which he tries to bless the world.

And if you don't go to church, there's a lack of covering and community that you have.

So you feel called to go to church and when you go to church it blesses you. But when you wake up in the morning, you got a bunch of stuff to do and it's not something that's really a habit for you. It feels frustrating and so you're like it's, it's, it's uncomfortable, so I'm not going to do it. God's going to call you to take a step, some of some of you.

Today you're going to get make your faith public through baptism.

That was a hard thing for me: a bunch of people, I don't know, looking at me and clapping while I go underw and don't drown. You know like it's like. This is weird, Lord, he said. But I want you to take a step out of comfort so that you can take a step into your calling.

And so he said: you got to get in the pool, you got to get in the water, you got to get in the river, and then someone's going to baptize you in the name of the father, son, Holy Spirit.

It's not magical. This is your step of Faith coming closer and closer to me, that you're going to look back on because of the celebratory Vibe. You're going to remember it day after day after day, and when it gets hard in your life, you look back at it and you remember God did something. Then, right, step into your calling.

The word of the Lord comes to you.

It's important for us to be obedient, even when it's uncomfortable. Even when it's uncomfortable- and Jonah was not comfortable going to Nineveh. I get it. I don't even want to talk about the reasons, though, because the text doesn't give us the reasons right now.

In fact, here's what it says.

Here's his response to the call of God- and I'll say this before. I read this verse. There are really three General ways that you can respond to the call of God. You can respond in the affirmative, meaning you go in the direction God calls you to go.

You can respond in the opposite, which is what we see Jonah does, which is, you know, like anti- what God would want for your life.

Or- and this is what many of us do. So I want to articulate it- we respond in the neutral, we just stick where we're at and don't make a decision either way. But when we look at Jonah, he goes the opposite direction. Right, we want to be not Jonah.

Here's what it says in verse three.

But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for tarses. He went down to japa where he found a ship Bound for that Port. After paying the fair, he went aboard and sailed for tares to flee from the Lord. This is funny.

Let me show you a map.

All right, this is japa. It says he went down to japa, so chances are he was in this little mountain range that you can't see, but I can see, cuz I'm right here by the LED screen. He's probably near Jerusalem. Maybe he's up there where Samaria would be.

Who knows where he's at, but he's up in the mountains, goes down to japa pays the fair, jumps onto a ship.

We find out later: it's probably a group of Phoenician Sailors. He hops on this ship and he's going to go toward tarses all the way over here. Most Scholars think it's Spain or Portugal. They don't really know.

What the text indicates is that it's the exact opposite direction that he was called To Go.

NVA is only 550 Mi away in the northeastern direction. Tarses is all the way across the Mediterranean. Here's how significant tarus is. It's the end of the known world to people at that time.

What is the author trying to tell you about Jonah?

He did everything he possibly could to get away from the presence of God and flee from him all because God called him to do something that we'll find out later. He didn't want to do. You're not Jonah, but I think, if we're honest, we've all found ourselves in that place. We know it's dumb, right, if you know, if, if God knows all things and if he's everywhere all at once, I can't flee from the presence of God.

We know, we know it, but that doesn't mean we don't try to.

I mean even Adam and Eve in the garden. They try to hide in the bushes from God, who created the entire universe and the garden that he plac them in. But they're. They're still trying to hide from God and many of us are going the opposite direction of God's calling on our life.

I don't know the reason yet, but you're going the opposite direction and what I want to encourage you is that is not going to be helpful for you.

Jonah knows God, he's a prophet, for goodness sakes, yet he still tries to flee from the presence of God, goes down to japa from Jerusalem, jumps on a boat and he flees. What's your reason? That's my, that's my third point. I want to talk you about the reason because you're responding in a particular way to the calling that God has placed in your life and we've all got a reason for it.

The text does not yet tell us Jonah as reason.

I could give you a lot from the context. Right? He's the only person, that we see in the, the prophets that we have in the Old Testament, that is called outside of Israel or Judah. That's.

That's pretty stressful, all my homeboys.

They get called in, they get called up to Jerusalem. They get to hang out near the temple. They get to talk to the Kings and the rulers. They get to be here, where I'm familiar.

But I got to go out there.

It's obscure, it's in the middle of nowhere to us and it's for a group of people that I hate. That's Jonah for you. God's called you to step into a walk with him. God might be calling you to start attending church again.

God might be calling you to serve.

God's calling you to parent differently, husband differently, employee differently, Netflix differently. He's calling you to live a life that revolves everything around Jesus. But we find ourselves in the opposite direction. For some reason, some of you- I get it.

It's hurt, it's, it's the pain that you have in your life.

That's why. That's why Adam and he's hid in the bushes- right that? That's why they hid, because of the shame of doing something that they knew God did not approve of. And you feel bad, for whatever reason it might be.

Someone said something to you when you were younger, that's.

That's Moses, right? Moses was called by God to go redeem the Israelites or deliver the Israelites from the hand of the Egyptian rulers in Pharaoh at the time. And Moses has a request. He says hey, I'm not eloquent or a able to communicate well, he feels like he's not capable of accomplishing the calling that God has on his life.

I don't think this is Jonah- I think the text clarifies for us- but it might be you.

You might be dishonoring God's calling on your life to live after Jesus because of some sort of inadequacy that you feel. And I think this is from the Lord, based on what I see all throughout the Scriptures, that if God calls you to do something, he did it on purpose. If God created you from your mother's womb, he formed you, he says, knows every hair on your head. He says he knows everything about you.

He knows your deficiencies, he knows what you're not good at.

He knows what you're capable of. He knows your full potential. He knows you deeply, more deeply than you know yourself. He knows how you tick way better than you do.

He knows better than your psychiatrist.

He knows better than your mama, better than your daddy. He knows you better than you can ever imagine being known. And since he knows you, if he called you, you've got to understand that it is the right thing for your life. So no inadequacy, no insecurity, no incapability can limit you in your walk with God if you choose to be faithful to him when he calls you to do something.

I know you think that you've done too much wrong to step into a walk with Jesus.

I've heard people say that. They say they say you know I would follow God, but I've already screwed up too much. I hear people say it. I think it's crazy to say that, because of what I know about the Bible.

But I've heard people say it.

And if that's you today, there's nothing you could do that prevents God from loving you. Nothing, in fact. He sent his son Jesus on purpose so that you would have life abundantly. If you simply confess that he's Lord, he'll forgive you of all the things that you screwed up in.

He loves you that much.

The Bible tells us, not just in the Psalms but also in Jonah, that God is rich in love, he's compassion, he is kind. We see in Jesus that he can sympathize with everything you've dealt with, and so when he says, follow me, he knows you can amen if you trust in him. So for those of you who are fleeing God's presence or think you're fleeing God's presence because you've done too much wrong, because you're insecure about something, I know it's hard to get rid of that insecurity. I've still got tons of insecurity.

Believe it or not, I don't really think I'm like the right guy to do half the things that I do up here.

This is me just like walking through life with General indigestion, thinking it's God's calling on my life. That's me. I'm trying to figure it out. And the Lord said, hey, go to Buckeye.

The Lord said, hey, Mary Hannah.

The Lord said, hey, y'all should have some kids, that would be cool. The Lord said, hey, do this, hey do this, hey, do this. And I'm like, okay, we'll figure it out one of these days. And I'm regularly running into my own inadequacies, insecurities and struggles, and I'm not perfect, I'm screwing up all the time.

And then I go back to the Lord.

I'm. I'm like, Lord, you call me to do this? Like, why'd you call me to do this? I'm screwing up here, I'm screwing up here.

This person left because I did this.

I keep screwing up. Lord, why' you call me to do this? He says: trust me, move forward, be faithful, and if you're faithful, I'm going to figure it out for you. You don't have to stress about it, it's the same for you wherever you are.

You don't have to run in the opposite direction because of what you screwed up in, because he'll take you in.

What is it? It might be something like church hurt. Church hurt's the term that I've heard a lot more out here than I've heard in the past. Church hurt is that term that people summarize to say I don't go to church anymore because something happened at church at some point in my past.

I'm sure that's painful, but, but the result is the same for those who aren't honoring God's call on their life, regardless of the reason.

That sounds hard, sounds really harsh. I don't want to be harsh, I want to be nice, I want to be gracious, like like Jesus, I want to be rich in love. Slow, anger, compassionate, kind. Come all you who are weary, I'll give you like, he'll give you rest.

I want to do that, but it's like, at the same time, God called you to do something and many of you struggling with church HT, you know that God calls you to do something, but you're not doing it because somebody else hurts you and if you just think about it and become aware of this for one moment, you would recognize that the people who hurt you- yeah, that's on them.

They screwed up. You know, if you come here long enough, I'm GNA. Screw up, I'm GNA. Say something dumb one day, I like, I, I Lord, please don't let me ever say anything heretical, but just in case I'm going it could happen.

You know, I don't think it's going to Happ.

I am human, like I have Frailty attached to me, inadequacy attached to me. I'm like that donkey that was tied up and now someone's using it and I'm still a donkey. You know, I'm still figuring life out. I'm going to screw up people here on the leadership around me.

They're going to screw up and here's what I'll tell you.

This might redeem some of you or free some of you from a mindset that is imprison you and kept you away from God's calling on your life. Whatever these people in this room do to you should not prevent you from honoring God's call on your life, because it's about following Jesus and his will for your life, not looking at people and saying that's why I'm not doing God's calling on my life. I bet Jonah's like. Remember those people they kidnapped, Lord, the Assyrians.

You remember those people that were my family members that I don't get to see anymore because of what they did to them.

You remember all the stuff that they've done during their Westward Expansion to the Mediterranean? You remember all of the bad things that they're AP part of Lord, don't you remember? And the Lord, I called you to do it. It's a great City.

Nineveh, God's called you into something and whatever that is, if you don't honor it, regardless of your reason, the results are the same.

You're disconnected from God's call on your life. You're disconnected from his character in your life. You're disconnected and cut off in some way. It's not his fault, it's, it's at ours who disconnect.

You're cut off from the Revelation that you could be having in your life from God.

Jonah has tons of reasons for us. We've got tons of. It could be Church HT. It could be distractions.

Yo, I've told you enough times.

I'm I'm sure there have been people who left this church cuz I'm 2 ADHD. It might have happened. Right, I get distracted. Right, someone walks in to my left over here.

Y'all don't see him.

I see him squirrel. I'm thinking about that for about 10 milliseconds. Then I get back to the sermon. That's me.

I get distracted.

It happens, you're distracted. It's just a thing anyone in here be honest with. Are you distracted? I'm dist.

There's so much stuff to do in this world.

This is Phoenix I came from, most recently Jin. I've been in the big city before, but, man, is there a lot to do here in Phoenix I can do tons of stuff, you know, and there then there's tons of stuff to do at work, tons of stuff to do at home, tons of projects that I haven't finished yet. I am crazy distracted and it's easy to bail on the things that I feel like I should do so that I can do the things or indulge in the things that have become the, you know, the object of my distraction. That might be lesser or less important.

Some of us are so distracted that we get to church on Su or get to Sunday morning and we're like, ah, I got too much to do to go to church.

I got too much to do to read my Bible. I get too much to do to, to, to pray and talk to my Creator. I got too much to do to spend time with people who would encourage me and that I could encourage. I got too much stuff on my calendar to be like Abram, who was called to go to a land that God would show him way back in the day, in the Book of Genesis, God calls him from Earth, the calans.

Then, from the land of Haron, he says: go to a land, I will show you.

He doesn't know where he's going and I'm sure he's distracted. I'm sure he's got plenty of kids. No, not him, he don't have kids. There's people around him in his family, though, who have got kids.

There's plenty of things happening that he could tend to, but he goes.

It's almost like Abram knew, that greater faithfulness to God and continued faithfulness to God has a blessing at the end of it. That is much better than catering to my own distractions. So for you, I man, people going to leave, I, I, I don't want you to just go home and say I quit everything, but if I- and I do- believe that the God of the universe created you and me, that he sent his son to die on the cross for you and me, and he asked us to follow him with our entire life so that he can shape our mindsets and change our practices, so that one day we spend eternity with him, and he looks at us and he says: well done, my good and faithful servant. And then all of eternity we get to sit there in joy and perfect peace, Everlasting peace.

Hang out with our creator, talk to Jesus, ask him a bunch of qu.

If I believe that, then I feel like it kind of makes sense for me to say to you guys who are going to live here, a maximum of aund and something years total, to say, hey, maybe these distraction actions are less important than your creator, maybe just a little bit. And so I want to encourage you: lean in, step in. I know it gets hard sometimes. I know that once someone signs up to serve- I'll just give you an example- once someone signs up to serve, a lot of people say: I don't want to be in front of anybody, but I'll set up and tear down.

I always think it's funny when they say set up, tear down, because then I text them back and I say, okay, well, the call time is, and I put ellipses: 5 P, 5:00 am.

That's what I tell them. You know what? Because I'm sitting here like I'm waiting for the shoe to drop. I'm like, okay, they want to do this.

I'm believing they're called.

They said that they wanted to do set up, tear down, and they believe that by setting this up, God's going to bless them in a particular way. They're going to be around some great people and then I, I, I'm just sending them the piece of discomfort or uncomfortable information that says it's not, it's not 8:00, it's 5, 500 am, that's when you guys show up, I, I, because I know that that discomfort can be frustrating. But my wife told me last week- actually it was two weeks ago-, we did our next step class. It was the third week where we talk about serving, and I kept apologizing.

I kept apologizing for, yeah, I know it's early guys, yeah, I, I, I know it's a lot, it seems like a lot, and if you're not familiar or used to that, then it's okay, I totally understand and that's 100% true.

But then my wife was like: but Matt, if you believe, if you believe that that serving God, not just through the local church, but in various capacities, reading God's word, if you believe that all of these things will bring them abundant life right now, in the present, then why would you apologize for it? And that's what I believe. And so I guess I'm just starting to live a life where I don't apologize as much, because I recognize this, that there is no reason that is good enough to keep you from God, even if they make sense, even if everyone around you will understand them. I can picture any reason.

It's not just the basic distractions or the church hurt, which, which I actually think fall low on the spectrum of good reasons, but there are, like sick, I mean there's- there's a person that was sitting here in the first service, that might be sitting in here right now, who I had a full conversation with them because they were struggling with a physical ailment, and it was a fun conversation, because at the end of it they said: I'm going to figure out what I need to do in order to follow God regularly, consistently, because, not, I used to run a lot.

I don't run as much as I used to, as you can tell, I'm 36 years old, but I used to run a lot and there was a season where it was raining for like two weeks and like I'd injured my heel and it was cut and I had got like a sprained ankle or something like that, and I was still healing from that and I remember thinking I'm not going to go out in the rain cuz I don't want to get a get the flu, and so I didn't run. It wasn't until two weeks that it continued raining that I realized: well, I'm in less shape than I was. So what am I going to do about it? Because in the end, the result was the same, regardless of my great it was raining.

I didn't want the flu, guys.

It was an amazing reason, but anything that prevents you from God becomes an idol between you and God, a barrier that prevents you from getting where God wants you to be. And if we're going to press onward, upward, toward our calling in Christ Jesus, it's going to take effort, intensity, and I'm no longer going to apologize for trying to encourage you and even myself, to honor God's calling, regardless of the reason. But I get them. I'm gracious and I want you to understand that, regardless of what has prevented you from coming till now, if you come back- 2 weeks, 6 weeks, 100 weeks, 15 years- I don't care how long it is- if you come back, we're going to welcome you, just like the guy in Luke, chapter 15, The Prodigal Son who came back.

We're excited that you came.

Whever you are, we're grateful for where you are, but wherever you are, God wants you to honor his calling on your life and if your response can be in the affirmative, regardless of the reason. I promise this. I don't promise it won't be hard. I don't promise there there won't be a cross to bear.

I promise you this: that the presence of God as you seek Him will be with you and around you.

It will exhort you and encourage you and move you and it will reveal to you his character in such a way that, regardless of how hard it gets, when you look back you'll see the progress. And Jonah, he knows God, he knows what he can do, he knows, knows what he's capable of, he knows, he know he's a prophet and he goes the opposite direction, for whatever reason. And there's not a single person reading this text in the way that it's articulated, just in the three, the first three verses, it says the word of the L, the word of the Lord, came to Jonah. Go preach to the ninevites.

Their evil has come up.

And I've seen it preach against it. And it says: but Jonah ran away. Now, not a single person, not people who were right after Jonah, not people who were 300 years after Jonah, not Jesus or any of his followers, not us. Nobody is reading that.

We don't have the reason.

Nobody is reading that text and thinking Jonah did something that was beneficial. And so when someone reads your life a 100 years from now, 10 years from now, when your kids right now are reading the way that you operate, do you want them to see you honoring God or do you want them to see you going the opposite direction of his calling, cuz they're reading your life? What are they reading right now? Are they reading someone who makes excuses to go in the opposite direction, no matter how good they might be?

Are they reading someone who says: I'm going to be resilient.

Jesus was resilient. Jesus lived a life. He robed himself in flesh when he didn't have to. He dwelt among men, sympathized with our struggle.

He came down, dwelt among men.

He was persecuted. Then he was crucified. He died for us. He was resilient to the point of death, even death on a cross, and through his resilience God lifted him up out of the grave and he's now the name above all names, seated at the right hand of the father.

Jesus is Lord.

And when you think about resilience, when you think about Jonah, think about the opposite of him. The opposite of Jonah is Jesus, who was resilient to God's call, even when it wasn't something he necessarily would have chosen. He says: not my will, but thy will be done. He did it and because of what he did, we can have life abundantly, life eternally.

We can actually honor God.

His Holy Spirit comes into us when we trust in Jesus. It convicts us of our sin, it compels us to further faithfulness. So, regardless of what you have in your life, there is no good excuse to ignore God. When I read Jonah, I hear this: he gets to this place where it wasn't what he signed up for, and he says: I'm out.

You can make a choice today, just like Joshua.

He says: choose this day who you're going to serve. You can make the choice not to be out but to step in, and so there are people in this room. You need to trust in Jesus for the first time so you would have life eternally and start learning about your creator. There are others of you need to take a step toward.

God might be baptism, making your faith public, might be coming to the next steps.

Class might be shifting your parenting style, wrapping it around Jesus, your husbanding or wiing style, whatever it is in your life that God's calling you to shift. No excuses. It's time to shift it, cuz no excuse is good enough when you've got bad results at the end of it, but God offers you a good result and a good eternity. So for those of you who need to trust in Jesus right now, the Bible makes it very simple.

You can confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

If that's you right now, let's all bow our heads and close our eyes. I want to lead you in a prayer to align your thoughts to God thoughts. You might pray something like this: God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he's the opposite of Jonah.

I believe he died on the cross.

Rose from the grave. I believe he forgives me of my sins. Father, make me a new creation as I trust in Christ Jesus right now. I commit right now, today, to follow you for the rest of my life.

No excuses, I'm pressing onward toward you.

God, I love you and I thank you for this salvation. It is in Jesus's name that we pray, and God's people said: am.