Jonah Ch. 2

In Jonah 1:17, we see Jonah is swallowed by a large fish, it does not say a whale – but a fish.  I think this is very import to note for a couple of reasons.  One being when I think of a whale, I think of a large stomach with lots of room inside to move around.  A fish on the other hand, from the pictures I have seen, even the large fish have a small stomach in comparison to a whale.  So to be in the belly of a fish must have been extremely tight and uncomfortable.  I can only imagine the scene that Jonah lays out for us in chapter 2, where the seaweed is wrapped around his head.  Imagine also the stench inside the fish’s stomach, with all the other dead and decaying things the fish has eaten, mixed with the fish’s stomach acids.  The stench alone would make one cry out to the Lord for help.  Then to make it even worse not being able to move around, lying prostrate on your back, not able to move your hands or feet.  Being in total darkness and feeling every jolt and move of the fish had to be a horrifying experience.  Jonah must have truly thought he was going to die in the belly of a fish.

God is giving Jonah here a HUGE wake up call in his disobedience.  Like Jonah we got to understand that God responds to disobedience by making conditions oppose us.  God knows what will grab our attention, what will cause a change in our hearts and behavior.  Jonah must have been one stubborn man if it took this to make him realize the sin he committed in his disobedience.  Then I think of the times that I can be stubborn and realize that it would take a real attention grabber to make me change my actions as well.

It just goes to show that God will go at whatever the cost to grab our attention, when we veer of the course that He has set for our lives.  To me this shows that God loves us so much that nothing but his pure and holly plan is what we deserve, not the leading of our own frail and limited mind’s plans.

To really grasp the agony of Jonah read chapter 2 in the Message or New Living Translation Bible.  These two versions really capture Jonah crying out to the Lord.  You can go to Biblegateway.com to find these two and many more.

Jonah Ch. 1

Before I begin let me start off with why I chose to do a Bible Study on the book of Jonah.  Jonah is a very interesting man, who in many aspects is a lot like the average Christian today. Jonah knows the will of God for his life, but like many of us, he chooses not to embrace the calling. Maybe out of fear of the people (in Nineveh), maybe his heart is not in it yet (not wanting to see the people of Nineveh saved), or maybe he’s the type of person that needs an object lesson from God to get his attention.

Jonah’s story has much to say about the love God has for all people.  God desires to show His mercy and offer forgiveness to anyone and everyone.  Although sadly when we, the church, have the attitude of exclusiveness, like Jonah had towards the Ninevehits – we fail to accomplish God’s great commission (Matt. 28:18-20).  But, when we, the church, take seriously the command of God to go to all nations of the world, those people who hear the Gospel and respond experience the mercy and love of God in a life-changing way.  It has been said that Jonah is the missionary book of the Old Testament.

Chapter 1

Verses 1-3 we see that the Lord is speaking to Jonah to go to Nineveh on the Lord’s behalf.  But like many of us, Jonah gets scared and maybe a little mad that the Lord would call him to talk to such wicked people.  So Jonah does what many of us do best in times like these, he runs trying to hide from God.  But where on earth can we hide from the God that made the very heavens and the earth?  Instead we, like Jonah, should have promptly done what God tells us to do.  Remembering that if we don’t, our stubbornness may very well cause trouble for us later on.

Then in verses 4-15 we see the trouble that Jonah got into for disobeying God.  He gets thrown into the sea, just punishment from a just God. Being the righteous and just God that He is, it would be wrong of Him, if he allowed the sin or disobedience in our lives go unchecked.  Since sin cannot stand in the presence of God’s holiness, we need to realize that any prayers we may offer up to Him are in vain and useless – until we confess of our sin and disobedience. The confession removes the sin, thus removing the spiritual barrier we had with God.

Knowing that we cannot hide from God, lets own up to our wrong behavior. Then move on with God’s plan for our lives.

What if today was your last day

Within the past two weeks this question has come up twice, “what if today was your last day”? Just this past Sunday on the way home from church I heard on the radio Nickelback’s song entitled “What if today was your last day”.  Then the week before that I heard a podcast sermon entitled, “what if today was your last day, what would you do?”

So these two events got me thinking how would I live differently if I knew today was my last day here on earth? Here are some things I make sure I’d get done.

• Tell my parents that I love them
• Jump on the trampoline with my kids, until we couldn’t jump anymore
• Take a walk with my wife and tell her how much she really means to me
• View the sunrise & sunset as if it was the first time I’d ever seen them
• Savor every bite of my last meal
• Call up each of my closest friends & tell them I appreciated their friendship
• MAKE EVERY SECOND COUNT

Then I got to thinking about it, no one knows the time of his or her own death, and God hasn’t revealed that to us. So why wouldn’t we live each day to the fullest.  Making every moment that went by count for something. Why is it that we allow so much of the business of life distract us from what’s really important.  I truly believe none of us will look back on life as we get older and say, look at all the wealth I gained, look at how busy I was. No, I believe we will look back on our lives and say, I should of spent more time with my family and friends, I should have slowed down a little and enjoyed life a little better.

Lets face it, the life most of us live is too busy, most of us want to slow down. But we live in fear that if we do slow down that business of life will catch up with us and over whelm us.

A buddy of mine today at the gym said, he finds himself going home after work logging on the computer to answer just a few more emails. My question is it really worth it taking your time away from your family. He has a toddler that he is missing out on all the new things he is doing, just to feel like he is ahead of the game a little.

For me I am trying, not saying that I am good at it cause Lord knows I always feel the need to stay busy. But I am trying to slow down and take each day as a gift.  Just think how much better everything would be if we treated it like it was the last time we could ever do it.  I bet that meal would taste better, making love to your spouse would be better, playing with your kids would be more enjoyable, and fact is life would be better period.

So I am challenging myself to slow down and take the path less traveled. To look at life differently, to live as if today was my last day.  And just in the short time that I started this, I feel better, I don’t take so many things for granted. Life, for the first time, feels like this is how God meant for me to live my life, because who knows this really could be my last day!

Being Culturally Relevant

Love him or hate him, Mark Driscoll is reaching people for Christ.  Although many think he is too harsh with is language and controversial preaching.  I say, “No he’s right on track.”  I myself listen to his podcast quite regularly.  He is speaking out on topics that most pastors do not want to talk about whether out of fear of making people mad, losing members, or they are just plane cowards.

Pastors find themselves in a very strange place now days in the church world.  In that nobody wants to hear about God getting angry at the sin in their lives.  Rather what ten things can we do in our lives to have “our best life now.” What pastors have to realize (and I am one of them) is that preaching the gospel is not easy or pretty at times.  We are supposed to tell the congregation what the consequences of sin are.  We are to tell the people what God likes and dislikes in their lives and most importantly it is to be Christ centered.  Since when did preaching the gospel ever become about succeeding in life, making everyone like you, gaining wealth, and so on?

I think what stumps most evangelicals concerning Mark Driscoll and others like him is we find it hard to believe that someone can be relevant in today’s culture and at the same time be biblically conservative.  I think why this stumps so many is because we ourselves want to be just like that: being relevant to the ever changing world to reach them, while still holding on to our conservative biblical truths.

Instead of letting these two topics stump us we need to be asking ourselves, is there anything here that I can learn from?  I don’t think Mark Driscoll is being culturally relevant just to be cool, but rather he is trying to answer the tuff questions that the cultural is asking – that other pastors don’t want to touch.  Like sex & sexuality, alcohol, what it means to be a real godly man or godly woman and so on.

A lot of what Mark Driscoll is preaching is nothing new. Just a few generations before us we see men preaching hard against sin.  Sadly, many pastor have gotten scared to look at someone in the eyes and tell them what they are doing is wrong and that it will send them to hell.  They would rather tell their people what God could do for them.  Over the next month, see how many times your pastor preaches a salvation message, it just might shock you.  Shouldn’t we hear the salvation message preached every time a sermon is delivered, I say yes we should! For what other reason do we do church if it is not to bring in other lost people into God’s flock and to constantly remind the righteous what Christ did for us on the cross.

Sadly many churches need to wake up and listen to a culture that is crying out in search of truth. We need to realize that many of our programs and fuzzy warm sermons are not answering the questions that the culture is asking.  The church would be better off if it could just let go of some of it’s “sacred cows” and get back to giving biblical truths to tough questions.

Next the church needs to move outside of its comfort zone if it has any hope in reaching today’s culture.   We have become to “churchy” for our own sake.  We have hidden in the four walls of the church for so long that we have disconnected from culture so much that we forgotten to go out and actually be the church.  So we have become an elitist club that gets embarrassed when the culture asks us questions dealing with sex and the like.

This may or may not come as a shock to many of you, but the Bible has plenty to say on hard topics like sex.  It also answers the hardest question of them all, what must a person do to be saved.  So question to the church is, it willing to do what it takes to answer the culture in a way that is culturally relevant but also biblically conservative?

Life is Beautiful

On a rare occasion I will stumble across a movie that shakes me to my core.  I saw such a movie just last night, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.  It was not the silly notion that a person could be born old and then actually grow younger throughout their lifespan.  Rather it was the intimate viewing of a person’s life, the changes one goes through.  It was as though I was seeing a reflection of my own life displayed on the silver screen. 

 

Although the movie was nearly three hours long I could have watched it again, if it were not already late into the night and 4:30 in the morning comes early.   I love the fact that we got to see each part of Benjamin’s life.  To tell you the truth I almost felt ashamed of myself, as if I was prying into every nook and cranny of his life.  As the onlooker we saw his adventures that he embarked on, the women of his life, the one true love that he always longed for, and we got to see the ordinary everyday things in life that help define who we are. 

 

I love the scene where Daisy, Benjamin’s one true love comes back to New Orleans from New York to see him and they are at a gazebo, and Benjamin says, “even the opportunities we do not take change and alter our lives forever”. That statement is so true as I look back at all the opportunities in my own life that I did not take a chance on.  Some were good ones and some were bad ones.  But what would have happened if I took just one of them, would I be where I am today or would life have taken a totally different direction?  It is almost too scary to think about that the everyday decisions I make can change the outcome of my life forever. 

 

I also like the idea that the movie portrayed the fact that the people in our life can make a huge impact on us, more so than we probably realize.  There’s a theme throughout the movie of being unsettled and restless in life.  Wanting adventure and going anywhere and doing anything to find it, but no matter how hard we search for this adventure – we always find ourselves wanting to go back home to get re-centered. This is true for me anyway. 

 

I think the reason why I like this movie so much is because I see a lot of myself in Benjamin. One being that he is a dreamer and the other he is a romantic at heart.  I just hope that as I get close to the end of my life I will look back and think that I loved well, that I raised my kids well, that I made the best of my opportunities, that I got to live life a little dangerously and recklessly, and finally that I made the most out of the life that I was given.

The iPhone, what a phone!

I cannot afford one, especially now that my wife and I are one the Dave Ramsey budget.  Although I am a tech geek when it comes to electronics, I don’t think I buy one even if I wasn’t on a budget.  Why you may ask?  Because it cost way too much for me personally to justify it as a Christian.  I know a lot of Christians have one and I am not saying they are wrong for owning one.  If I made more money and was able to give more freely with my money to those in need, then I would very seriously think about getting one. 

 

Especially now in light of the country’s economic state we find ourselves in, I don’t see how buying a sleek-do-all phone that lets me text and listen to music all at the same time is a worthy purchase.  The media and the marketing world have conned us into thinking that these gadgets are a necessity rather than a luxury.  If you think about it we made out just fine fifteen, twenty years ago without all that a mobile phone can do now days.

 

As Christian’s, we should be a little leery about the iPhone and it’s rival the blackberry (know by many as the crackberry) anyway.  The Bible talks a great deal about coveting and for some it’s the seduction that draws many of us to want a phone like that in the first place.  Because we think it will make our life easier or we see someone else have it and we don’t yet, we purchase the lie so that we will be happier, more available, and more informed.  Then once the newness wears off, Apple comes out with a newer version to draw us back into their web. 

 

Then there’s this theme that runs throughout the Bible that says live simply and rely on the Lord.  One of the reasons why I think we are called to live simply is so that we can give more to those who are in need.  But how can I give if I just laid down $300 for a phone? 

 

I am however a product of my culture. I have a lot of useless crap laying around my house that I bought on a whim.  And for the record I think the iPhone is the coolest gadget ever made.  So often I find myself not buying the latest and greatest gadget only because I have a thin wallet and not because of my convictions. 

 

For a lot of us Christians who have the lack of funds to buy into the seductive marketing of the iPhone, we might need to ask ourselves – I’m I happy with life?  Is a mobile phone really going to make me that much happier with whom I am and how I live my life?  Will I really want to hear a chime go off in my pocket letting me know I have an email from my boss?  Am I really going to be that much closer to my friends if I can access Facebook anytime I want?  Do I need to be a slave to technology?  And ultimately is the iPhone going to make me a better person, a person more like Jesus?

getting centered again

 

From time to time I need something to really grab my attention, to get me back on track. I was lucky enough this past weekend to experience one of those great Ahhh moments, when I went to an Acts 29 conference.  An Acts 29 conference is where a couple thousand pastors and others that have an interest in rebuilding the church for God’s kingdom – come together to here some terrific speakers talk about theology and the church.  Neither of which is what made me experience the Ahhh moment.  Instead, it was the underlining theme to make preaching once again Christ centered, instead of this self-help crap we hear some much in our pulpits. 

 

This got me to thinking whether or not I’ve really been centering my life on Christ, or have I been trying to make Christ fit around my life?  If I’m honest with myself it has been the later for some while now.  But to be a Christian, a Christ follower, I need to make my life revolve around the teaching and life of Christ.  I am a fool, because I now when I have done this in the past, my life seems to go a lot better.  I don’t seem so overwhelmed with life in general, but it is easy to get off track, isn’t it?  I’m sure I will veer off course sometime in the near future.  Although for now I have a new fervor for my Savior and I am taking steps to help keep it around a bit longer than usual. 

·      Reading my Bible 1^st thing in the morning

·      Praying right after my Bible reading

·      Doing an in depth study on 1 Timothy

·      Trying to look at people & things with the eyes of Christ

 

I know this is like a schedule.  But we’ve got to start somewhere, until the heart desires more than anything to follow after – no viciously pressure Christ and His teachings.  Then once we have the heart felt desire we do it out of love, we do it because we truly want to be more like Christ!  I thank God that in my older years I have experienced more up times in my relationship with Him than the down times.  I believe it is partly to do with all those years of following Him and with each attempt to follow Christ more closely – it seems to become more natural.    

What Jesus will look like

I read about the 2^nd coming and I, like most evangelicals, think of a big to do!  I imagine Jesus riding a white stallion with clouds rolling behind him as He comes down to earth, like the pictures I see.  I also imagine everyone waking up to angles playing trumpets. 

 

But what if my view like many other evangelicals in America is wrong.  What if instead of angles playing trumpets, it’s a couple of homeless guys in New York playing. Instead of a great white stallion it is a donkey?  Then what if after Jesus got here He first visited the homeless shelters and bars and drank and ate with the kinds of people evangelicals have declared war against?  And when it says in the Bible that He comes like a thief in the night it means that He did not make a big deal of his return, that He kept it on the down low.  Now to top it off, what if He did not have long waive hair and a good complexion, but was just average or below average looking.  And what would we think if he talked with a hick accent and spoke in parables all the time. 

 

I think if He comes back like this not many will believe He really is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  Those that did follow Him would probably be the poor and marginalized.  I can’t help but wonder if the ugly Jesus came to America if we would fulfill the Isaiah 53:3 prophecy once again, where it says He that was rejected by men. 

 

It’s probably easier for you and me to believe Jesus is now in Heaven with God in all his splendor and glory.  I feel this way because I’m afraid the Jesus that exists in most of our minds is hardly the real Jesus at all.  The Jesus that sells books, that is on TBN, the Jesus of many evangelical Americans, is a lot of times the Jesus of the suburbs.  A Jesus that wants you to be a better person, a Jesus who supports your political party, a Jesus who dresses in a suit, who speaks eloquently and says what we want to hear and above all does not rock the boat in our lives. 

 

I think some people live in a fantasy world where Jesus is holding our hand telling us we are the ones that are right and some day soon all the other idiots will pay.  And we are going to make it because we are Pentecostal, Calvinists, Catholics, and Armenians; because we attend the right church and support the right political party.  Or is Jesus actively pulling our heartstrings to feed the hungry, help the marginalized, and the desperate.  Is He the Jesus that is telling you to reach out of your comfort zone to eat and fellowship with those you would not normally talk to?  The Jesus that compels us to pray for our enemies instead of talking about them – the Jesus that says put others before ourselves, the Jesus that said to model our lives like him.  The latter of these is the Jesus of the Scripture, the ugly one.  The first one is definitely more popular in evangelical America, but is a myth, a make believe Jesus sharing a genre with Harry Potter.

I’ve got God all figured out

I have been involved or been to a lot of different churches in my life.  I guess you could say I’ve been around the block as far as seeing how different churches operate and the one thing they all have in common is they think they are right in their view of God.  I’ve been a Baptist as a young boy and teen, I went to a Church of Christ college for two years, preached at Church of England church for a summer, spoke at a Presbyterian Church, and I now belong to the Church of God domination.  And you know what each one of them will promise you that they have the inside track with God and that their views and beliefs are correct.  All these different views on God, this “religion” is enough to make one an agnostic. 

 

Then you have these fanatics about their domination that will argue with you that what you believe is wrong and some are so bold as to say that you are going to hell, because you do not believe the way they do.  I guess if you have a room full of fanatics each of a different domination, they will all damn themselves to hell. 

 

But what is really scary to me is the average person who on some level actually believes, that God is who they think He is.  Meaning they have Him all figured out, mapped out, dissected and neatly put into their little box.  I can’t help to wonder if God actually created us in his image or if we created God in our image.  For instance, I know a very conservative guy who is very opinionated, who at the drop of a hat, will tell you his beliefs on God and why God agrees with his view on political ideas and why his political ideas are right.  While he is ranting and raving I am think about the third world countries I’ve been to and was feeling like this guy with his opinions was presenting a kind of Jesus who would not even exist outside of America.  This guy’s Jesus was just an invention of his imagination, someone who just justified his potions and concerns.   Listening to these types of people rant is tiring to me.  People like that should have their own little island to live on.

 

The truth is God cannot fit in a nice little box that we or a domination makes for him, He is just too big for that.  So why do we try so hard to force Him in there?  God just can’t be totally figured out, that’s why He is God and we are not.  Once I believe I know all there is to know about God, I read something in the Bible or hear a speaker talking about God – that messes up some of what I believe God to be.  I believe this to be a good thing, because it makes me want to all the more seek God out for myself to learn more about Him and what He has in store for my life.  Not having all the answers is a good thing.  It makes us question our beliefs and it should challenge us to wrestle within ourselves why we believe what we believe.  So I guess we will all have to wait until we get to heaven to figure out God, I doubt even then we will have all the answers about who God is.

Learning from the silence

 

 

My day for the most part begins like everyone else.  A very loud alarm clock screaming in my ear that it is time to get up awakens me.  Then once I am up and moving around I get into my truck and head to the gym.  On my way to the gym I listen to the radio to see what the days weather looks like.  Then I hop on a treadmill trying to make myself feel better about eating that big bowl of ice cream I had the night before and I catch myself humming to the song that they have playing over the speakers at the gym.  Then it’s back into my truck with the radio on heading back to my house to take a shower and grab some breakfast.  While I am eating my breakfast I can hear in the background my son’s cartoons playing on the living room’s TV.  Then I’m once again in my truck this time listening to a podcast as I make my way to the office.  Where I am bombarded with emails and phone calls throughout the day. 

 

I take a break at lunch to clear my head sometimes I eat with a friend and just chat about the weekend or I’ll pick something up at Subway and head back to my office where I shut the door and listen to another podcast.  Then believe it or not I hope back into my truck, to go home for the day, listening to the radio while talking to my wife on the phone. 

 

Once I’m home I watch a little bit of TV talk to my wife and kids and then go to bed, ready to do it all over again the next morning.  But something seems very odd as I lay there in my bed, I don’t hear any noise and it kind of bothers me at times.  I have grown use to hear some type of noise all the time. 

 

One night last week in particular it hit me, I had not had one moment of silence all day in who knows how long.  As I lay there in bed I was convinced that I was addicted to noise.  That I had to have something on all the time, white noise if you will to drown out the silence in my life.  The silence that I should be giving to God, for the opportunities to hear from Him. 

 

Would Jesus, if He lived in today’s culture, be listing to his iPod all the time, checking his emails on His “crackberry” every few minutes?  Would He have left His phone on while He preformed miracles, to catch needless phone calls?  If I were truthful with myself I’d have to say “No, He would not.”  Jesus made time for silence in His life, so much so that He would stop preaching and healing the multitudes to seek the silence.       

 

The silence was a place for Jesus to seek out from God what was His true purpose here on earth.  If you think about it, we have it all backwards. We try to cram as much as possible into a day as we can.  Thinking that it will make us more productive in the end, but in reality we produce very little when it is all said and done.  While Jesus, on the other hand, spent a considerable amount of time being silent before the Father to receive from Him, I’m sure he had accomplished more in His three years of ministry than what we can do in a life time. 

 

The Bible talks quite a bit on waiting in silence for the Lord like:

•    1 Kings 19:11-13 (hearing from God)
•    Lamentations 3:25-28 (waiting patiently)
•    Habakkuk 2:20 (worshiping God)
•    Psalm 46:10 (knowing God)
•    Luke 5:16 (praying effectively)

 

Since God convicted me of all the noise in my life I am going to try starting this week to have at least one full day of meaningful silence.  Now I know that I can’t stop talking to my wife, kids, or boss, but I can turn off the radio, put down the iPod, and turn off the TV to be silent before the Lord. 

 

It is my prayer for those that are reading this that are guilty of being addicted to noise that you join with me in one day a week of silence before the Lord so that you might hear from Him as well.