Jonah 2
Ways to Navigate Our Place in the World
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Clock set to the time of home port*
Everyday a check – what time is it where you are*
Declension – latitude-North or south of the equator
Ways to Navigate Our Faith
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Why do you Pray/Serve? *-Jonah prayed-
-Jonah was distressed about:
*Prayer for the fact that he was not in the presence of God (he expected to die)
*"Your" waves will break me, not "the" waves
-Do we pray to get through life?
-Is it so we don’t die? What is our motivation?
-We should be more concerned with being with God… He is more important in our spiritual lives than anything He can GIVE to satisfy desires or us.
-God Himself should be what we desire as the most important
-God wants to fix our mess, but more than that; He wants us to be in love with us and we Him
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How do we stay in His presence? *-Through community
-We experience God’s presence – we recognize Jesus is inside of each of us; He can act through us physically for each other
-"banished from His sight" – we don’t want this!
-Through his spirit
-He lives in our hearts
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When our lives are ebbing away, and a big mess, what do our thoughts turn to? *-Vs. 7 "When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple."
-If we aren’t focusing and looking towards God’s presence, than we know we need to reorient our lives to Christ
-Even good and worthwhile things can lead us off course – reset our coordinates and path to God!
-If hearts and mind set on the things that are not God, we’ll veer off course, and we won’t be paying attention
WE TURN EITHER TO GOD OR IDOLS!
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Will we cling & forfeit or let go and live? *-Vs. 8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs."
-Idols allow our hearts to be captured by things or people who aren’t what we want them to be… they don’t have the ability to be
-We couldn’t possibly get what we desire and need from idols – SO DON’T CLING
-What is The Grace? 0 For Jonah, he was saved from the physical death and ability to look at God’s temple again – his most distress
-We hope our hearts are so captured by Christ, that being away from HIM is what grieves us most!
** Once Jonah recognizes his salvation, and that God still cares about him, Jonah says those who cling forfeit grace – and he has a heart – and he recognizes he never would have been rescued had God not stepped in – he has profound gratitude. He sacrifices his all to God.
God accepts sacrifices of our bodies. Spiritual acts of worship
How Do We Express Our Gratitude?
-Everything our bodies do can be offered to Him and working for God.
-Not to rescue ourselves, but out of gratitude because He has sacrificed for us.
-Vs. 10 "And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land."
-God pits him back in a safe place, but a place where Jonah has to work and can do the sacrifice for God as he promised
