Jonah #1

[Video]

Well, welcome today to all of our campuses. We’re so glad that you are with us. Let’s
pull out our Bibles together. Open them to the book of Jonah. It’s a bit difficult to find,
so if you want to go to your Table of Contents, you can do it. That’s not cheating, or a
little hint: it’s between Obadiah and Micah, or in my Bible it’s on page 901. Don’t know if
that’ll help you or not, but anyway, it’s there. How many of you basically know the story
of Jonah? You pretty much know the story of Jonah. A lot of people do, the story of a
guy who doesn’t do what God wants him to do. God puts him in the belly of a big
whale. He lights a candle. The whale throws him up on shore, and he gets to be a real
boy for the rest of his life. Okay, now that’s Pinocchio. It’s kind of muddled up.

What we are going to do is, we are look at a story that a lot of people consider to be
kind of a kid story that you hear about in Sunday School, but the truth is, the story of this
reluctant prophet, Jonah, really will speak into all of our lives if we listen to the Spirit of
God. So, let’s start today in Jonah 1:1-3. It will set the context for us. Here’s what
scripture says. The Bible says, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai,”
and this is what God said. God said, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach
against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” In verse 3, though, we see
Jonah’s unfortunate response. Scripture says what? Help me out, All of our campuses.
The Bible says, “But Jonah,” did what? “Jonah ran away from the Lord and he headed
for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for the port, and
after paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to,” do what? “He sailed
for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” He was a man on the run.

Let’s look at the meaning behind a few of the words. If you are taking notes, first of all,
Jonah, he’s called by many as the reluctant prophet. He was a prophet of God that
often did what was right, but in this particular story, we are going to find that he did not
obey God at all. His name, if you are taking notes, it actually means dove, so he was
called the dove, or the peaceful one, who ended up disobeying God and is now known
as the reluctant prophet. Next word in your notes is the word “Amittai,” and that is his
father. He was the son of Amittai. Amittai actually means truth, which is a great name
of a prophet to be the son of truth. Nineveh was the city that he was commanded to go
and preach to. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Nineveh was Israel’s absolute
foremost worst enemy. Israel hated the Ninevites, and you’ll see why as we go on into
our study. Let’s look at verse 1 again, and as we do, as we start to look at this story, I
believe that God may show you what He’s shown me, that we all have a little bit of
Jonah in us. Jonah 1:1 says this. Help me out. The Bible says, “The,” what? Say it
aloud, “The, the word of the Lord.” One more time. All of the campuses, you guys can
do better. “The,” what? “The word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai.”
Good news is that the word of the Lord will come to you today. God is a God who loves
to speak. Whenever God created, He said, “Let there be,” and there was. He created
with the spoken word. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us.” God is a speaking God. God created Adam and Eve because He wanted to love
and to be loved. He wanted to speak. He spoke with Adam and Eve in the cool of the
day in the garden. He is a speaking God. Throughout history, God speaks in different
ways. God has often spoken with the audible voice. God has often spoken through His
prophets. God has spoken through circumstances. God has spoken through the voice
of His Holy Spirit. If you’ve never, ever heard the voice of God, you can and will today,
if you simply open up His Word. This is His Word. It’s described, self described, as
living and active. It’s sharper than any two-edged sword. This is His Word that pierces.
It is truth that is living. It will transform. The Word of the Lord will come to you, and God
will speak to some of you a very specific Word. His Word will be to change something,
to move in a new direction, to be obedient to what He says to you, and you will have a
choice. You can do what God wants you to do, and that is to be obedient to His Word,
or you can do what Jonah did and say, “I don’t want to be obedient to You.”

The Word of the Lord will come to you. That’s the good news. The challenging news
for many people is this, if you are taking notes. When God comes to you, He will often
ask you to do some things that you don’t want to do. He’ll often ask you to do some
things that you don’t want to do, and the reason we don’t want to do them a lot of times
is because we really like to believe that we know what is best. We like to try to convince
ourselves that we really know what is better. For example, all of our campuses, if you
guys could, help me out. What’s best: chocolate or vanilla? Vanilla or chocolate? How
many of you would say, “chocolate”? Hands down, chocolate. How many say, “vanilla,
vanilla, all the way”? Some of you voted twice. That is not fair at all. Okay? What is
best? Well, strawberry is best, okay? You know, whatever. We like to think we know
what is best. Sometimes, someone in authority or someone with more knowledge will
tell us what to do and we will say, “I don’t want to do that. I feel like I know what’s best.”
My family and I, we were in Colorado for some time off, and I took my three oldest girls.
We went on a little hike, and a lady came running up to us and said, “You guys have to
leave here, now!” I’m like, “Look, we came here. This is a public place. Why?” and
she’s like, “You just have to leave here, now! Get out of here, now.” And I’m like,
“Why?” and she said, “Because there is a bear up in that tree.” Oh, I see. Okay? And
there was. There was a little bitty black bear, a really cute little baby black bear, and
she just said, “Get out of here, now.” So, guess what we did? Do you think we left? I
can see it now. I took my phone out. It had a little camera on it. We got as close as we
could, taking pictures. You know, chu chu lika, cute little bear. Yep, look at it … b-b-b
baby bear. Baby, baby, baby, baby bear,” and all this stuff, and she came up again.
She said, “Get out of here, now!” I’m like, “Why? It’s just an innocent little baby bear,
and she said, “Whenever there’s a baby bear close by, there’s usually a momma bear,”
so we got out of there! Okay? When I understood the context of the assignment, I
understood the reason behind it. Then we got back to our little, the place where we
were staying, and guess what we saw? Momma! Believe it or not, mamma was in our
garbage can eating our leftovers from the night before. So there was big mamma bear,
baby bear, and we were Goldilocks and we got out of town. We just left. It freaked us
out. Bears everywhere on vacation.
A lot of times, we feel like we know what is best, and we don’t want to obey when the
Word of the Lord comes to us. This was the context of Jonah, and we see this actually
take place in verse 2. Here is the command. God says to him, “Go to the great city of
Nineveh and,” do what? God said, “I want you to preach against it, because its
wickedness has come up before me.” Now, you might wonder, “Well, okay, Jonah is a
prophet and that is what he does. He preaches God’s Word, so why didn’t he just obey
this very simple assignment?” Well, when you understand the history of Nineveh, or the
Syrian empire, you understand a little more why he hated them. The Syrian empire, of
which Nineveh was the capital city, whenever it was rumored that the Assyrians would
be attacking somebody, they were so brutal in the way they would handle the captives.
They would torture them and just be so destructive that, occasionally, when it was
rumored that the Assyrians were going to be attacking, sometimes a whole town of
people would just commit suicide, because they would rather die that way than
experience what was coming. That’s how feared the Assyrian empire was, and they
were hated. Let me tell you a little bit about it. You can read this in history books. This
is what they would do. They would go in and they would take over a city. They would
kill all sorts of people, then the surviving women they would rape before they would kill
them. They would often even rape the little girls. They would torture some of the kids,
and then they would take the husbands, who were prisoners of war, the men, they
would take them outside the city and they would skin them alive. Then, once they were
skinned, they would actually bury them in the desert’s sand up to their necks. You can
imagine the pain they would be in. Then, they would take their tongues and they would
pull their tongues out, and they would drive a stake through their tongue so they would
go crazy as they were dying of thirst in the middle of the desert, and then all through the
night, they would make them listen to Paris Hilton CD’s, just to … [laughter] I’m just
lying about that last part, but the rest of it is all true. You can just, you can start to
imagine the horror of a stake driven through your tongue, and most people would go
crazy before they would die. Then once they were dead, they would behead them, and
they would take the heads of all of the prisoners of war, and they would make a pyramid
of heads outside their city to say to the rest of the world, “This is a city that we
conquered.” Okay? When you know that, maybe you have a little more mercy for
Jonah when he said, “I don’t want to go there. I hate these people.” It could have been
that he had a relative or a friend, or someone who’d actually experienced that. He
despised them. God said, “I want you to do something,” and in his mind, he had
legitimate reasons why he didn’t want to obey God. Maybe you can relate.

The Word of the Lord will come to some of you, and you will hear specifically from God,
“This is what I should do,” and in your mind, you may think, “Okay, I understand that’s
what You want me to do, but I don’t want to do it! I don’t want to have anything to do
with it.” Perhaps, you can relate in different ways. Maybe someone has wronged you
and hurt you, or hurt someone that you love, and the Word of the Lord comes to you,
and the Word of the Lord, for you, is to forgive them – to forgive as you have been
forgiven, and you look and you go, “I don’t want to. They don’t deserve it. I don’t feel
like forgiving them. I know that’s what God wants me to do, but I don’t want to do it.”
And I know a lot of you have heard the teaching of the tithe, the Biblical tithe, that the
scripture is crystal clear that God trusts us to manage His resources, and ten percent,
the first ten percent of what He trusts to us belongs to Him. We don’t give the tithe. We
return the tithe as an act of worship; and yet, a lot of you have heard that and you’re
like, “I don’t want to do that. I know that is what God said, but I don’t want to, because
in my mind, that doesn’t make sense, and I like my things more than I want to obey
God. I simply don’t want to do it.” Maybe you’re dating somebody and he’s just cute, or
she smells good. Unlike your other friends, you know, and you get, you get close to this
person and you get tingly wingly wingly wingly. You know, you just get the twingly
wingly wingly wingly, and so you got the tingly wingly wingly. Next thing you know,
you’ve been doing some stuff you shouldn’t do. You’ve been messing around. The
Word of the Lord will come to you. That is for marriage. That is not for dating. You’ve
got a choice. A lot of people will say, “Well, I know that’s what God says, but I want to
do this. I don’t care what God says. I want to do this. It feels good. Makes me feel
loved. Don’t care what God says,” the Jonah in all of us.

Maybe the Word of the Lord has come to you and you thought, “Okay, I know what I’m
supposed to do, but I don’t want to do that now. I’ll do it later. I’ll do it later. I’ll get to it.
I’ll get to it later.” Remember this. Delayed obedience is really disobedience. Delayed
obedience is disobedience. It’s kind of like the parenting technique of teaching your
kids, you know, “Do this. Do this. Come on, now, do this. Don’t make me come over
there. I told you to do this. I’m serious, now. Okay. I’m going to count to three. Okay,
one, two, two and a half … okay?” What are we doing? We are teaching delayed
obedience. “Don’t run out into the street. Don’t run out into the street. One, two,” splat.
Delayed obedience is disobedience. I like what my friend, Aaron McManus, said. He
an author and pastor in California, a great guy. He says the mark of maturity is what he
calls lag time, lag time. You can tell the maturity of a person between the distance of
the command of God and the obedience. If the distance is short, they are mature. If
the distance is long, it is immaturity. And, I am so afraid that we have a church full of
people in our church that there is lag time, if obedience at all. Command of God, “I
don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.” The Word
of the Lord will come to you. He’ll often tell you to do some things that you don’t want to
do.

Jonah said, “I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to have anything to do with those
people. They make me angry.” Remember this, thought number two. God will speak
to you, and He may tell you to do something you don’t want to do. Whenever God does
speak, number two, you can always find a boat sailing in the wrong direction. You can
always find a ship moving in the wrong way. Some of you know what I’m talking about.
You say, “Hey, I want to obey God. I want to do what He’s called me to do,” and all of a
sudden, your old buddy comes up and says, “Hey, don’t do that way. Let’s go back to
what we used to do. Hey, let’s go back to the old life.” Watch how it happens here in
Jonah. God says, “I want you to preach to the Ninevites.” Verse 3, scripture says this.
“But Jonah,” did what? Say it aloud, here’s what he did. “But Jonah ran away from the
Lord, then headed for Tarshish, then he went down to Joppa, where he found a ship
bound for that port. And after paying the fare, he went aboard and he sailed for
Tarshish.” Why did he sail for Tarshish? Because he wanted to what? He wanted to
… He wanted to run from God. What did God say? God said, basically, “Go east to
Nineveh,” and Jonah said, “Uh, uh, I’m going west to Tarshish,” 2,500 miles away from
the target destination. That’s how far it was, twenty-five hundred miles away. One
commentary said that it would take about a year to sail from where he was to where he
was going. That’s a lot of running. Some of you, right now, you can relate. You may
be sitting next to someone who thinks you’re absolutely on track, but you know in your
heart you’ve been running, and you’re a long way from God. The Word of the Lord is
come to you. “Here is what I want you to do,” and somewhere along the way, months or
weeks or years back, you said, “No, no. I know that’s what You want, God, but I don’t
want to obey You.” You’ve been on the run, and you think you can get away with it.
You need to understand, you can run for a while, but you can’t run forever. You cannot
run forever, because it will catch up to you. Maybe, maybe you are not on the run as
much as you are just drifting. You are just drifting.

One time, I took my kids to the beach. My family were there, had a little lake house
thing, and we were out playing in the water. Just playing, making shark noises – da
nun, da nunt, da nunt … “Did you see that? That was a shark. Just playing. Then, we
looked up and we’re like, “Where’s our house? Where’s our house?” An hour later, we
couldn’t find our house. We had drifted several houses down and we didn’t even know
it until we looked back at our point of reference. We hadn’t realized just how far we had
drifted. Some of you, you may be able to relate, because maybe months or years ago,
you were really close to God. You know what I’m talking about, when you’re like
praying and God answers your prayers, and then you’re like, you’re going, “Man, that
was a coincidence,” and then, “There’s another coincidence. These aren’t
coincidences. These are God things,” and God would prompt you to do something or
say something, and so you do it or say it and then, He’d bless you like, “Whoa, that’s
just amazing,” and then His Word was a valuable part of every day and you’d open it up
and you’re like, “Man, that was like for me, and, and that was for me, and it is speaking,”
and you’d go to church and it’d be like, “God’s speaking to me. It’s like I’m the only one
in the room,” and you’d have these divine appointments with people, where you’re like,
“I think I was supposed to say that, and that really helped,” and then one day, you skip
church. And the next week you skipped, and “I’m doing okay,” so you put down His
Word and you stop reading it. And then you didn’t pray as much, and then you didn’t
see as much of the God activities in your life, and then one day, “Like, how did I get so
far from God?” It wasn’t that you were running as much as you were drifting from Him.

When we disobey the commands of God intentionally or even unintentionally, we are

drifting. We are separating ourselves from Him, the Jonah in all of us. The Word of the
Lord will come to you. It may not be what you want to hear. When you run, you can
always find a boat sailing in the wrong direction. Some of you are on the run right now.
This third thought might speak to you. When you are on the run, doing the wrong thing,
thought number three is this. God may send a storm to grab your attention. Some of
you might go, “Oh, I see. Uh, huh. Now, I know what is going on.” God might send a
storm to grab your attention. Verse 4, Jonah was on the run. Scripture says this, “Then
the Lord,” did what? Say it aloud. “The Lord, He sent a great wind, and such a violent
storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.” Now, this was ship full of sailors that
were transporting cargo, so this was a very strong ship. This was such a great wind, we
are talking, you can only imagine, “boom!” and the boat going up and down, “pheuuuu”,
and everybody screaming, “Help! What are we going to do? We’ve never seen a storm
like this,” so much so that the integrity of the ship was at risk. They’re starting to say,
“Who’s fault is this? What’s going on?” and they drew straws and did a little lottery
thing, and they say, “Well, it’s Jonah’s fault.” And they said, “Who are you, and what did
you do to bring this on?” Verse 8 reveals the answer. Jonah answered them and said,
“I am a Hebrew and I,” what? Say that phrase aloud. “I am a Hebrew and I worship the
Lord, the God of heaven.” Do you really, Jonah? At this point in your life, are you really
worshipping the Lord God of Heaven? He said, “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the
God of heaven, who made the sea and the land,” and this terrified them and they asked,
“What in the world have you done?” because they knew he was running from God.

The storm blows up and all of a sudden, he starts bringing up the God talk again.
Maybe we do need God. If you ask me what are the three biggest problems in the
American church today, what are the three biggest problems? I’m not sure what they all
are, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I would say one of the problems is, is that
we we’ve got a generation of people who call themselves followers of Christ, but do not
live like it at all, at all … at all. There’s no distinction between them and someone, the
person that lives next door to them that does not know Christ at all. It’s a cultural
Christianity. It’s a Christianity in name only. It’s a consumeristic religion. It’s, “Well, as
long as God does good things for me, yeah, I’m like I go to church every now and then,
or something. I might bless the Thanksgiving meal or something like that, you know.
Hopefully, I get to go to Heaven and they give me a promotion, and then if I get sick, I’ll
go to Him and ask Him to heal me, or heal someone that I love.” But there’s nothing in
daily life that resembles the teachings of Jesus in scripture. “Oh, yeah, I worship God.”
Do you? Just because you’re in church does not mean you worship God. Worshipping
God is not something you do for an hour a week. It’s a lifestyle. “Uh, uh, uh, uh, I
worship God. I worship God, then I go home and I yell and I scream at my kids and
throw things at them.” You worship God? “Oh, yeah, yeah, I worship, I worship God
and then go play golf and take God’s name in vain.” You really think you worship God?
“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we’re a Christian couple. Yeah. We even have our own
Bible that sits on our coffee table. We’re a Christian couple, but, but our marriage
hasn’t been going so good, and I know that we don’t really have Biblical grounds for
divorce, you know, but we’re just not happy. So, we’re going to divorce, because that’ll
be better for everyone. I know what God says, but I don’t want to do what He says.”

Forgive me if this comes across harsh, but it just … I believe I’ll answer to God one day
at some level for what goes on in our church, and there are times when I look around
and say, “I’m not sure what’s going on around here is pleasing God. This is halfway,
lukewarm, cultural Christianity thing that, yeah, we know God says it, but, “I don’t want
to do it.” You say you worship God. Do you really? The sails are freaking out. It’s a
big storm. Jonah finally realizes, “It’s my fault.” Some of you are going to recognize
that right now. You are going to think, “Well, what I was doing, my private rebellion, it
wasn’t hurting anybody.” Oh, don’t kid yourself. If it hadn’t hurt somebody yet, it’s going
to tomorrow. You realize, “This is my fault. I’m hurting all these innocent people by my
disobedience to God.” He finally owns up to it. You can see it in verse 12. He says,
“Okay, guys, I’m sorry. Pick me up. Throw me into the sea, and it will become calm.
This whole storm, it’s my fault,” he said. “That this great storm has come upon you.”
So, the sailors, they’re going to have mercy on him, because they really care about him,
even though they know him. And they said, “We’re not going to do that to you. Let’s
throw our cargo off the boat.” This was the thing, their livelihood. Okay? “Let’s throw it
off the boat. We’re going to get rid of everything and try to save you.” That didn’t work,
okay? “Let’s row back to shore.” Row, row, row your boat … Okay, that didn’t work,
either, and finally, it’s like, “Okay, we’re all going to die. I guess we need to throw you
off.” And so they said, “God, forgive us. We’re sorry. We don’t want to do this to
Jonah. Jonah, we’re sorry,” and they throw him overboard, and the sea goes calm.
Then, something unbelievably bad in our human mind happens to Jonah. If you know
the story, he got swallowed up by a big fish. People say, “Jonah and the whale”. It was
not a whale. Original text says it was a fish. Doesn’t really matter. It was big. It was
nasty, okay? He was in the fish for three days. That’s freaking me out. I can’t even eat
fish for three days after I’ve eaten fish for three months after my wife read the satanic
book that said meat is bad but fish is good. People are saying, “You look like you’ve
lost weight.” It’s because I’ve been eating rabbit food and fish for three months. So, I’m
not bitter. I still love my wife. I’m just praying for her deliverance. [laughter] Some
pastors go out of town and like, they go and do wild things. I go out of town, I eat steak.
[laughing] Great thing. That’s why I’m out of town a lot.

Thought number four, Jonah’s worst nightmare was exactly what he needed. Jonah’s
worst nightmare was exactly what he needed. Verses 15, 16, and 17 tells the story.
Jonah, they took Jonah. They threw him overboard and the raging sea grew calm. At
this, the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and they
made vows to Him for seventeen, now check this out, but the Lord did what? Say that
phrase aloud, “But the Lord provided a great fish.” One more time, what did the Lord
do? “The Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish for
three days and three nights.” The Lord provided the fish. What Jonah would see is the
worst possible scenario God provided. Some of you right now, you may be facing what
you would consider is your nightmare. I mean, financially, you may be like, “I’m done.
It’s over.” And God may say, “Okay, now do I have your attention?” Some of you may
be facing a relationship that you think it just couldn’t get any worse than this, and God
may say, “Okay, do I have your attention?” Now, what I am not going to say is, I am not
going to tell you that everything that bad happens is God causing it in your life, because
I don’t believe that is true, but I do believe with everything in me that there are times
where God may cause, or God may allow, what we would consider is our worst
nightmare so that He can fully get our attention. I’ll give you an example, and if you’ve
been here for a while, I talked around this story for a couple of years, but I’ve never told
the whole story until this weekend. It’s with the blessings of my family that I do tell this
story. My wife’s brother, Amy, Amy’s my wife, her brother is David. He passed away at
the age of 35. I never told you why. He grew up in a Christian home, and in his teens,
he said, “Forget God. I know what God says, but I don’t believe He’s real. I don’t want
to do what His commands teach, anyway, so I am going to do my own thing.” He went
into a hard party life. One thing led to another, and he entered into a full-blown
homosexual lifestyle. Early twenties, David came to us and came to his parents and
said, “I am HIV positive.” Family’s worst nightmare. That is a death sentence on
someone, and so we prayed for healing, and he was never healed. Worst thing
possible. Not to David. David told us before he died, he said it was the best thing that
ever happened to him, because between the age of 23 or so and 35, when he died, he
was fully committed to Christ. That’s what it took. When I’m telling you he was
committed, he was committed. I know there may be some who were equal in his
commitment, but I don’t know anyone more so, and I’m not telling you he was perfect,
because he wasn’t. He messed up some time and had some struggles, but I’ll tell you
what. The dude was full on for Jesus. He married a great girl, who is now, will be a part
of our family forever. She is family, adopted her son, coolest kid in the whole world and
kind of one of my greatest honors to get to invest in his life. At David’s funeral at the
age of 35, I’ll tell you what. I’ve been a part of probably a couple of hundred funerals in
ministry. I’ve never seen one where God did more. I’ve never seen one where God did
more. Never, ever seen one where God did more. And so, I asked David, David’s
mom, my mother-in-law, would you change it to have David back? And the mother of
this child said, “No. No way. I wouldn’t trade any of it for what God has done.” That’s
intense. That’s intense, because what we would call our worst nightmare, and it was,
actually became one of the greatest things that I have ever seen God do.

The Word of the Lord will come to you, and you have a choice: obey or disobey. When
God speaks to you, you can always find a ship sailing the wrong direction. If you do not
obey, He may send a storm to grab your attention. If that doesn’t get it, He may allow
you to face your worst nightmare. When He does, understand this. It’s all because He
loves you, because He has something for you to do, and He has a city or a group of
people for you to impact. You’ve got a choice. You can keep running, or you can come
back to Him. I pray you come back to Him. All of our campuses, let’s pray together.

“Father, we ask that Your Spirit would draw us back.” All of our campuses, today, some
of you would recognize the fact that you’ve been on the run. Others of you have been
drifting, but you recognize, “It’s time for me to come back. It’s time or me to repent.”
Your prayer today is, “God, renew that joy of my salvation. God, accept me back.
Forgive me for my disobedience. I’m coming back to You.” If that’s you today at all of
our campuses, would you just lift your hands high right now? Just lift them up high. All
over the place, a bunch of Jonah’s in the room. What I want you to do is, make these
next few moments, make them a holy moment for you. I’m not going to give you the
words to say, but you pray. Pray sincerely. Cry if you want to. Make your seats a holy
altar before God, and come back to Him in your own words. Tell Him you are coming
back full blown and full on and just pray. Make this your holy moment. [silence]

“God, thank You for Your mercy and thank You for Your forgiveness, and God, in behalf
of our whole church, God, forgive us for not taking You seriously. God, forgive us for
the times that we, as a church, hear your word, but don’t act on it.” As you are praying
today, there’s a verse in scripture that says this. The Bible says, “There is a way that
seems right to a man, seems right to a person, but in the end it leads to death.” There
is a way that seems right. A lot of times we do what seems right, what we feel like is
right. A lot of times, you might think, “Hey, I need to something that brings meaning and
fulfillment, so maybe this relationship will do it. It seems right, and in the end it doesn’t.
Maybe you feel like a little more money will do it for you, the nicer things, a different
lifestyle, a different title – something else, something else, something else, something
else that will do it, and so you are searching for it. There is a way that seems right, but
it doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s because, if you are running toward anything but God, you
are running from God, and you may recognize right now, “I didn’t even realize, but I am
running from God.” In Luke 15, Jesus told a story. He said there was a father, who had
two sons. One of them said, “Dad, I don’t want to do it your way. Give me my stuff. I’m
going out on my own,” and he did. And he woke up and he realized, “This is not
working. It seems right, but it’s not working,” and he wondered, “Would my father have
me back? Would he receive me?” What he didn’t realize is, the father was on the edge
of town daily, waiting, hoping, praying, seeking, searching. “One day, will my son come
back?” Two thousand years ago, God, He loved you so much, He sent His Son, Jesus,
the sinless Son of God, who, like Jonah was in the belly of a fish for three days, Jesus
died for our sins, was in the ground dead for three days. He is risen from the dead.
Now, Jesus is at the right of God, the Father, and He is praying for you by name. He is
praying to God for you. “God, bring them back. Bring her to Me. Bring him to Me.”
Jesus is praying for you, and you may think, “But, I’ve been too bad. I’ve done too
many wrong things.” All God wants you to do is to turn from your sin and turn toward
Him. Surrender your whole life to Jesus. Jesus … scripture says that anyone, it doesn’t
matter who you are or what you’ve done, how bad you feel about yourself, how dark
your life is. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. When you call on
Him today, understand this. You are stepping across a line. You are stepping into
eternal life. You’re not going to be the same. You will be filled with the Holy Spirit of
God. You will be able to communicate with God. You will be totally different, but
understand this, because you are different, you will leave a life behind. No going back.
This isn’t any half-way, kind of, sort of, maybe sort of, pretend way commitment. This is
a full-blown, “I am repenting of my sins and I am returning to Jesus. Jesus, save me.”

There are those of you here, you can sense it. It’s your time. It’s a no turning back
moment. It’s a full on, full-blown commitment. “Jesus, be the Savior and the Lord of my
life. I am coming to You.” If that’s your prayer today, at all of our campuses, would you
lift your hands high right now? Just lift them up all over the place, and leave them up
and we are going to pray together. Right back over there in this section, sir. Thank
you. Right back over here. God bless you, as well. Here in this middle section. Both
of you guys right back here. Ma’am, here. Sir, right back here. God bless you guys.
Back here toward the back. Sir, right up here in this middle section. God bless you.
Right back here in this middle section and toward the back. Others of you. Sir, right
over here. God bless you. Ma’am, right over here on my side. Just leave your hands
up and let me just meet you eye-to-eye and just recognize you and welcome you in.
Sir, right back here in this middle section. Way back here on this side, God bless you,
as well. Others of you. “I surrender, Jesus. Save me.” Sir, here in this middle section
over here on this side. Way back there toward the back. Sir, right back there. It looks
like red, ma’am, right there in the white. Both of you guys together, praise God for you
right here. Here in this middle section. Right back there toward the back. Right there,
sweetheart. God bless you. Others of you. “Jesus, save me from my sins. I surrender
to You. I turn to You.” Right back here. Right back there. God bless you. Thank you,
sir.

Pray with those around you right now. Just everyone pray aloud. Pray, “Heavenly
Father, I am coming home. I am a sinner. I need a Savior. Jesus, forgive me. Make
me brand new. I believe You died for me, so I could live for You. Fill me with Your
Spirit and take my whole life. It belongs to You. Thank You for new life. In Jesus’
name I pray.”

LifeChurch, would you worship a good God, who makes people new …