- Hey guys. Man, welcome back to our Summer at Highlands. I hope you've really enjoyed this series. I'm telling you, this just had so many different moving messages that's challenged us. Last week we got to hear Pastor Robbie, and oh my. Man, the power at the end of his message, of being so vulnerable, sharing his heart, and then challenging us to house our heart for others all around us, was just moving. And if you didn't get a chance to watch it, I want to encourage you go to hf.church, taking a check on our archives. Watch that message. I think it's going to speak to you big time and you don't want to miss that. This time we are in our Summer at Highlands. And today I want to be able to continue that. And my heart has always been in here. We had these different lives this season, wanting change. And I think after going through COVID, gosh, don't we all desire a little bit of change in our lives now to be able to move forward. But as I sit there and looked at that and I look at our lives, we all can have some struggles doing that. We can all have struggles moving forward. Because we'll sit there and we'll say, I want to change, but, and we hit that but. And there's always some kind of excuse, some kind of struggle that we have. being able to move forward. It almost makes that change feel like it's impossible in our lives. It makes us have this struggle to move forward. And it can be all kinds of crazy stuff. I seem to think about folks and they're trying to change in their finances. They want to be able to move forward in life. And then all of a sudden a week later, you find out your hours get cut at work. Pretty hard ain't it. And sometimes there's, gosh, here it is. I had this desire and now man, this thing seems impossible. I want to sit there and start working out. Man I'm going to get in shape this year. This is going to be my year. I want this season to look good. We're going into the fall. Then all of a sudden, a week later, you sprain your ankle. And you're like, "are you kidding me?" I want to change but now, man, it seems like it's impossible for that to happen. I want my marriage to be better. Hey, maybe we struggled through all this COVID this last year and a half of craziness and now we're going to focus on this thing. We're going to dedicate and spend some time. And you find out two weeks from now that you're going to sit there and have to go on the road three days a week for work. And you're like, "well, how do I work on my marriage like that?" Man, I want to change but it almost seems impossible. And I was trying to dive through some stories in the Bible, since they're really kind of spoken to that. And I came up on one and I love this story. And most of us, about everybody, knows the story of Jonah. Everybody knows the Jonah in the belly of the fish. Or Jonah and the big, the belly of the whale. Oh yeah. But there's always a backstory to that. And today I really want to look at that backstory because I think of the backstory, when we check it out, we understand where Jonah's come from. Because a lot of times the stuff that we deal with today, is the product of decisions we've made in the past. And I think Jonah brings that up big time, in that first chapter, as we see there. Because a lot of the stuff he's dealing with right there in that moment, when he's in the belly of that fish. It was so much of his choices before that. So let's sit there and look at that. Let's look and start jumping in there at verse one. "The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai. "Go to the great City of Nineveh and preach against it; because it's wickedness has come up before me." I want you to understand that sounds like a pretty good task. God said go to Nineveh to sit there and preach to him and everything else. Make this change happen. But I want you to understand what's happening rather, what Jonah is actually trying to process. Because it's a big but. There's a big impossibility with that, that he's got to challenge. If you know about what's going on at that time, you're sitting there thinking about Nineveh. Nineveh is the capital of Assyria. And Assyria has, over the years, hundreds of years, wore out Israel. They've attacked them, they've raided their villages. Man. They took so much stuff. They killed so many people and they made slaves. They've done all these things over the years. Because they were the Israelites. Israelites, at this time of the Bible, they were constantly following God. Then they wouldn't following God. Then they was following God. Then they wouldn't following God. And every time they wouldn't follow God, they hit struggles. God was to say, "Okay, I'm not going to protect you. I'm not going to put my hand on blessing on you. Protect yourself." So here, all these surrounding people groups, have come in and just wreak havoc on them. Causing all this chaos. So here Jonah knows, man, these Assyrians, they kill us. They think we're worthless. Now God is saying, "Hey, I want you to sit there and step out and go love on these people. Help them change." And Jonah's like, "Are you kidding me? You want me to help those people? Those people that think I'm worthless, you want me to go help?" And he's like, "Yes, that's who I want you to sit there and go after." So we're sitting there. You got to sit there and put your perspective of that. I'm sitting there thinking about, gosh, back in the 1940s, if you sit there and ask a Jewish person, "Hey, would you go to Berlin and help witness and change?" How many Jewish people go, "Yes. I really feel called to go preach and witness to the Nazi party." Would it be a big warm, fuzzy feeling with it back in 1940? Today, gosh we can watch the news and see all the chaos over in Afghanistan. How many will this, if I sit there and say, "Hey, you know Dave, I'm really sitting there and getting this feeling in my life that God is wanting you to go to Afghanistan. Because those people, those Talibans, they could really use the gospel." Would you be pretty excited about it? Or you'd be like, "Ooh, God. You sure it's God? Do I have to do that?" 'Cause man, that's tough. They kill you. They'll kill you and then they'll process it. So that's why I want you to understand what Jonah was going through in that process. Man, he wanted this change to happen in his life. But gosh, the circumstances at that point, made it almost seem impossible to do that. And scripture doesn't tell us what happens between verse two and three. Because you know Jonah had to be having some conversations with the Lord. Like, "Lord, you know, I want to follow you. Gosh. You know I wanted to. You know my heart wants to sit there and go in that direction. And man I'll do anything, but not go to Nineveh. I don't want to go over there." How many times have we sat there and argued with God? "Lord I want to follow you, but man, not there. Not to do those things." Do I want to sit there an risk my life for it? And that's the challenge. See when the Lord didn't give Jonah his answer, when he give him this piece that he was looking for, he took off in the opposite direction. He took off to Tarshish. We read in verse three, " But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord." He was fleeing. If you think about where Nineveh is to Israel, it's about 500 miles to the Northeast. If you think about where Tarshish is, to the East of Israel, is 2000 miles to the West. God said, "I need you to go East." And Jonah said, "Nope, I'm going to go West. I'm headed in this direction." He was running from God. He sat there and he had this thought process, "Man, if I could sit there and run far enough from Israel, if I can get far enough away from the people of God, maybe I won't be able to hear His voice anymore. Maybe I'll get so far out that he'll just leave me alone and let me go do my thing. He won't challenge me to be that way." But you and I know. I mean, we know we can never truly run away from God's voice in our lives. It's always still there. And Jonah takes us on his journey in this first chapter and we get to see five struggles and I think that each of us can relate to, when we're sitting there trying to run from God. And I think we need to be able to find him in our lives. 'Cause when we can see ourselves doing these things, we need sit there and to understand, gosh am I truly following God or I'm always hanging on that but? I'm always hunting for the excuse to keep me from doing that. And when it does, chaos enters my life. And the chaos has not just happened because of circumstance, it's made because of the choices that I'm making, that's causing that chaos, these storms that come into my life. 'Cause we are going to make some dumb decisions in our lives. We just do it. We're human. We have those things. Jonah didn't want to follow the instructions. So he ran from God. This is what he did. What happens when we screw up today and we hit storms? When we sit there and make some dumb mistakes and stuff? We run from God. Man, we'll run from God. We'll run from church. We'll run from any friend that would give us biblical advice. We don't want to hear it, because that truth hurts. And we get to that point, and this shame or whatever it is, and man, we'll just flee. We'll do the same thing. We will run from God, 'cause it feels easier to do that than face that truth, sometimes in our lives that we have. But we could never truly run away from God. But here Jonah tries. He decided he'd try to do that. And if we go into verse four, says this, "Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship." The sailors knew this thing was supernatural. Didn't they? They knew this storm was just, man, it was just crazy. And they sit there and say, "Man, the gods must be angry. So let's just pray to all the gods. Surely to goodness, we pray to all of the gods, one of them is going to hear our cry. One of them is going to hear this cry for mercy and they'll open this door of mercy and they'll be able to calm the storm and we'll be saved." They knew that. They knew that they could do this. And if we look closely, this is the verse man, that I think I can relate to so much in our lives, that we have struggle. See so many times we can sit there and go through issues or struggles, everything else. And we fumble around with it. See these sailors were on this ship. It's a storm. So that means you're out there on the sea and there's these massive dark clouds above you. There is no light. The only lights coming are from the lightening around you. So here they are fumbling away in the dark, calling out to all their gods. Sitting there, standing all their stuff up, to say to a man to save me. How many times have we fumbled around in the dark, in our own lives, trying to call out to these Israelites? I kind of put it into analogy of me going out at night. I've gone out. I've come home late. I didn't turn the front porch light on in my house. And my arms are full. I've got my arms full and it comes time to get into the front door. And what we do, we get our keys out. We start fumbling in the dark. Don't we? And we're sitting there and we're trying to open that door. And son of a gun, if it ain't hard. And you'll mess around and you'll mess around. And no, it ain't gonna get you yet. So I get the Allen out and I try it. Nope, upside down. And we'll sit there and fumble around. Get aggravated like, find out my arms cramping, I can't get the right key to work. 'Cause I know there's only key that truly opens up that door. I know that! Here are these sailors are on this ship, calling out to all these gods, but we know there's only one true God. There's only one true key that can open that door. And his name is God. He is the true God. It's Jesus Christ in our lives. And we then do the same things. We can fumble around in our lives. We could fumble away with all kinds of, sorts of keys in our lives. See what storms happen in our lives, we'll cry out to a lot of false gods. We do it today. We just give them different names. That's all it is. Or we sit there in our relationships. Mess up. Our marriage can... We get to point, our marriages can just fall apart. They end in divorce. And I've seen this so many times though. End in divorce and what happens? We start fumbling in the dark. We start trying to find this relation, this connection, this piece again in our lives. So they'll jump from relationship to relationship. From bed to bed, trying to find it. But the storm still rages on in life. Don't it? It's still just massive chaos in our lives 'cause I can't find it. That's not the true key. That's not where you find peace. We can have these storms of losing a job, losing a loved one. And man, we'll sit there and come to this point and we start fumbling with the keys. We'll start fumbling that if I can find any substance that would help shrinken this pain in my life, then I'm for it. I don't care if it's drugs. I don't care if it's lust. I don't care if it's money. I don't care if it's shopping. I don't care if it's eating, I don't care whatever it is. If I can sit, then get that some kind of temporary relief in my life from this pain, I'll do it. But the raw storm is still raging on in our lives. We're still trying to find all these false gods, we put in our lives. They're not there, they're not real. We know, gosh, there's only one true key. There's only one true God. They'll sit there and brings in the storm, but we will do this. We're so tempted when those storms hit our lives to cry out to false gods. We have to recognize those false gods that's in our lives. Be aware of those things and understand that's what's keeping us from God. Jesus is the only key that opens the door to peace in our lives. That's it. There is no other. No other fake thing. No other false god that we try to put it there, can do it. I want you to look at Jonah. This man of God that has the key. What he's doing here, as we read the second part of verse five. "But Jonah had gone below deck where he laid down and fell into a deep sleep." Are you kidding me? He went down below and went to sleep. Gosh. Have you ever heard a comment, "I slept like a baby last night?" Baby sleeps down because man, they're a baby. They don't have this value of seeing. They don't understand that. So man, they can sleep like a rock. You know that they don't have this conscious of knowing what that is. Jonah sitting there sleeping like a baby. He's down below. But I'm always wondering how can he sleep like a baby when he knows he's going against God? He's going against God and his will that he has for his life. How can he do that? And the storm was all around him. And it just blows my mind, that, and again I struggle because I felt like, gosh, how is he doing that? And then I finally come to this point of sitting there going, the only thing that I can sit there and figure is, he's just ignoring the problem. He's just ignoring the problem that, man he's disobeying God, he's just put it to rest as a man. I'm not going to stress it because hey, it's not... And I'm like watch in our own lives, don't we do this at times. We can be so overwhelmed with the storms or the struggles in our own life. Then we'll almost pretend are not there. We'll ignore them. We'll have this blatant thing, this blatancy and this blatant mistake that we're just dealing with. And man, we'll just still step back and go, "I don't think it's sin. I'm not sure, I don't mess with it. I'll just kind of ignore it." And all that talk is there. And then, "Oh my gosh it's a storm all around you." But you act like it's not even there. We do the exact same thing. He's sleeping down there. We ignore the storm is raging all around us. And we know this sometimes and we shouldn't. We know we need to go in the right direction. You see, Jonah is guilty and he's still sleeping like a baby. So we read in verse six, in verse six, "The captain went to him and said, "How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us and we will not perish." I like this verse because of two reasons. One. I'm not sure if it's comic relief, Christian humor in it, or it's the opportunity. You can look at it two sides. If you're a believer and you've been a believer a long time, and where our heart can be at messed up places at times, we can sit there and see someone, like a captain coming to me. This captain doesn't believe in God. He's telling me, go pray to your God. He don't believe in God. He's far from God. And so many times I've seen in life, people that may be far from God, "I don't want to hear you preach it. I don't wanna hear your message. I want to hear that." But six months later and life blows up, "Hey. Man, I sure could use your prayer." You know, it's almost a little bit, almost a little bit evil, but it's almost a little bit of a humor that you laugh 'cause you there feeling that. But the second part of it, you have to look at it is, is God given you an opportunity? See they might've rejected his message all those years. They didn't want to hear your preaching, they didn't wanna hear your message. But when God provides the opportunity, when that life is hitting chaos, we have a responsibility as a Christian. We have responsibilities to believers. Here's an opportunity to love on them. Not to to go, "Told you so. Told ya I was going to get ya, but you wouldn't listen to me." Or are you going, "Oh my gosh, I hate that happened. How can I help you?" That is the two things that we had to stand there and guard. Because if you've been a Christian a while, boy it's easy to grab that one. "I told him, I mean, I told him." But God wants us to have the heart of man. How can I help? How can I be there? I love that verse from watching that captain go down there. Made me see how his life is and what he's doing. All right, we're going to verse seven and eight. "Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots out, who is responsible for this calamity. They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah." So they asked him, "Tell us who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?"... And I thought that was some wild questions that they ask, in those moments. And we read that, 'cause we kind of read it, 'cause we're in a nice, safe place. You're sitting in your living room or you're sitting in a seat at one of these campuses, nice reading that. You just have to imagine, when these sailors were asking Jonah that, they were in the middle of a raging storm. It's pure chaos. It's dark. You can't really see nothing, the only light is when that lightning is hittin'. There's waves crashing all over. So when they're asking this stuff, it's just not a nice, calm, little voice ending up here. Man they're screaming it. They want to know these answers. They want to know this about their man, What? Who are you? What is your job? Heck what is your hometown? Where are you from? What country are you from? Something. Tell me something. And then finally he hits the end, " from what people are you?" Jonah only answers hat last question. Which I thought was interesting. 'Cause it tells me that the other ones, really wasn't that important. What you do for living is not going to get you into Heaven. Man what town you were born in, raised up in, it's not going to get you into Heaven. Even being in a living in an amazing country that we have, doesn't get you into Heaven. The only thing that matters is, of what people are you? And finally Jonah hits it here in verse nine. His answer: "I am Hebrew. I worship the Lord, The God of Heaven, who made the sea and the land." Well you're right, Jonah. Now you're right. You got that one right. At the same time when I'm sitting there saying, "you're right Jonah", I'm judging him. Because I'm like, "Do you really?" I worship the Lord. Well gosh, let's look at the heaviness of what you're doing. Doesn't look like it. Look like you're going the opposite direction, man. If you're worshiping the Lord, why are you running from him? Why are you going the opposite direction, that God desires for your life? Man, how can you sit there and be disobeying him flat out and doing your own thing, when God is calling you to go in this direction?" Man, your words don't align with your actions." And right when I say that, I go, " Oh shoot. I do that too. I do that too in my life. My words don't sometimes align with my actions. I can say a lot of stuff with my mouth, but gosh, does it add up to what I'm living? Does it sit there and show people how I'm really truly living out in life?" Man, we going to say we trust God. But when it comes to the hard things, when it comes to those hard asks that he has for us, do we do 'em or do we back off? Do we try to find that but that keeps from that change taking place in that? We look for an easier route. We look for something with less commitment. "Man I want to worship God." Well man, let me get you engaged man. Let me teach you how to do a quiet time. "Woo, I'm busy. Phew, but I'm busy man. I'm busy. Something less committed." Well, hey. Let me connect you with some people. Maybe once a week you can get with some folks. They call it a group. You can hang out and you can read some scriptures. You get to make some friends, everything else. " Uh. I mean, that sounds good. I'd like to do that change but, I'm not sure, man. What can I do, less commitment?" Okay. You're coming to church on Sunday. Man, let me get you plugged into ministry. Come in 15, 20 minutes early man. I'll, get you greeted at the door and you can meet some new folks." " Uh, 15, 20 minutes early, that's a lot. Do you have anything with less commitment?" And there's the truth of it. We're hunting for stuff all the time with less commitment. We want to do that. We hunt for that but. Make sure, you know what I'm saying, I'm going to worship the Lord, your words and your actions align together guys. Make sure you put them the place to that. Make sure you have it there. Verse ten. " This terrified them." This is the sailors. When Jonah said the answer who he followed. And then they asked, "What have you done?" And they knew. They knew he was running away from the Lord, 'cause he had already told them so. See these beings were terrified because they, this is the part when they start realizing, the gods that he'd been been praying to, they're a joke, they're worthless. This is when they start realizing, the Lord is the only true God that they have. We're going to verse 11. "The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?", "Pick me up and throw me into the sea" he replied. "And it will become calm. I know this is my fault, this great storm has come upon you." So he knows it. Jonah knows that this storm was all his fault. Why in the heck didn't he just jump into the water? Why doesn't he realize? And these guys got to throw him in the water. And then I go on to verse thirteen. And I finally get a glimpse of why this had to take place. Why it went this way. Instead, the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Why did they sit there and doing this? Why did they sit and take place? These pictures, I get to see mankind right here in this point. Like we've done it so many times in life. They're trying to sit there and fix it. They're trying to find this piece, without coming to grips with the real problem. We do it all the time. These poor sailors, they were trying to fix the problems of self, without removing the sin. We do it in our lives all the time. Man, I'm going to mess up. I'm going to do these things and sin enough, especially at church. And if I'll come over here and if I serve Jesus some more, maybe it'll balance out. I'm gonna go ahead and mess up though. Man, let me serve Jesus more, get the skills to get out and I will have more good than bad, dadada, I'm all right. We do it all the time. But just sit there and no, you can't. No matter what. These sailors knew this. They had to make these hard choice, hard physical choice to throw Jonah in the water. They had to get rid of sin that allowed for it to really be corrected. For them really to be able to worship and follow God, they had to get rid of the sin. Sometimes we have to make hard decisions in our life to remove sin. It's not easy. Sometimes it's some real hard choices. Man, sometimes there, we can have close people around us, that we are trying to encourage, to lift up, to build, to save. And at the same time, you're literally drowning. You're literally drowning in that mess. Man, sometimes we've got to make those hard decisions. We go on to verse 14. Then they cried out to the Lord, "Oh Lord, please do not let us die for taking this mans life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, oh Lord, have done as you pleased." Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard. And the raging sea grew calm. At this, the men greatly feared the Lord. They offered a sacrifice to the Lord and then made vows to him." Here's the moment I don't want you to get hung up on it. See we all have to think about Jonah and we think about the fish. But don't get so hung up on the fish that we forget this. This is what you don't wanna miss. This entire shipload of sailors, come to know the Father. They came to God. They were converted. They were far from God, and man , now and through all of this chaos, they got to come and know God. Yeah. This is what happens when we get rid of the stuff. When we get rid of that but. These excuses in our lives, we stop running. We stop calling out to false gods. We quit ignoring the problems that's right there in front of us. We put actions to our words. And we fix the sin in our lives. We actually change. When we leave out the but, we actually changed. There's a change in us. God comes into this and it allows that change to take place. Those sailors got rid of that sin, in the person of Jonah. They threw it overboard. They got rid of sin in their lives. That's repentance. That's when we make that change, we make a different decision. They greatly feared the Lord. When you greatly fear the Lord, that's called faith. You put your faith into him, not of yourself. And they offer sacrifices to the Lord. That's worship. They literally worshiped the Father. See they build a fire and they slaughtered an animal, to the true God of Heaven. And if you had to think about it, this is all happening on a wooden ship. And you maybe you think you're crazy, 'cause I'm sitting there thinking about campfires, When we have campfires. You got to think about these guys, they sacrifice an animal. They built an altar on the boat, to sacrifice and worship God. Well this is a wooden boat. If you ask anyone who's a sailor or if you ask anyone who's ever been in the Navy, what's the most dangerous thing you can have on the ship? Let alone a wooden ship. Fire. Fire. You're out on open sea. Man, if that thing gets loose, you're done. So anybody going by and saw this boat, they would literally think that they're crazy. " Is that, is that a fire on the boat? Oh no. They're worshiping. What are they doing? They're crazy." See, so many times in our own walk with God, you can almost look a little crazy. How many times have you had friends. and you've took, and maybe you, you've told friends or family or members, everything else, "Hey man, I'm going to change. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to make this difference. You know, I went to church and man, I'm going to move forward in life." And then a few weeks, a few days later, you found a but. You found another excuse. And you drift back into other things and your family's used to that. Today I want you to make a change in your life. I want you to take that change and move forward in your life. For something, for God has something, you better. And for those who's far from God, when they see you, it's going to seem a little crazy. They've heard it before. They're going to think it's crazy to sit there. They're gonna think it's as crazy as building a fire on a boat. They think it's as crazy as building a fire on a wooden stage. It sounds crazy, don't it? But man, when we get to follow God with everything we got, he changes so much in our lives. He moves it to something different. So it might look a little odd, to those far from God, but that's okay. We still get to move forward in life. You sit there making that decision in your life, that changes everything. It's when we let go of the but. So the worship to God, I mean that's not the end of the story. If we go to verse seventeen, we get to the part that everybody knows, "But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights." See, Jonah went in that fish. He finally had a change of heart. God changed his heart. Being in the belly of fish, I could see how it could change your heart. You probably want to listen to the Lord after three days. He went to Nineveh and thousands of lives were changed. Thousands of folks come to know the Lord. And God spared the city. So you're thinking, "Man, that's all great. It's all good, isn't it." Then you offset and you look at toward the end and you thought Jonah would have been happy, but something else happened. If we jump over to chapter four, the first couple of verses there, "But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry." Like what? How can he do that? He prayed to the Lord, "Oh Lord, is this not what I said, when I was still at home? This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are gracious and compassionate God. Slow to anger and abounding in love. A God who is relentless from sin and calamity." God. He's a God of compassion, of love, of grace. This didn't please Jonah. It angered him. Even when Jonah is still on it. Even when he sees the fish and how he moved, he still had this heart. Man, as a believer, if you've been a believer for a long time, you gotta watch your heart. We can be so gracious to those coming to God, the first time and then know Jesus the first time. But if you're a believer and all of a sudden you fall out, you find a but all of a sudden, after 2, 3, 4, 10, 20 years of being in ministry, coming to church. We have a harder time, as a believer, accepting him to come back home. It's just like, "Oh, well they used to be here. They used to do that, but now they left. So I don't know about them." But we'll get fired up when someone new comes to church, but that person walks back in, "Man, I'm not sure if I'm fired up for them coming back in." Gosh. His grace is unbelievable. His love is unbelievable. He desires that. And for us to be there, we're no better than Jonah. Bad heart and our attitude. Man, we should celebrate. We celebrate those as just as those new coming to Christ the first time, that those coming home for the first time. Don't let your heart be like the brother of the prodigal son. To sit there and have this, you know, "Okay. My son's coming home now and he's all great." And what about the older son? He's like, "Well, gosh, look at me. What about me? I stayed here and I was faithful." Man, don't let your heart be hard like that. Celebrate every time there was a win for the Lord, for that grace. Cause we're all on a mission guys. Jonah was not only on God's mission, he was God's mission. And God does not only desires you to be on his mission, you are God's mission. No matter how good you think you are, maybe how much you're on it, man, we still are on that journey. And God wants to use us for all of our lives, to change us, to be able to move us to that. There's a time. when God's people, when they were sitting there coming out of Egypt, and they were in this Exodus, and they were screwing up constantly. And I can relate to that, making all these different mistakes. And I see God, but I see this gracious God, even though he's letting them go through a storm of 40 years of their life, I could see him still be so gracious to them. And I love this one part in Exodus 34:6, when he talks and he says that this is the kind of God I am. "I am the Lord God. I am merciful and very patient with my people. I show great love and I can be trusted." So matter what you're dealing with, no matter what circumstance you're going with, circumstances don't define us. It's our heart that defines us. That's what makes all the difference. Our heart. Where do we lead? Where do we sit there and have his trust? Where do we have that bound? Where's your heart today? Can you ask him the most important question in your life, of what people are you? Are you truly Gods' people? Have you truly accepted Him? Are you truly worshiping of Him? Are you truly living that out? Or is it just words? Because when you can answer question, man, it changes everything. That's the change that we desire in our lives. That's the change that we want. Today I just challenge you to just step away from the excuses that you have and allow God to change your life for good. And we're going to make mistakes, just like Jonah did. But man, allow him to work on that and to build to the person that he wants you to be. Allow him to change you. And if you're just coming home, welcome home. If you're home for the very first time, welcome home. It doesn't matter. We're all on this journey. We will go up and down. We will have these tides. We will have these storms. But we don't have to do them alone. That is what I desire for you today. See the stuff, to see the struggles that Jonah went through. See the struggles that we all go through. Make sure you identify those excuses. Don't allow the but keep you from having a change in your life, but allow God to have it. Don't let circumstances define who you are. Let God define who you are. And you are unbelievable. Would you pray with me. Heavenly Father today we just get a chance to glimpse into Jonah's struggle. And man, I can see it from his perspective. I can see that beginning from that. But even after I seen all the circumstances that allowed him to have those excuses, Lord. It really came back down to just this heart. Where's our heart today. We will all have circumstances and struggles in our life. We will go through stuff all the time in our life, but where's our heart? The heart is everything. That's all you desire, God. All the stuff, all the chaos, all the stuff. And you're all around us all the time. It's going to be there. It's going to happen there. But he wants to know, where am I at right here in your heart? Today, where are you? Are you of God's people? Do you truly worship the Lord with your life? Are you you're hanging on to excuses? That's my challenge to you. Cry out to God. God, you know me, you know all the mistakes I've made, you know all the excuses I've come up with. Father, I want to be more committed today in my life. Father, let me be able to repent from that. Let me have this change in my heart that I want to follow you closer. Allowing me to challenge me to be in ministry. Allow me to be with others. Allow me to be able to serve you God, with all my life and not let it just be some words, but Father, let it be a true act of worship in my actions of life to do that. And if you've been gone from home for a long time man, let's welcome home. Lord accept them back into our family. Let us have a true heart of believers that a home was for everyone. Man that we want you to sit in and walk with Jesus. That is all we desire. Living a life with Jesus. That's what I want you to have God. And if you don't know the Heavenly Father, if you don't even know who your people are, man, let me introduce you to Jesus. Jesus died on that cross for our sins. For all of them. Past, present and future. And then we asked him, when we call out to him and say, Jesus, forgive me of my mistakes, my sins in life. I believe in you. I believe you died on that cross for my sins. And when you sit there and done that, you covered all my mistakes. All my issues God. And for the best I know how, my words and my actions, the best to know how, I'm going to follow you for the rest of my life. That is what I desire God. I will make a lot of mistakes, just like Jonah did, but God don't give up on me. Let me keep on fighting that in that forward. Let me be part of a church family, that can help me move in that right direction God. That is what we desire Lord. Lord today, we give you this service. We give you our lives. Father, let us spend more time working for your Kingdom, than our own. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.