hey guys pastor Matt here um one of our Visions at The Village Church is we want to be a place that resources liberally the big sea Church of Jesus Christ and if by his grace we might leave a kingdom Legacy with those resources we want to be all about that and so thanks for watching this sermon or preparing to watch this sermon I I'm praying that you're watching this in community in conjunction with your ongoing discipleship at a local church and and if by the grace of God this becomes one of those things that continues to build up your faith encourage your walk fuel your love for Jesus would you consider giving to the ministries of The Village Church it's actually really simple you could either do it in the app or you can go to the village church.net backg and do it there I hope that the next chunk of time as you watch this sermon you find your affections for Jesus soaring you find find courage flood back into your bones and you fall more deeply in love with Jesus than you are at this moment God bless you hello church family my name is um Darren spec and my wife Andre and I serve as Deans in the connections Ministry and we've been here about 18 years and this morning I'm going to be reading from Jonah 1 4-1 17 but the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea and there was a mighty Tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up then the Mariners were afraid and each cried out to his God and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into this sea to lighten it for them but Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had Lain down and was fast asleep so the captain came and said to him what do you mean you sleeper arise call out to your God perhaps the God will give us a give a thought to us that we may not perish and they said to one another come let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us so they cast lots the lot fell on Jonah then they said to him tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us what is your occupation where do you come from what is your country and of what people are you and he said to them I am a Hebrew and I fear the lord the god of Heaven who made the Sea and the dry land then the men exceedingly afraid and said to him what is what is this you have done for the men knew he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he had told them then they said to him what shall we do to you that the sea May quiet down for us for the sea grew more and more tempestuous he said to them pick me up hurl me into the sea then the sea will quiet down for you for I know it is because of me that this great Tempest has come upon you nevertheless the men rode hard to get back to dry land but they could not for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them therefore they called out to the Lord oh Lord let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood for you oh Lord have done as it pleased you so they picked up Jonah hurled him into the sea and the Sea ceased from its raging then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows and the Lord appointed appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights this is the word of the of the Lord thanks be to God I love that well done if you have your Bibles go ahead and grab those we're going to do what we did last week and just kind of walk through this passage uh together today so uh been here I'm on my 23rd year so I know uh a lot of you know most of my testimony but I had a pretty significant list of why I did not want to be a Christian before I became one um whether it was me or whether it was my mom or some other things but my understanding of Jesus was that he he had some rules that he wanted me to abide by he had some things that he did not want me to do and it just so happened that those were the things I kind of liked doing uh and so really nothing of his truth or beauty or goodness it was more what uh I might call um moralism so be good don't be bad and I was better actually was really good at being bad more than I was being good even when I tried to be good it came out as bad uh and and so so that that was I was getting that from mom um Dad was battling his own demons pretty significantly and so I I got a front row picture of what happens if you give yourself over to worldliness and and then I had this Jesus who I was not interested in because it was clear that I was disappointing to him and and and not really his kind of guy uh and my personality type is if you don't like me that's no big deal I probably don't like Q either and there's all kinds of space for that and in how my mind worked and and all of that um started to change when Jeff Faircloth walked up to me in football and said I need to tell you about Jesus when you want to do that now I was not interested in his Jesus but my whole life was a lie and what I mean by that uh is I incessantly felt the pressure to either pretend or project that I was something I was not in order to win the approval of my peers uh and and so I was one of those guys who'd be like I don't care if anybody likes me and I really really cared if people liked me in fact the the more you say to me I don't care what anybody thinks the more I actually believe you really really care what people think and so I didn't want Jeff's Jesus but I did want his courage uh I wanted to live a life where I could with Integrity go I'm just going to be me and whatever comes after that I'll live with and I didn't have that integrity and so I started hanging out with Jeff trying to kind of unpack the secret because I could not figure out how Jesus was the secret to that uh and so I started hanging out with Jeff went to church with him uh to a Wednesday night Youth Event called Jesus and me or Jam for short and I've told this story plenty of times but um they they sang this song If You're a church you might know it I've got joy down in my heart deep deep down in my heart spell it and then the whole room went j o y down in my deep deep down in my and and to me this was one of the cornier kiter environments I had ever been in my life and then after a few months of hanging out with Jeff uh I went to on a Friday night in the Houston Summit which is now Lakewood Church uh I went and saw Run DMC Beasty Boys okay so that I okay I didn't know how that would go across I want to see how the rest of the illustration plays out to this day the viest maybe the viest environment I've ever been in in my life and and I loved it and then the next night I went with Jeff uh and the youth group of First Baptist Church of Texas City to see DC Talk open for Michael W Smith see I knew I could figure out in this illustration who was a church kid and who wasn't and who was somewhere in the middle cuz some of you right now are like beasty who and others of you are like oh my gosh Michael W Smith and so I was at the summit again next night and I thought again this is the lamest goofiest thing I had ever seen as a non-believer it was kitchy and silly to watch Mike Olivia Smith dance behind that keyboard it was like a sir Live sketch and and I was if you've been here a while you none of this will surprise you I was vocal about how goofy all this stuff was a and so it wasn't uncommon uh I didn't have a car yet so to get in the car with Jeff who was driving me there and back to my house and bring up to him just how lame that was like the only equivalent I had to the Joy song was the YMCA at the skating rink and even that we were aging out of uh and so I would bring these things up I would point to the fact that that that was Goofy is all get out and then we would get up to my house and he's like do you want to come back next week I was like absolutely I do and what was happening to me in that moment is unbeknownst to me I would find out years and years later that I was caught up in what theologians call the effectual call of God what that meant is the Lord was pursuing me he was wooing me and I had no idea other than I knew I was growing less and less satisfied with my life over here and more and more curious about who Jesus was I didn't like everything I heard in church I didn't agree with it and I really couldn't see myself in that world cuz I considered myself a cool kid and this was not cool and I couldn't stop going I was caught up in what CS Lewis described as God being The Hound of Heaven now he didn't come up with that phrase that phrase is from a poem but but he used that poem to describe and here he he said that God was like The Hound of Heaven who doggedly pursued me and would not let me go and that's what I found myself caught up in like I didn't want it but I couldn't stop coming back to it I wasn't planning on surrendering to it and yet I was hopelessly curious about it well my life over here felt less and less satisfying in fact I I think it was probably three months before I became a Christian that I went oh man I think this stuff might be true no surrender no here's my life Lord just the oh man this makes sense I think this might be true and it'd be a you know June 17th is my spiritual birthday I will be 33 spiritually and and that was the day that the Holy Spirit opened up my heart to believe and and the all of life for all of life Journey began one that I'm still on now um I if you were here last week we we said that the book of Chona is more mirror than it is lenses and and what I mean by that uh is that the Book of Jonah was written to hold up a mirror to the people of God to warn them uh of some drift and some silliness that can befall us if we're not careful it's not lenses like see the world this way it's hey be careful you got a little something on your face right that's what Jonah is and it reads I want to highlight some things that we just read and then I've got three points because we're still Loosely affiliated with the SBC and I'm under contract for three points that's a joke if you didn't know so uh remember last week if you were here I told you that the Book of Jonah reads often times like satire it's over the toop it it it like makes its Point uh by highlighting and making absurd certain parts of the story well well in this story when the Hebrew says that the ship threatened to fall apart uh the Hebrew phrase there is actually the ship like pondered it it animates the boat like a Disney movie like the Disney movie like like the boat's like I think I might fall apart it's like the the boat is living in the story I think another point that I want to highlight from what we just read is the Mariners these men who live on the ocean if you remember the map from last week it was 2500 miles across the ocean ocean to tares these are not men who are unfamiliar with storm Ms at Sea and they know something's different about this one and they are terrified they're throwing cargo out they're just praying to any God who might listen remember the the C was like pray to your gods and so you got all these different gods being beseeched meanwhile our boy Jonah I don't know if you heard it had gone down again and was asleep like who can sleep through this like seasoned Mariners are vomiting over the side of the boat casting the car go over which is a loss of their welfare and think they're going to die and our boy is down below sound asleep and not the kind of sleep that Jesus is going to have because he's all powerful in the New Testament you tracking with me I think that's important here and the other thing I want to highlight is it is the Pagan Mariners who pray first and ultimately end up praying to Yahweh making Covenant vows of faithfulness to him not our Prophet our hero in the text uh and so here here's what I want to do here's our three points I want to show you the pursuit of God the reluctance of repentance and the Staggering mercy of God on pagans and stubborn and hypocritical Believers you good so let me show you first The Pursuit Of God look at verse one if you have your Bibles open that's fine I'll put it up on the screen but the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea and there was a mighty Tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up now look all the way down to verse 17 and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah so who caused the giant storm the Lord did who sent the fish the Lord did so let me pull out a truth that I think it should blow your circuits God's intent is not just to see the Assyrians repent and come to know him God's intent is the heart of his wayward son who's grown hardened and is running from him the Lord is a God who pursues his children maybe even especially when they're stubborn and stiff necked like God did not just pursue me to save me he has not stopped pursuing me for close to 33 years he in fact one of the ways I'm trying to grow in this Le this decade I'm in is to be faster to say yes than I was in the first two decades I was slower to say yes in the first two decades and I know where I'm going where I'm taking this story and so I'm telling you I want to really quickly let go of the stuff he's telling me to let go of let me read you a great quote by ji Packer I call him Jim he wrote a great book called knowing god if you hadn't read that I just commended to you get it read it he left a mark on me in fact um when he was in his early 80s and I was in my late 20s early 30s uh I got to take a picture with him and Lauren would joke that I look happier in that picture than I do in our wedding photos and I just said it's just a different kind of happy baby it's not it's a different happy happy but here's here's Jim for us still He blesses those on whom he sets his love in a way that humbles them so that all glory may be his alone still he hates the sins of his people and uses all kinds of Inward and outward pains and griefs to wean their hearts from compromise and disobedience still he seeks The Fellowship of his people and sends them both sorrows and joys in order to detach their love from other things and attach it to himself your God is Not indifferent to your stubbornness the writer of Hebrews says that God disciplines all those who he loves and he scourges those who are called Sons which means part of the way God's love works itself out for you is to pursue you when you're running from him and that almost always involves his discipline so the reason why I said the first two decades taught me when he asks for that let it go because the book says if you don't he might just break your hand and if that's a lot for you I I would just appeal to those of you who are parents that you are not indifferent when your kid runs out into traffic you're like well that's what he wants no you'll snatch him won't you you won't be like honey no and I know it's a new day like I know hardly anybody catches weapons anymore I know we get to think about what we've done in the corner just sit there until we can regulate or all that stuff and I'm not trying to romanticize what I grew up in where everyone could whip you like there wasn't like it wasn't just your folks it was your teacher some random guy at Kmart like everybody could put a beating on you back then but now like it it's just like falling out and I'm telling you God loves you enough to swat you on the bottom and and you shouldn't despise that you should be grateful that when you run off like that he doesn't go just fine run off no he pursues you he's after Jonah here why did he send the storm because Jonah's living into the life he wants and not the life God has for him and God who's outside of space and time sees the Heartbreak and Devastation that's going to bring not just to Jonah but to everyone around Jonah in fact even these pagans are caught up in nearly dying because of the stubbornness of this man God is a pursuer of our souls not just unto salvation but even even after he just keeps coming after us this is why we we read that his Mercy is new every morning he he just keeps coming he just keeps pursuing and this is what there are two things that the Bible is clear about one that God isn't the author of evil so I'm not saying here that that God is the author of the evil in your life in fact the scriptures are clear that God's heart desires to bless to give and and again maybe I can go back to this well this is the way I tried to frame the world to my three kids I want to bless you I want to give to you I want to come alongside of you I want to make your heart glad but you hold the power on how much I'll be able to do that this is if you live in my house these are the boundaries and I thought we were rather generous I'm not the Foot Loose Dad no rock and roll in this house right every once in a while I still like to throw on some obesy boys right it's fine it's fine and and and and yet if you decide while you live here that the way we do life isn't the way you want to do life you're free to do that but I will remove blessing from you because I cannot bless the direction you're heading because I know this is hard for you to believe I know where that ends you don't I know and and I think that's part of what's in view here God knows How It Ends and he pursues that's not the only thing here You' got the pursuit of God but you also have the reluctance of repentance let's pick it back up in verse 8 then they said to him tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us what is your occupation and where do you come from what is your country and of what people are you and he said to them I am a Hebrew and I fear the lord the god of Heaven who made the Sea and the dry land then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him what is this that you have done for the men knew he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord because he told them parent he's an external processor then they said to him what shall we do to you that the sea May quiet down for us for the sea grew more and more tempestuous and he said to them pick me up and hurl me into the sea then the sea will quiet down for you for I know it is because of me that this great Tempest has come upon you Jonah is a throw me overboard not turn the boat around I know that this is happening because I refuse to repent God has sent me into the life he has for me I'm not doing it I'm going my own way so he has sent this storm I'm trying to get away from his presence and everybody knew it because he shared it with them like hey where you guys headed we're heading to Tar just great trying to get away from the presence of the Lord you might have I hop on board with you come on like he the answer is turn the boat around that's the answer but instead he creates this kind of hairbrained Looney substitute of repentance that's not repentance at all but something allog together different just throw me overboard no turn the ship around maybe that's the right play but he's reluctant to repent he knows and even in the storm digs his heel in and gives a counter offer to God yeah this is because of me should we turn the ship around no no no just throw me overboard that way at least you guys will survive right th this is madness and it it's what happens to us when we flee from the Lord and embrace our own power and wisdom wisdom over the power and wisdom of God so here's what I want to do uh I want to share um two ways that we strengthen our reluctance at repentance that are experiential for me what I mean by that both in my own life and having pastored here in the suburbs of Dallas uh for the last 23 years and then I want to show you one that's embedded in the text the two I'm going to share with you are not Jonah's issue they're our issue and the last one is Jonah's issue because it's in the text and it's clear as day so again the first two are are both experiential and then the last one's the one that's embedded in the text so here's here's the first way that we we kind of strengthen our reluctance at repentance the first I'll just call fueling doubt fueling doubt now I'm not saying doubting because doubting is human so even if you're in here today and you're in a season where you're like you're you hope he comes through for you but you're not quite sure you hope this works out but you're not and and you've got some doubts going on in your life right now nothing wrong with that that's human in fact you're in really good company biblically right just almost everybody in the text has a moment like that how long oh Lord will you forsake me will you forsake me forever that's her boy King David whose nickname was a man after God's Own Heart you're in good company but to fuel doubt is something allog together different so I I I I taught a little bit about this when we were doing the awaken alive series like two years ago in the fall um but he here is here's how I think fueling doubt Works um the enemy of our soul he his biggest kind of Ploy is not to entrap you in some sort of moral snag but actually to try to get you to doubt the goodness of God for you and you see this in the garden this is how the whole thing breaks loose God comes to Adam and says this this is a quote you may surely eat of every tree in the garden you hear how broad and generous that is hey look around it's all yours eat your fill and then when the enemy approaches Eve here's his twist did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden do you see what the enemy does where God's offer is Broad and generous life real life deep life the enemy slithers in and says he's trying to take from you he can't be trusted your compulsion is what's true not what he says only you know what's best for you only you have enough understanding to make sense of the Brokenness of this world and he whispers against the character of God and when you begin to fuel that and it doesn't take much to fuel it in 2024 um and and like you you begin to kind of dwell on it and then find evidence you're not taking it to the Lord you're not letting the word of God bear its weight on your thinking you you just kind of get stuck in a cycle there it is again there it is again and then what's going to happen is you're going to be on Instagram or you're going to be on Tik Tok and you're going to come across somebody with a twominutetips equivalency and what I mean by that is they're going to start their clip with I got my masters from such and such theological school and did you know that the Bible that wasn't written in and they're going to talk about their deconstruction Journey about how they went off to college and found out the Bible wasn't true and now you're going to find that popping up every five or six reels and doubt will be fueled doubt will be fueled doubt will be fueled and then that leads me to the second thing that strengthens this um really reluctance to repent and and that's what I would just call disconnectedness in Matthew Chapter 13 Jesus is telling this parable of what the kingdom of God is like and and we'll pick it up in verses 20 and 21 as for what was sown on the rocky ground this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy yet he has no root in himself but endures for a while and when not if when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word immediately he falls away God is Triune in nature he is community in Oneness you and I were designed for him and for each other and the first step after fueling doubt is to disconnect and isolate uh I heard um a man once he he was talking about uh King David and he talked about this idea of having a king's table and and and he said every man this was he was speaking to men uh every man I would say woman person needs a king's table and he when David was at his best when his star was on the ascent he had a joab a general that was like where we going boss tell me what hill and I'll take it with you he had a Nathan an older man that go you're being an idiot and he had a Jonathan a lover of his soul and it wasn't until Jonathan was killed in battle that our boy found himself on a roof looking at another man's wife went on to commit adultery and murder you are becoming like your five closest friends you just are you are becoming like your five closest friends so I if your friends are the kind of friends you hang out with and then you and your girl get in the car you and your guy get in the can you believe her I can't believe him then then man you are you're on your path you will become you will not be enough to make everybody like you so our closest friends those that we create proximity with and we do life with must be those who are deeply serious about the things of God and maturing into all that God has for us in Christ that will sustain you on the day of trust and not having that puts you in danger it's why we do discipleship the way we do it here I don't know how embedded you are into our life here this is nearly the only space we have where there's dactic teaching you know what that means like there's one guy teaching to Rose one person teaching to Rose everything's around tables or broken into small groups why cuz we're trying to give you the best possible shot at connecting with one another deeply because we were meant to do life together that's the way this has been designed and the more you isolate the more you tend to live life on your terms and just Co-op Jesus when you need him which is what you're going to see Jonah do next week I know this is difficult in this current moment we're not good at this stuff we're not good at connecting we're good at hanging out out good at chips and guac good at Fantasy Football good at going for walks or what we're good at Loosely connecting we we're not good at life on life for all of life as best we can so like watch how difficult it is um if you've ever like tried to join a home group went for a month or two and then realized yeah no this isn't these aren't our people anybody be honest enough to be like yeah that's happened to me get let's lift our hands like we're not Baptist there we go now look around be encouraged get your hand up like look at how hard this is like we're in a room with people who are saying I love the Lord I want community and we get there and it just isn't clicking and I want to just say it's okay you just got to keep trying you got to keep pressing in and proximity matters the number of people tell me I got deep friendship lives in California no you don't now you might reconnect and it feel like you haven't missed a beat but he can't see into your life she can't see into your life there there isn't the kind of connectivity there that they can sense you're off that they can sense that you're not bringing your full self to bear on this conversation in this fight with your spouse in this struggle with you fill in the blank no God's given us each other for our own safety and edification and when you fueled out and you isolate you you grow stubborn and stiff necked towards the Lord you'll say some crazy nonsense like just throw me overboard no turn the ship around he's pursuing you turn back into his Pursuit now neither of these are Jonah's deal here's Jonah's deal let's look at verse n remember they ask where you from what's your occupation who are you of what nation are you so he answers I am a Hebrew and I fear the lord the god of Heaven who made the sea and dry land no you don't but here I think he believes he does he's got just enough Christian e to speak a language that isn't his heart language at this moment if you fear the lord and he comes to you and says head to Nineveh you head to Nineveh if you fear the lord and you find yourself in a weak moment on a ship where mysterious Supernatural storm has put everyone around you in danger and your tail is down under sound asleep then you do not fear the lord if your answer to his discipline is to Triple down and negotiate with him you do not fear the lord now remember what Jonah is doing here is holding up a mirror to us because right now you're probably feeling better than Jonah I know I am I mean look if you guys you guys wouldn't do this you wouldn't hop a boat to tarus there's no way you would and and yet we do all the time we we just don't get on the boat we just binge watch stuff and rage scroll we just busy ourselves to not feel the pressure of conviction we isolate pull back ignore try to flee the presence of the Lord even though he cannot be run from wherever you are there he is and again this is a mirror we're meant to feel better than Jonah In This Moment only to wake up and go oh no I'm not and and I I know you're not like the the bar around here is so low it's not like hey go to Nineveh right it's like hey maybe you shouldn't freak out on your barista maybe you should come to church more than four times a year I wouldn't go to I wouldn't do that but you'd scream at your Barista for messing up your frap are you kidding me like this is the stuff this is the mirror where we can feel self-righteous we would NE we don't have that wide of a gap between what we say we believe and what our lives are and having been here close to 25 years now I call Bull now there's a giant Gap it's Pride self-deceit not seeing well how FAL how far short of the glory of God we've Fallen it's not throwing ourselves on the mercy of God seeking transformation from the inside out it's white knuckled just throw me over to the other side I can't own this I don't want to let this go I don't want to turn the ship around I'm just gonna gosh I'm ex I'm just gonna go down and go to sleep yeah this is the mirror that he wants us to look into now here's the good news well let me read this because I I highlighted it so it was like oh I really want to say this glossing over our own hypocrisy leads us to our own way of living with Jesus where we co-opt him when he's useful and ignore him when he's not and so again I mean this is 23 years of experience here where you know let something go bad and all of a sudden Jesus need really needs you to come through for me here got a big promotion on the line at work Jesus need I know we hadn't talked in a bit but really need you to come through for me somebody gets sick somebody hey hey Lord hey just I know I know it's been a year or two man I really need you to show up here now or really need this is co-opting Jesus this is trying to get him to give you what you want rather than surrendering to what he wants now I know all of this is heavy but I love how the text ends look at verse 17 because remember there were three points there was The Pursuit Of God then there was the reluctance of repentance and then you remember the mercy of God on Pagan sailors and stubborn hypocritical children verse 17 and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights now um the the word for swallow up here is used in another place in the Old Testament as a judgment that leads to Salvation ain't that cool like that the fish is swallowing him up if they would have known the old test this little phrase here oh okay so the the fish this judgment of God is actually meant to save Jonah remember the pursuit of God and then for um the Hebrews the journey to death was a three-day Journey uh if you've ever been to Israel you'll see in their um in their graveyards there are certain boxes not not the tombstone but boxes uh when uh one of the men when Jesus is like hey follow me and he's like first let me bury my dad um most Scholars think what was going on there is they would do they' put the body in one of these boxes and then 3 days later they would move him out of the box and put him in the ground with a tombstone a and so the Hebrews know that 3 days is the journey to death now listen to Matthew 12 38-40 this is a conversation with Jesus then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him saying teacher we wish to see a sign from you but he answered them an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a great fish so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth so that what we're seeing in Jonah we'll see next week him being spit back out on dry land is simply a picture of the radical mercy of God towards the most stubborn of us towards the most stiff neck of us and so I know some of you are here today and you've already condemned yourself you you got baptized you know decade ago or when you were a kid you followed Jesus for a pretty good run and man you've made a mess of your life like Jonah all sorts of collateral Dam like the pagans are nearly going to die because of Jonah there is always collateral damage when we say no to God and let me I'm not trying to I think this is especially true of men who are husbands and fathers I'm not saying ladies you can't make a hot mess of things I'm an equal opportunity you say no to Jesus it goes bad what's hard as an adult is that our reluctance creates havoc in the lives of those around us and yet what we see here is God pursuing this man who is an absolute have you seen anything in this man's life yet you're like that's commendable not a thing that's the satire of the book who is quick to repent the pagans who makes a covenant vow to God the pagans who's dug in their heels and said not me the man of God so according to Jesus Jonah is here so that you would know you have not out send his grace he is pursuing even now you made a mess of it all hey I got good news new for you today I got good news for you the Lord Even In This Moment is moving towards you with mercy and Grace like when I say to you up here that Jesus knew what he was buying on the cross this is what I mean like why do you think the cross was so brutal well because of how dumb jonan we are so he's like yeah I I'm going to publicly show how you can't get this and he absorbs God's Wrath towards all who would believe in his name so that all of their sin past present and future would be fully freely and forever forgiven in him he does not reget regret saving you and is not frustrated about pursuing you the opportunity you have is to turn into him quit running do you do you see what happens when you run it just gets worse and worse because that is the heat at which God loves you he will not let you run out into traffic he will snatch you by the back of your neck and I don't know if anybody else had a dad with that hand that would clamp down on the back of your neck and rip you back I that's why I said I'm I've learned over the last 20 years that if he's like I I want you to hand that over like okay don't break my hand you know be up here in a spiritual sling what happened you know some delayed obedience and the Lord just got tired of waiting so he smashed my hand and so it doesn't have to be remember he desires to bless okay why don't you do me a favor bow your heads close your eyes we're almost we're almost done here I I wonder if you're here today and you kind of find yourself in that place that I was all those years ago and that we see Jonah in now where you know you're you're not quite sure what to do with all of this but you just keep moving towards it so you've had a friend or a cooworker or something happened in life and you're back in church again you're kind of hanging out and you're like you're you have a growing dissatisfaction with your life and a growing curiosity about the claims of Jesus well I wonder what it would be like for you today to Just Surrender to him just to turn and surrender maybe You' even gotten your head no I believe oh okay where well bring that belief to him and surrender your life all of life for all of life if that's you and you're just like man I'm not I'm not sure I believe all of this but I certainly some something's drawn me I just can't I'm more and more curious about this stuff in a way that's new and different to me if that's you and you're in here just lift your hand up hi just be like that's me right now I'm not I don't know but I I'm more Curious okay and now let me ask you this what the book has in mind as it Bears its weight on us this morning is whether or not we have not hardened ourself towards repentance and so maybe even right now in your life you've you've hatched some hairbrain scheme of how you're going to manage this sin or get around this th this Brokenness in you rather than coming to him and repenting and and so maybe as I was preaching this morning the thing that the holy Spirit did was wake you up from your reluctance to repent to him and exposed your little hairbrain scheme to manage your life rather than submit to him if that's you and you're in this place and you're like that's me right now I'm I'm I don't want to be ashamed to say it if this is what the people of God have a tendency to do if you're like man I've got some reluctance to repent in my life right now would you just lift your hand up just like I just got it man I just it's hard for me to Trust on this in this season all right man so many of us yeah don't don't be ashamed there most of us will walk through this season gosh I told you I had 20 years of it all right praise God here's what I want to do I'm going to pray for us and while I'm praying members of our prayer team they're going to come up here and stand over the front and then when I say Amen we're all going to stand together we're just going to sing a simple short song and and the words are I will make room for you it's a it's a it's a song of turning back into the pursuit of the Lord not running from him any longer but planting that foot and pivoting back towards him in Repentance and so we want to pray for you if you don't know where that begins because repentance isn't feeling bad repentance is an action uh and so we want to just pray courage over you we want to pray life and if you don't even know who to tell you can just just come tell us I've got a reluctance to repent in my life right now and we'll pray and counsel and come alongside of you uh and and I want to pray for us now that if the Holy Spirit has made your heart tender in this moment you don't decide to jump overboard rather than turn into his Mercy that's just right here for you right now father I bless these men and women in the name of Jesus thank you that you chase us you pursue us you love us you come for us you unrelentingly pursue us with your love thank you for that e even though that that love sometimes requires discipline forgive us for being so stubborn and thank you for the provision for our stubbornness in Jesus's life death and Resurrection I I pray for courage and freedom to be given to the dozens and dozens of people that just raised their hands you brought them here today as part of your pursuit of them even now even if they've been following you for 30 40 years you are unrelenting grant us courage alongside the softness of our heart right now we need you and it's for your beautiful name I pray amen