Nineveh: A difficult assignment

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me." But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. Jonah 1:1-3

Jonah did not do as God had commanded him and fled from the presence of the Lord. Jonah was a prophet; he was one who spoke for God. God created him and called him to do a certain work. Jonah’s job was to share the message God gives, to whomever Got commands it to be given to.

God had given Jonah an assignment: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” We will learn later in the book of Jonah that Jonah did not want to be on this assignment. He did not want to do anything that might cause the Ninevites to repent and be saved. He did not want them to hear the warning of God, lest they humble themselves and repent of their sin and receive mercy from God.

God has created each of us according to His plans and purposes. When we choose to go our own way, we sin against God. Sometimes it is an identity issue that we struggle with; we are envious of another’s life, of their prestige, or of their calling and we wrongly try to be like them and live their life. Other times it’s just the difficulty of our work and the current circumstances of life that lead our wayward hearts to turn away from the work that God has called us to, and pursue other more attractive opportunities, more money, or more power.

Reflection

1. What is the work that God is calling you to do in this season of life? When answering, don’t think in terms of vocation, but instead think of assignments (ie: there’s a broken relationship in my life and I know God wants me to reconcile it).
2. Prayerfully consider why you are resistant to doing this work.
3. When Jonah rebelled from the work God called him to, there were consequences that not only affected him, but those around him. How has your resistance to this assignment impacted your heart towards God and others?
4. Spend some time in prayer and ask God to help you identify the sin that you need to turn from, and the resolve and help of the Holy Spirit to do so.

Share your answers to these questions with someone from church and encourage and pray for one another that you each may complete the assignments that God has called you to do.

What else did you take away from this passage?

 

I see lost people

Listening to a message on Luke 15 about  the lost coin and the prodigal son, a very keen observation was made by the speaker: 

lost things don't know that they are lost; lost people don't know their lost. 

While the prodigal son parable is very much about the lost son who ran away and came home to the compassionate father, it is also very much about the outwardly obedient son who stayed home, yet who was inwardly lost. The younger son saw his sin and repented both inwardly and outwardly. And the father showed compassion on his lost son and received him, for the son knew he had sinned but also knew that the father was gracious to forgive those who repent.  The older son, though he did all the right things outwardly, was blind to his own sin and his equal need for the Father's compassion. 

http://youtu.be/QUYKSWQmkrg

The link above has a clip from the movie The Sixth Sense. It is one of the most sobering scenes I have ever seen. Dead people don't know they're dead. Lost people don't know they're lost. And if lost people don't know they are lost, they will most assuredly not seek to be found. 

Follower of Jesus: God is light, and he placed his light in you, not to be hidden, but to be shared wherever He has placed you. We are ambassadors for Christ, 24/7, 365 days a year, for as many days that God gives us. 

There are literally millions upon millions of people, who though they are physically alive today, are spiritually dead and don't even know it. The Father loves the lost, and will do whatever is necessary to find that which is lost. And we who have been reborn also have the will and compassion of the Father in our hearts. 

Let us eagerly and diligently do all that we can to seek the lost, and let us also persist in prayer for the lost to see their lostness, so that we can point them to the Father who not only found us, but also wants to find them.  

So... What did you think of the service?

"I thought it was good."

Long pause.

"Yep. Me too."

More often than not, this is usually how our conversation goes on the way home from church. Sometime we'll talk about some of the main points, but rarely do we get past the listening comprehension phase of talking about a sermon.

Of course there are those days when the pastor brought a really strong word, or maybe the topic had our attention. After those messages, we have little trouble moving past the facts of the message and taking it to another level as we talk about our feelings, how we felt when he talked about x. But is this how we should be responding each week? Should our response and motivation to reflect on what we heard be conditional to how well we "liked" the message?

Let me offer to you that the answer to those questions is no. Yes, some days we are more in tune with the Spirit, and have no trouble feasting on the message for the rest of the week. But more often than not, this will not be the case. Most of the time, we have to do some work.

We have to move past the reciting of facts that are delivered to us. We need to let the facts sink into our hearts and minds so that our feelings about reflecting on those facts begins to surface.

As we process our feelings, we return to the scriptures and make sure we are correctly understanding what we heard. Then we form conclusions, identifying where our understanding needs correction. Those conclusions should then be shared with other believers to help us make sure we are not making mistakes in our thinking. We also invite others to learn how to encourage us and celebrate how God is at work in our hearts. And finally, we move to identifying what our next steps are for us to apply the preaching of God's word to our lives.

Yes, this is hard. Yes, this requires some effort and work. But the fruit of asking some hard questions of our hearts in light of hearing the preaching of God's word will become evident. We will no longer be mere hearers of the word, but doers.

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." (James 1:22-25 ESV)

Facts: What was discussed?

Feelings: How did I feel about those facts?

Conclusions: What did I learn about God? and myself?

Community: Are my conclusions correct? What do I need to hear from other believers about this?

Next steps: What will I do about it today? This week?

Make it a point today to work through these questions and consider what you heard from the preaching of God's word. Let's move past, "what did you think?" to "what are you going to do about it?"

Big questions

What big questions do you need to ask yourself?

Maybe you've been avoiding them because you don't want to deal with the emotions that are there. Or maybe you avoid the big questions because its easier to live in the shallows and you don't wan to deal with the deep.

Regardless of the reasons, I would commend to you to making time each week to reflect and ask yourself some key, big, deep questions.

These aren't for everyone, but I've come up with a short list of big questions that work for me- they help me refocus, recharge, and remember what is most important.

What is my struggle?
What is my joy?
What is my fear?
What do I now see?
What sin am I still clinging on to?
What do I need to repent of?
What shame do I need to let go of?
What kindness do I need to thank God for?
To whom do I need to show kindness to today?
What things in this season of my life do I need to daily and continually be in prayer for? (Identify and then pray for these)
What big prayer do I need to pray today? (Identify and then pray)
Today's reminder
Next step

Worshipful Awareness

Most churches start their services with the singing of several songs and hymns to God. While this isn't the only way to order a service, I do think that singing to God at the beginning is helpful to prepare our hearts to receive instruction from the Lord through the preaching of His word.

We know that the worship part of the service should stir up our greatest affections, and should be the overflow of our walk with God. Unfortunately though, our hearts have a way of wandering. When our hearts are hardened, we become spiritually numb to the words we sing, and rob ourselves of the joy of seeing God for all that He is, seeing His holiness, and most of all seeing how sinful we are in light of how holy He is.

I think that it is becoming aware of how holy that God is that enables us to see how unholy we are, apart from the finished work of Jesus for us. When we are able to see our sin as God sees it, we agree with Him that it is in fact sin and that something must be done about it.

The good news is that in Jesus, something has already been done about our sin. For us who place our trust in Jesus, our sins are forgiven, and the perfect life of Christ is now imputed to us, making us pure and holy before God. Apart from Him, we are done, totally lost, and fully deserving God's wrath for our sin that we continually commit against Him and others. But God has declared that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because he paid the debt we could not pay and gave us new life. It is through Christ that we find fulfillment, purpose, joy, our identity, and most of all, life.

It is the awareness of his holiness that leads us to repentance, but it is awareness of our adoption as sons and daughters of God through the cross of Jesus that leads us to life and joy!

It is my prayer that our hearts would not be hardened and that God would cause us to constantly remain spiritually aware of these realities, so that we would continue in repentance, and grow in our affection for the ultimate Father who has adopted us as His own.

I love the one who tells me the truth

It's great to listen to others singing our praises. We love to hear all the good things that people say about us. Makes us feel good, right? Boosts our all important self esteem!

But that's not what we seek when we see the doctor, is it? When we see the doctor, we want him to tell us the truth, right? Not, "hey, so good to see you! Your health is great!", when really he knows that you have cancer.

There are few who deserve our deepest affections than those who tell us the truth.

When we know the truth, we know what to do. If we are diagnosed with cancer, we then will focus on getting treatment so we can be made well. But if we don't know the truth, we will continue in ignorance thinking that everything is fine, and never seek the cure that we think we don't need.

Yes I know. Bad news is unpleasant, and hearing it will probably make me unhappy. But my happiness is not the most important thing. Knowing the truth and responding to it is far more important than my temporary discomfort and pain of discovering I had believed a lie but now know the truth.

In the end, I am thankful and praising God for the one who tells me the truth, who calls out my sin, who causes me to seek repentance and seek forgiveness from the only One who can ultimately forgive the debtor. Yes, this person I thank and love profusely, because they have shown me my sin and caused me to return to Jesus where I find the only grace sufficient to save me from myself.

I'll say it again, because we will need to remember it the next time someone tells us the truth about us: There are few who deserve our deepest affections than those who tell us the truth.

Lead well

How would you define the culture of your office, your church, or the team you serve with? Is it a fun place to work? Do you like the people you work with? How about problems versus solutions- are the people you work with driven to find solutions or do they campout and critique the evidence of the problem? Do they dream about what's possible? Do they get excited about what could be? Do they celebrate when their coworkers succeed?

These questions and many like them will reveal if healthy leadership is present within your team or office. It is because of good leadership that people learn to discover solutions to problems, find satisfaction in their work, persevere through difficult assignments, and enjoy working with the people on their team.

In small teams, the leader has direct access to the team, and they to him. The leader can develop relationships, help them grow in weaknesses, develop them as leaders themselves.

Large organizations with multiple layers of management and leadership are different. Someone with 100 people under their care cannot foster a leader/learner relationship with each person. Not only is it impossible, but to attempt to do so discredits the authenticity of their attempt while stunting the growth of the people he leads.

If you want to lead your people well, lead your leaders well. Leaders who are led well will lead well.  

The leaders within the organization are the culture shapers. They are intimately familiar with the issues and concerns of the people. If the leaders don't have vision and drive and and desire to improve, to create, do do the impossible, if they don't enjoy what they do, then neither will their team.

A leader can only lead as high as the leadership he reports to. If the leadership above him is strong and leading him well, then he will rise to that level of leadership with his team. If the leadership above him is poor, then the leader will either resign his will to lead, or more likely, he will simply leave and go to a place that has a higher level of leadership.

If you are frustrated with the culture of your organization, then start leading your leaders well. Leaders who are led well will lead their leaders well. And as the leader goes, so does the culture.

The right leadership at the wrong level is the wrong leadership for all levels. If you want to lead your people well, lead your leaders well.