Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 24 June 2014 "Jonah sent 'out of the office'"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 24 June 2014 "Jonah sent 'out of the office'"
Daily Scripture: Jonah 1:1 Now Yahweh’s[Jonah 1:1 “Yahweh” is God’s proper Name, sometimes rendered “LORD” (all caps) in other translations.] word came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid its fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh.
3:1 Yahweh’s word came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I give you.”
3 So Jonah arose, and went to Nineveh, according to Yahweh’s word. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey across. 4 Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried out, and said, “In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”
Reflection Questions:
Most Israelites saw Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, as an undesirable town where their worst enemies lived. When God first called Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah resisted. He "fled from the presence of the Lord" toward Tarshish, in Spain, as far from Nineveh as he could get. Though Jonah denied his calling, God remained persistent. When He called Jonah, for the second time, to travel to Nineveh, the prophet obeyed. He left his comfort zone to pursue God's plans for him.
More often than not, we find it extremely difficult to leave our comfort zones. We feel safe in what we know and it becomes hard to leave the boundaries we've created. When God first called Jonah to go to Nineveh, Jonah quickly rejected the idea. He was afraid to be sent "out of the office" to an unknown place. What "comfort zones" do you have in your life? What makes these boundaries so comfortable to you?
God's persistence with Jonah reflected his persistence with the people of Nineveh. God desperately wanted Jonah to reach Nineveh's people, because he wanted to show love even to an enemy city. God's persistence moved Jonah to abandon his sense of comfort and to go to Nineveh. In what ways is God calling you out of your comfort zones? Where do you see an opportunity to answer God's calling today?
Today's Prayer:
Loving God, it may be scary to leave my comfort zones to explore the unknown, but I know you're present in everything I do. Thank you for being so persistent with me, nudging me toward new opportunities daily. Help me see all you have in store for me. Amen.
Insight from Brandon Gregory
Brandon Gregory is a volunteer for the worship and missions teams at Church of the Resurrection. He helps lead worship at the Vibe, West, and Downtown services, and is involved with the Malawi missions team at home.
As a kid, the Jonah story was one of my favorites, although I’m a bit ashamed of the reason. But I’m willing to admit it to you. Are you ready?
I liked the story because it was silly.
You have a guy that gets a clear request from God. Some would have followed it, some would have ignored it—and that covers most people—but Jonah actually pays for passage to another country in an effort to get away from it. And when you read the story, you find out that Jonah is a serious whiner and a bit of a jerk. I’m sure the real-life prophet Jonah wasn’t quite this bad, but his book in the Bible doesn’t really paint him as a guy to look up to.
But, as with many stories in the Bible, there’s a deeper truth there that I didn’t see until I was much older.
Later on in the book of Jonah, we find out that God’s message, delivered through Jonah, led to the salvation of the entire city, which had more than 120,000 people. So in the end, despite his best efforts not to do so, Jonah was responsible for saving not only the 120,000 people of Nineveh, but also all of the people that those people would go on to help. I don’t know much about Jonah, but I don’t think he had ever done anything as noteworthy as that, and I don’t think he ever did again. Saving Nineveh became Jonah’s defining moment, and was probably the single greatest thing he had ever done. And he almost missed it.
It sounds like the fish that swallowed Jonah and forcibly delivered him on Nineveh’s shores was a blessing in disguise, not only to Jonah, but also to the people of the city in need of repentance. Truth be told, I’m kind of envious of the fish, because I know the greatest obstacle between me and God’s plans for me is my own ambition. When I choose to ignore God’s will, I don’t get a fish—most of the time, I get to sit back comfortably and do what I want, while the people I could have helped sit uncomfortably and wait for help which may never come. And both of us are worse off for it.
It could be little things, or it could be big things (and I have no doubt that some of you reading this are ignoring big things), but they’re all hard things. Nobody turns away from the easy things. It could be warning your friend about the bad consequences of their relationship choices when you know that it’s not going to be well received. It could be trading in a lucrative career to apply your business smarts toward helping people. It could be tithing when you can think of ten practical reasons not to. It could be clearing some time up in your schedule so you have more time to volunteer and help people that way. There are a hundred things it could be, but chances are, when I’m running, I know what it is.
In these situations, I have to ask: What would my fish be? What sign from God would be so powerful, so undeniable, that I would have no choice but to do the good that God wants me to do? Would it really take a giant fish, or a giant Lord of the Rings-style eagle to carry me somewhere else? Chances are, no (but I’ll admit, it would be really cool in retrospect).
But whatever my fish would be in that situation, I then have to ask myself: if that really happened, would I feel the same way about my story that I felt about Jonah’s? Am I running so fervently that my story would seem silly, even embarrassing to tell others? And even if I then choose to follow God, would my reaction after the fact be as laughably bad as Jonah’s? I have to wonder, if the story of my life was being recorded for others, what kind of story it would be, what kind of character I would come off as?
We don’t really know who wrote the book of Jonah, but if it was indeed the prophet Jonah, I have to hand it to the guy—it took guts to portray himself like that. It goes to show us that waiting for that undeniable sign can be a little silly. There are better ways to follow God than spending days in the belly of a whale—and I guarantee you that whatever the outcome of your obedience, it will not be as bad as Jonah’s journey to Nineveh. It may lead to the salvation of an entire city, or it may lead to the salvation of one; but the point is that it’s your story, and it doesn’t take a fish to get you there.
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