I heard a sermon while I was driving down to Medford today with Amanda, one of the illustrations was that during Moses’ time, a majority vote left Israel wandering in the wilderness for 40 extra years, of the 12 spies that went out, only two wanted to obey God, the other 10 made excuses for why it couldn’t be done. Never thought about it that way before, but it’s a great insight.
“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is…”
–C.S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity”
I think through the times of trial is when the content of our character is revealed. At that point, we must consider long and hard whether what we do is glorifying to God, or giving place to the devil. My prayer is that in adversity, my characther is glorifying to God.
(Amanda’s probably laughing to herself right now, since she saw firsthand what I’m capable of when I’m too competitive, which makes that statement truly ironic. =)
I haven’t written a blog post in a while. Why? Well… I haven’t had a lot of time, nor have I really had a lot to say. But I’ve kind of felt the Spirit moving me tonight, as I get the feeling there are a lot of people hurting tonight and something needs be said. I’ll preface this by saying, I’m neither a terribly gifted preacher, nor an altogether dynamic layman, so don’t expect something the caliber of what you might get out of any one of the pastors at church.
A vote took place tonight at church, the results of which affect the very course of our church’s history. Some are heartbroken, others upset, and most are bewildered at this point. The expressions on the leadership team’s faces when they walked up on the platform said everything that needed be said: “What are we going to do now?”
I won’t go into the details of the situation, most who need to know the situation’s details already, but in short this vote decided whether or not Pastor Lindsey would be restored as our pastor. This great man, who shepherded us through the first seven years of being, seemed a shoo-in to return to the pulpit. Yet somehow, the vote slid below the required 75% mark required to pass. And now the congregation, too, is left wondering what just happened.
It’s incredible to view how God used the messages Pastor Lindsey preached to prepare us for it, even if we didn’t realize that’s how we were being preached to. The sermons that were intended, at the time, as a reasonable defense for why he was acceptable to return to the pulpit, wound up being some of the deepest spiritual truths imaginable for the time we were approaching – God sometimes has to teach us deep spiritual truths in the darkness.
In Isaiah tonight, Amanda and I were discussing the situation, and I let go with the comment that God makes in Isaiah 55-
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts
Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)
What interesting about that (which I didn’t notice until Amanda pointed it out), is what all else was in that chapter of scripture. Further down the page:
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
Isaiah 55:11-13 (KJV)
God’s words will not return void, but it shall accomplish that which he pleases… This verse, among many others, gives me comfort tonight.
The reactions of some is with great zeal and fervor, wondering what could possibly have possessed the 28% to vote that way, I’ve even seen some turning it into an “Us vs. Them” mentality, thinking that those who did not vote with the majority were somehow traitors that hated Pastor Lindsey. Paranoia starts to set in, people start wondering what someone else has against them, why would that 28% want to ruin it for the rest of us.
I think everyone needs to take a big step back, take a deep breath, and chill for a moment.
After tonight’s vote, there was no joy. There was a lot of weeping, red eyes, downcast faces. In looking around the room, there was no one who looked particularly happy. Think about it, folks. Who there was prancing around singing “Ding, dong, the witch is dead?” Who walked up to Pastor Lindsey and shouted “HA! You lose!”? Nobody. I didn’t see anyone gloating. What I saw was a room full of hurting people, people who didn’t understand what just happened, some looked angry, others shell-shocked, but when it came right down to it, no one looked like it had been an easy decision. I think that for the last several weeks a lot of prayer has gone in for everyone involved for God to reveal his will, and God did just that in a way that none of us truly expected.
God’s ways are not our ways. We aren’t always going to understand why things happen the way that they do, and God’s in no way going to be forced into revealing it to us right away. But we are still to be one body, and move forward with one accord. God revealed his will to us, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to strive together to continue on in his will, to discover what God DOES have planned for us? Or are we going to be, as Jared brought up in a recent sermon, like Jonah, and say “See God? That’s not how I would’ve done it. You really messed that up, if we would’ve just done this my way, this ALL could’ve been avoided!”
I’d like to put my vote forth – Let’s move forward and see how God can work. Like the children of Israel, he didn’t lead us to the edge of the Red Sea to watch Pharaoh’s chariots barrel down on top of us and utterly destroy us. He led us to the Red Sea so that we can witness HIS miracles, and HIS glory.
For those who had the majority vote – Don’t become bitter about it. The vote, even with the people involved, was still in God’s hands the entire time. God works in the hearts of the people, and to become bitter at those who you may not have agreed with is simply giving place to the devil. Paul wrote in Ephesians,
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Eph 4:31-32 (KJV)
I don’t think a decision like the one that was made tonight was made lightly by any of the parties involved, nor do I think it was a personal attack on our pastor. I think everyone there tonight had approached it with much prayer and supplication, and – as I said before – the entire process was in God’s hands, not ours.
Additionally, those who voted with the minority – don’t gloat, or make it seem like those who were voting with the majority were wrong in voting how they did. This is a time where we’re being broken as a congregation, and now more than ever we need to strengthen ourselves for the trying times that are coming. We need to move forward and face the future, not spend time dwelling on the things of the past.
If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
Phil 2:1-2 (KJV)
We can ill afford to sit back and do nothing, friends. We cannot begin to let bitterness seep in, or to think that God in some way has abandoned us. God was here before this time came, God’s still here now that the time is upon us, and God will remain with us in the future. Never lose sight of that!
As I think about all of the ways that I’ve grown under Pastor Lindsey’s teaching, there’s one thing that I think always stood out about his salvation story – When he talked about how the deacon who led him to Christ fell away, he began to question why he was even in it any more, and considered quitting. His pastor told him to get his eyes off of the man and get his eyes on Christ.
That, if you take nothing else from this, is going to be the big thing. Stop focusing on what men are doing, start focusing on what God wants us to do. The world is watching us, how are we going to handle the coming darkness?
Andrew
Psalms 84:11
This weekend, as I went to starbucks before church, I passed Sherwood Ice Arena to a disheartening sight: Harmony Christian Books & Homeschool, a former competitor when I was in Christian retail, is going out of business and liquidating its store. It doesn’t come as a complete shock, though. It’s no surprise that small Christian stores are struggling, in part due to the economy and in part due to inability to compete with big box stores like Best Buy and Borders.
Harmony’s not the first retailer I’ve seen struggling: Shortly after I got out of the game, the Greatest Gift in Wilsonville had shut down, another small, family-run business. Rainbow West in Tigard, to the best of my knowledge, has closed down again (unless they’ve moved, which they have a nasty habit of doing without telling anyone) And the signs advertising space for lease in two locations of Christian Supply stores, one in Tanasbourne and one in Lake Oswego, don’t bode well, either, a clear indication that even the chain stores are feeling the pinch.
Part of it, clearly, is the inability to compete. Let’s face it: When Best Buy can sell Veggietales for 7.99 on release, and Christian Supply has it for 12.99 but gets it the Saturday before the secular market, particularly now, an extra three-days wait is easily accepted for the 5.00 savings. And Best Buy can afford that, as we’d had drilled into us countless times while I was still in Christian retail, they have larger ticket items that allow them to take such hits on their smaller purchases. However, I don’t think that’s entirely it, either. I think, to an extent, Christian retail brought it upon itself.
At this point, I’m sure many of you are kind of shocked at my hypothesis. “Brought it upon itself? How can they be to blame?” I don’t think Christian retail set out to deliberately sabotage itself, but I think by a process of decisions its made over the last couple of decades, it’s gotten into the mess it’s in now.
Christian retail used to be just that – Christian. It catered to an audience of born-again believers, looking for music that was uplifting, books that were inspiring, and Bibles that were… well.. Bibles. And it was good, people could find all of those items together in one place. However, over the years, things changed. Sales didn’t seem to be as good in the Christian markets as they were in the secular markets, and someone, somewhere, began to ask, “Why?”
They began to compare what was selling in the secular markets with what was selling in the Christian markets, and you know what they found out? What was hot in the secular markets didn’t really have a counterpart in the Christian market. Clearly, though, if it was that popular in the secular area, it would also be popular in the Christian area as well. And thus began Christian retail’s struggle to become “relevant” to the changing times.
Before I launch into this too far, a disclaimer: I am not going to get on my soap box and say whether or not certain types of music or books are more Godly than the other. We are, after all each given a different measure of faith, and while some may find certain things okay, others won’t. But I will point out a few different cases in which I saw something that struck me as seriously wrong in the Christian retail markets that I think stemmed from the problem of trying to be everything the secular market is without being the secular market.
That being said, Christian retailers began to bring in more things of what was popular: Christian rock bands that sounded just like the secular artists that were popular on the radio. In some cases, it wound up being a secular band trying to get its break. Take, for instance, Evanesence. Few people will remember, but they started their life as a “Christian” band on Wind-Up records. I remember we had the CDs up for about a whopping two weeks while I worked at Christian Supply just starting out. Then, one day, my manager told me that we had to pull them all. Puzzled, I asked why (the only thing I knew was the girl on the cover scared me). Come to find out, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, one of the band members had said “We’re really popular in the Christian markets, but we’re not a Christian band. What the [bleep] is up with that?”. There was an apology issued almost immediately from the record label, assuring us all that they would do a better job screening their artists before release. One two different occasions, I had to pull CDs by 12 Stones because of language/inappropriate comments in the CD liners. At the time, they seemed like trivial things, but looking back, they were things that never should have happened in the first place.
Music isn’t the only thing that became popular. An almost constant stream of “self help” books became the next big thing. It amazes me looking back at how many of the “next big things” were, in fact, big until they came out, then no one cared. And the number of ones that came through that had almost no theological foundation was appalling. The vast majority of the books in the “Christian Living” section were books based on pop psychology with scripture thrown in to make it look more spiritual. I remember vividly a book titled “Get a Life! It IS all about you”, which offered almost nothing from a Christian standpoint, but relied heavily on what’s popular in the psychology world. That’s frightening, folks. As Christians, God’s word is supposed to be our source. Not popular psychological theories.
And then Bibles. Let me say, when I was a kid, we had two kinds of bibles: NIV and KJV. (there were probably more, but those were the only two that anyone cared about). Now, there’s a bible in every shape, size, and kind. And some of them are borderline sacrilegious. For instance, the Bible as a Seventeen-style girl’s magazine. Because, clearly, the best way to get girls to read the bible is to make it look like a secular magazine that they’d rather be reading.
Regardless, things still weren’t booming in Christian retail. There were still things that were more popular in the secular market that the Christian markets couldn’t replicate. So, most recently, I’ve noticed a shift from strictly “Christian” items to items that are “Family Friendly”.
“Family Friendly”? Seriously?
It first hit me the day I entered the Lake Oswego Christian supply and found, prominently displayed, Disney movies. Disney movies with no discernable spiritual messages (Well, that is, unless you find one of the many books that specifically tries to draw spiritual themes out of secular movies), no real connection to what Christ came to do on earth. Then, a few weeks later on a trip to Vancouver Mall, I found in Crown Books & Gifts carrying Hannah Montana and High School musical CDs. The clincher, however, was reviewing the Easter sales flyer I recieved from Christian supply that had, in fact, no mention of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. At this point, it occurred to me that Christian retail has lost its collective soul.
Isn’t Christ supposed to be the focus? If we turn “Christian” into a synonym for “Family Friendly”, what has Christ done? Christ died on the cross, but for what? So we can use his name in vain attempts to promote a business that we’re running under man’s power with man’s logic?
Allow me to be counter-intuitive: Christian retail lost its soul and, I believe, is losing business because it fails to differentiate itself from the secular market anymore. If you walk into a Christian retail establishment, odds are you’ll probably get a similar level of service to a Borders or a Best Buy, a lot of the same products, but with higher prices. And since Christian retail’s moved to try not to invoke Christ as often, what’s differentiating them from the competition? Higher prices. It’s sad, but true.
I would love to see a Christian retailer let God build the house for once, live by faith, and see what happens. Stop trying to please the secular markets, but trust that God can provide the business if they try to run a business that’s pleasing to God. Christian retail shouldn’t have to change everytime the secular markets catch onto a trend that’s popular. Christians SHOULDN’T be keeping up with the Joneses, we were called to be set apart from the world, not to try and be like it but still maintain our identity as Christians. We should be seperated, and I just wish one retailer would decide “Okay, that’s the business plan. We’ll see how God can provide.”
Alas, I doubt I’ll see it in my day unless I open it myself… And that’s a market I don’t really want back into.
It’s not our public face that defines who we are, it’s who we are when no one else is watching. Men judge by actions, but only God judges by hearts.
(It’s probably been said by someone more eloquently than I, but it’s just a thought I had this week)
1 Kings 13:1-10
In 1 Kings 13, we see an interesting man. He is not named, he’s only mentioned in the Bible once. But for the few paragraphs we see him, he leaves an excellent example of taking a stand for God.
Backing up to chapter 12, we see Jeroboam setting up idol worship in Bethel and Dan. You see, Jeroboam was afraid. The kingdom was divided at this point, and he was afraid if the people went to Jerusalem to worship at the temple, they would eventually return to follow the rightful king, Rehoboam. So Jeroboam crafted two golden calves, and in the same words as Aaron in the book of Exodus, said “Behold thy gods.” He portrayed it as a chance to make God more accessible to the people, to make worshipping a little easier on them, but what it came down to was Jeroboam was selfish.
Then in chapter 13, as Jeroboam is preparing to burn incense at the altar in Bethel, we see the stranger arrive. We know the man was out of Judah, and he came because God called him to go, and he went to the false altar and cried against it. He said in verse 3:
“O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.”
The stranger’s message wasn’t popular. He was in a strange land. He was not of the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom; he was from the tribe of Judah, of the southern kingdom. And his words against the altar got Jeroboam fired up against him, to the point that he ordered him captured.
God sometimes calls us to take a stand for him, even if it means risking everything to do so. Are you taking the risks in Jesus name, or are you trying to hide from what God would have you do?
I’d like to share three keys to taking a stand for God from the life of this unnamed stranger.
Take the risk to do God’s will. – In Verses 2-3, the man got up there and prophesied against the king’s altar, I’m sure there had to be some in the crowd thinking, “Who is this guy? What business does he have in criticizing how we worship?” But there were certain guidelines that God had set forth for worship, and what Jeroboam was doing wasn’t it. The stranger had to be willing to surrender to God’s purpose and take a stand for God. This man got up before the crowd and proclaimed the truth, even if it wasn’t popular to hear.
Don’t hate those who speak against you – We see in verse 4, Jeroboam stretched forth his hand against the mysterious stranger and told the people to seize him, and the moment he stretched forth his hand against the man of God, it withered. But what’s even more interesting is, in verse 6, Jeroboam asks the man of God to “Intreat now the face of the Lord thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again.” At this point, the stranger had two options; He could a), walk away, laughing at how God struck that old fool Jeroboam for trying to bring harm on him, or b) Pray to God on Jeroboam’s behalf. We see later in verse 6 that he did the latter, and prayed on Jeroboam’s behalf, and Jeroboam was healed.
Don’t make compromises with the world – We see in verse 7 that Jeroboam said to the man of God, “Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward.” Jeroboam wanted to reward the man of God for asking God to heal his hand. In verse 8, however, the man replied, “If thou wilt give me half of thine house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: For so it was charged me by the word of the Lord, saying, “Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest.” Instead of taking up Jeroboam on his offer for a reward, he said, I don’t want your gold, I don’t want half of your house, I just came to do what God commanded.” We need to get back to doing what God commanded of us instead of simply doing what makes us feel good about ourselves.
An update!
As most of (the three of) you know, I’ve been in the preaching class at church. Last week, Chris came up and said, “Are you aware of the New Year’s Eve tradition?”
“Which one?”
“The preaching class preaches?”
“Oh yeah, I know about that.”
“Are you interested?”
“Absolutely.”
With that, I signed up to be one of the six members of the class to brave Pastor Lindsey’s pulpit and preach. At the beginning of the week, I don’t think I realized how nerve-wracking this would ultimately be.
For starters, the Holy Spirit made me rewrite my sermon not once, but twice (three times if you count the sermon I mentioned at the beginning of my preaching, but that I was joking about). At the beginning of the week, I had decided to preach out of I Samuel, however after much prayer, I felt like God was moving me, and by Thursday, I had something I was planning on bringing out of the book of Romans. In fact, it wound up being Saturday Morning, sitting in the middle of the Village Inn, reading my bible, that I finally wound up in Genesis chapter 22, which was the text that God gave me to preach from.
As if that weren’t enough, when we find out the preaching order, I was 4th. I had admittedly been hoping to go first so I could get it over with (I was actually really nervous about it, which is funny since, when you ask most people, I don’t shut up. How could I be nervous about talking in front of people? :-p) I had to sit there, bouncing my knee with pent-up nervous energy, through Buddy, Tanner, AND Damien before I got up there.
Once I got there… Wow. All I can say is, it’s different when you’re behind the pulpit instead of the sound board. You find out that the congregation has these things called faces (When you run sound, you think they just have hair), and when you’re behind the pulpit, they’re all looking square at you. 100-200 sets of eyes, trained on you, watching your every move, waiting for you to say something profound and impacting. Then it hits you: That’s right! I’m supposed to SAY something! I knew I forgot something here…
I’ll let the sermon speak for itself, all I’m going to say is, I survived, and I haven’t quite gotten off the rush that came over my once I’d spit out my first two Buddy Buckwalter jokes (they’re GREAT icebreakers, not to mention it lets you loosen up a bit…)
Without further ado…
Clicky!
(MP3 courtesy of Timberline Baptist Church)
(I don’t preach until 20:00 in to the MP3, I highly recommend listening to the other guys, but if you’re impatient, that’s about how far you need to go to find me…)
Saturday was my second preaching class, and I came (semi)prepared with a sermonette. My earlier post, you’ll notice, I had decided on Jonah 2:1-9. But then Chris brought me back to earth when, last Sunday, he said, “please keep it under 5 minutes”. It actually served as a pretty good lead in to my sermon. (“This sermon was originally going to be a little longer… *holds up notebook*…these are my notes on the book of Jonah, it’s about a third of the notebook pages. But then Chris said keep it under five minutes and I realized I was about thirty five minutes too long…”) So I whittled it down to three points that I drew off of Jonah 2:9, although during the reading of the text I included verse 8 with it. It says:
They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy,
But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.
I’ll try and give an abbreviated rundown of a 4 minute, 12 second sermon.
When you think about Jonah, just about everyone knows what Jonah is famous for: He was swallowed by a fish and spit up on land. But not a lot of people spent time thinking about what he was doing while he was in the fish: He was praying. I drew three things from that passage that I hope will be helpful to you:
1) We should sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving – When we feel God calling us to give something up for him, we shouldn’t gripe about it, we should be thankful that God is using us to do something and excited to see how he plans to use us. It made me think of Abraham, when God had given him Isaac, his promise seed, and then said, “Oh, by the way Abraham, I want you to go up on the mountain and sacrifice your son for me.” The one thing that you don’t see Abraham do is argue the point with God. Any of you parents, imagine taking your kid and killing them as an offering to God (parents of teenagers need not apply. =). Abraham knew that God had promised to make him a great nation, and believed that, even if God asked him to sacrafice his only son, that God knew what he was doing, and he did.
2) We should keep the vows we make – Basically, if you say you’re going to do something, do it. Don’t tell someone, “Oh, yeah, I’ll take care of that,” and then a week later have them come back and “Oh, uh, ooops, forgot about that, sorry.” That’s no way to be. I’m as guilty as anyone else of it, I load myself up with stuff and then let things slide that I shouldn’t, and it’s something I’m working on myself. But Christian, let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. Don’t flip flop on it.
3) We need to recognize that Salvation is of God – God sent his son to die for our sins, so that we may go to heaven and live with him for eternity. There is no problem that is too big for God, and when life is crashing down around our ears, we still need to recognize, God is in control. When Jonah was in the belly of the whale, in verse 2 he refers to it as being in “the belly of hell”. It was probably not a particularly pleasant form of transportation. But Jonah was in that whale at that time because God had ordained it, and he knew what he was doing.
That’s it for this sermon, tune in next month, for my sermon that I’m planning on John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) titled “Jesus is crying, and it’s probably something YOU did.”
(Believe it or not, that sermon’s not going to be how I’m sure it probably sounds… =)
I finally feel like I’ve got the chapter that I’m going to preach out of down. Jonah 2:1-9.
After talking with a couple people about preaching out of Jonah, the question has been raised, “Why Jonah? What’s so special about that book, anyway?”
Well, that’s the book I’ve felt God wants me to preach out of, and with good reason. I can draw a couple of parallels to my own life with it to better illustrate (and as someone once said, “Preach what you know, not what you don’t.”).
for those not familiar, Jonah was a prophet (oooh, ooooooh), but he really never got it (sad, but true)…
Wait… Veggietales did that one? Well, shoot.
Well, anyway, Jonah starts out with God telling Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, a Gentile city that the Jews were none too fond of. As such, Jonah wasn’t particularly pleased that God wanted him to go there, so he ran the opposite direction.
Comparatively, in my own life I first felt God nudging me towards preaching back in March. We were at men’s retreat, I was sharing a room with the pastor’s father, and during a late night chat, seemingly out of nowhere, he says, “Have you ever thought about preaching?”
I suddenly found myself scrambling for excuses. “No, never. God wouldn’t use me for that, I’m sure he’s got many people far better qualified for that out there somewhere. I’m a lousy public speaker, no one would bother to listen to me.” Now, granted, greater than these have tried these excuses before (See: Moses). But God wasn’t finished with me yet.
The next Sunday, something in the message hit me on that same calling.
The Sunday following, it hit me again.
This continued up through June before I finally said, “Okay, God, look, I get it. You want me? Fine. But you’re going to have to drag me in kicking and screaming.” Somewhere at this point, it was as if God said, “Well, you asked…”
In Jonah, as he’s fleeing for Tarshish, Jonah’s sleeping below decks, and out of nowhere a storm begins to toss the ship, and all the sailors start running around in fear. This brings me to parallel number two: The storms.
In July, I discovered one of my two roommates at the time had decided (rather randomly, as was his custom) to move to Reedsport to be with his “girlfriend” (I use quotes there because they were no longer together by the time we’d officially moved out). As if that weren’t enough stress, the apartment complex was jacking our rent up. By August, it hit me that where I was in my job wasn’t where God wanted me. In fact, I didn’t really know where God wanted me, but by September I was unemployed for a three week stint. And by September, relationally Jenn and I both came to the conclusion that neither of us was where God wanted us, and broke things off.
It was around September 9th, end of the first week unemployed, that Robb Foreman preached a sermon titled “Be Ye Steadfast”. If you’re interested, the sermon can be found here. It was that night that I finally bowed my head and said “I get it now, Lord. Whatever you want from me, however you plan on using me, I’m yours.”
I’m not saying, “Trust Jesus and you’ll be employed,” or “Trust Jesus and you’ll never worry again.” But when I finally got to the point where I had to rely on him, it made me realize how truly insignificant my problems were. I landed a temp job during September by week three, and permanent, gainful employment starting October 8th. I’ve been able to throw myself into more things around church to help out as we’re getting into the building. And you know what? For the first time in my life, I really feel like I’m getting where God wants me. I’m still not quite there, but I’m getting there.
Jonah had to trust God, too. When they figured out God was angry with him, he told them to throw him into the sea. Getting thrown out in the middle of the ocean during a storm took a bit of a leap of faith that God would provide, and when God provided the fish that swallowed him, Jonah prayed to God for deliverance. The inside of a giant fish is an excellent picture of having to rely on God’s guidance. After all, how much control did Jonah have in steering it? chances are, not much.
Anyway… Not trying to give the full sermon (because God only knows, this isn’t it), but there’s the explanation. God knows why. =)