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Welcome to the Southside Church Podcast. Weekly content that inspires all of us to follow Jesus. Join us each week for a message from one of our fantastic communicators that provide practical ways to grow our faith, challenge ourselves, and to love others more. And now, this week's message.

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Well, it is so good to be with you this morning. You know, there's a lot of things in life that I think we would probably say that we don't like to do. That's just part of life, it's part of living. We have some things that we like to avoid, some things that we would like to put off, some things that we procrastinate, maybe some things that we run away from. I don't know what that is for you, and you don't know what it is for me. I would be willing to bet that maybe we would agree on some of them. We might disagree on some of them. Maybe for you, the thing that you try to avoid might be something I enjoy and vice versa. But for the sake of today, and to kind of get us going with the message, I want to talk about one thing that I don't want to say it's universal, but I think it's pretty universal. I think most of us fall in this category of something that we really like to avoid is going to the dentist. Anybody like going to the dentist and feel like they want to raise their hand and say, yes, see? No, well, like one person, two people maybe. Congratulations. Let's talk after the service. I want to know a little bit more about that, honestly. Most of us, these amazing people excluded, don't like going to the dentist. And I gotta be honest, this is kind of hard for me to talk about because my dentist attends Southside, and he's a good friend. I really love Brian. And if you need a dentist, Brian Halstedt is the best around, I promise you. But he knows this. I would probably rather see him just about anywhere except his office. Because when I'm at his office, somebody or him have their hands in my mouth doing something that I don't enjoy. Now, when I was a kid, I had to go to the dentist. And this is probably true for you as well. When you were a kid, your parents made you go to the dentist. And when I say I had to, I mean like my mom was militant about it. It was every six months on the dot. We would finish the appointment, we would stand at the counter, we would get the appointment card, they'd write it down, we'd hang it on the fridge. Six months later, you gotta go back. I tried sometimes to just throw those cards away. If they're not on the fridge, my mom will forget. Don't worry, y'all. She wrote it down at about 900 other places. So she never ever forgot. Also, I also had braces as a kid. Um, I know that's orthodontics and it's different, but it's still it's people putting their hands in my mouth and doing things that hurt, and it's all the same. So that's it. So when I was a kid, I had to do this. Now, when I got older and I became an adult, not only could they not make me eat my vegetables, they could not make me go to the dentist. So I did not go to the dentist. And when I say I did not go, I mean I did not go. And it was about 10 years before I made it to the dentist as an adult. Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, one, you might be thinking gross, and it probably is a little bit gross. Also, you may be a little bit worried about the health of my teeth. Don't worry, everything was fine. In fact, when I showed up at the dentist 10 years later, he looked at me and was like, Yeah, they did all the cleaning, no cavities, no problems. He's like, just keep doing what you're doing. I was like, great, I will see you again in 10 years. No problem. Uh now, to be fair, again, I said I love Brian. Brian's a great dentist. I have had some dental issues over the last couple of years. I have gotten more in the habit of going to the dentist like I should, so don't worry. Don't email me and say that you're worried about the health of my teeth. Everything is gonna be fine. But the bottom line is we all have those things in our life that we really wish we could avoid. We have things that we wish we didn't have to do, we have things that we put off and we delay as long as possible. We often ignore things that we don't want to face for as long as we can get away with it, right? We often ignore the things that we don't want to face. It could be really, really big things, it could be small things like the dentist, but the bottom line is we often try to stay away from those things for as long as humanly possible. In the process, though, and you know this, you've gotten on the other side of that bad thing that you didn't want to do before, and you've realized, you know what, it wasn't that bad, honestly. You know, it might the dentist, it was that bad. But if you got on the other side of most of those things that you had to do, it wasn't that bad. And see, the thing is, we end up burning way more energy avoiding the thing than what the thing would have actually cost us in the first place. And that word cost is something I want to lean into for a moment because this is a key point in all of this. Avoidance has a price tag. Avoidance always has a price tag, it always comes at a cost. That cost may be small, that cost may be large, you may be counting the cost right now. It always costs something. At some point, somebody's got to pay the bill. Sometimes that person is you, sometimes that person is those around you. So, with that in mind, we're gonna talk today about a guy named Jonah. We're gonna be looking uh at a guy named Jonah. And if you hear the the the name Jonah, what's the first thing that comes to mind? The whale. Very good class. You think about the whale. Jonah and the whale are synonymous, they go hand in hand. It's like peanut butter and jelly. You rarely think about one without thinking about the other. And if you've been around church for a while or you know scripture, you're a follower of Jesus, familiar with the story of Jonah, you obviously know that there is a large fish, a big fish. We assume it was a whale, this is the biggest fish we can think of, so we just call it a whale. At some point during the narrative, you know this. He got swallowed by this big fish, this whale, and lived inside this whale for three days and three nights. If you're familiar with the story, if you know the story, it makes sense. It doesn't seem that far-fetched. If you're not a follower of Jesus, if you're not a church person, if you're just kind of new to this whole thing first, I'm really glad you're here. I think you've got uh we've got something that is going to be really helpful for you to hear today. But another thing that is probably happening is one of two things. You're thinking, okay, I may can get on board with the fact that this person was swallowed by a fish, as you say. Uh I'm nothing else, I'm intrigued. Or the other thing you're thinking is, I knew these Christians were crazy, and I cannot believe this person that I'm sitting next to made me come. There's the door if you need to go. I promise, stick around because I really do think that this is gonna be really helpful, regardless of where you land on the spectrum of faith. Because, as we're gonna see, the story of Jonah is not just about the whale. It's not just about the whale. We're actually gonna get to that next week. I'm teasing it out right now. We're not even gonna talk about the whale today. There is something so much more significant at the beginning of the story of Jonah that we're gonna talk about. And what I think you're gonna see, what we're gonna find together, is that Jonah is a story about a guy who tries to run from what God has called him to do. At its core, Jonah is a story about a guy who tried to run away, to get away, to be disobedient from something that God had called him to. What we're also gonna see is that Jonah is a story about God's inconceivable compassion. God is so compassionate towards all of us, and not just those of us who prescribe to faith, not just those of us who follow Jesus. There is not a human alive that God doesn't have compassion toward, not a human alive that God doesn't see as being created in his own image that he will chase after, that he will pursue, that he loves. And it's not just the people who love him back, it's everyone, even the people that maybe you and I don't like. It's also a story about God's gracious, and I do mean gracious second chances. You don't have to raise your hand, but how many of us have benefited from God giving us a second chance? I have benefited from second, third, fourth, sometimes fifth chances. God is incredibly gracious and incredibly kind. The story of Jonah touches on that kindness. The story of Jonah is also a story about how God can and will accomplish his purposes in our lives and through our lives. Whether we acknowledge them or not, whether we want him to or not, he is going to accomplish his purposes in our lives. You see, the whale that we talk about when we talk about Jonah is really just a part of the larger story. It's a part of the bigger narrative. The story of Jonah intersects with each of us to some degree, regardless of our faith story, regardless of whether we even have faith in God. So today, as you might imagine, we're diving into a series for the next several weeks on Jonah. We're gonna be looking at the story of Jonah and what we can learn from this narrative. And what I think you're gonna find is that there is an intersection of your life and Jonah's life, this prophet from the Old Testament from thousands of years ago, that I think you're going to see a little bit of yourself in his story. So I want to dive right in. We're gonna be in the book of Jonah, chapter one. If you've got a Bible, we'd love to invite you to follow along. If you've got a physical Bible or you've got a device, that's great. Uh if you need a Bible, if you don't have a Bible, we would love to put a Bible in your hand. There's some tables in the back of the room. Please feel free to stand up, go grab one. Uh, if you've used one of our Bibles before and you've ever thought, this is really small print. I cannot read this. We agreed with you, and so we got bigger print Bibles. So now you can actually read them, and we would love for you to take that as our gift to you if you need one. But we'll be in chapter one, verse one. It says this the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amitai. Now, when it says it came to Jonah, Jonah was a prophet. Jonah was a prophet, and prophets in those days were essentially the spokespersons, the spokespeople of God. God would speak to these prophets, and these prophets would then go and give his message to those around him. So God's speaking to Jonah. Came to Jonah, son of Amitai, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me. Now, a very clear directive from God. God's looking at Jonah and saying, I need you to go do this for me. I need you to go preach against it. This prophet that I that I love, Jonah, I need you to go preach against the city because they're so wicked, and it's come up before me. They've gone astray, and I want you to help bring them back. Now, what do we know about the city of Nineveh? Well, we know that the city of Nineveh was a part of the Assyrian Empire. These were sworn enemies of Israel. They were kind of the worst of the worst. They were the worst enemies of Israel. What we know about Nineveh is that they were incredibly brutal. The Ninevehes were notorious for their unusually violent and cruel behavior. Think anything, maybe the worst kind of period pieces you've seen with the violence, it's that times 10. I could tell you a little bit about what they did. I think it would honestly just be a bit of a distraction. So if you want a history lesson a little bit later today, just go Google the Ninevehs to give you an idea of just how bad they were and how badly they were thought of. Another book in the Old Testament, the book of Nahum, uh, called them the City of Blood. Nineveh was known as the City of Blood. This was a brutal, brutal people. So, point being, Jonah had every reason to not like these people. He had every reason to distrust what God was asking him to do. He did not want to go to Nineveh. So let's see how Jonah responds in verse 3. 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. So Jonah, a prophet, gets this very clear directive of something he needs to go do, something God wants him to do. And what does he do? He runs away. And he doesn't just run away a little bit, he runs away a lot. Okay? Nineveh, where he was, or where he was being called to go, was east of where he was, right? So he was being called to go east. Instead, he decided to go west. So he wanted to go in the complete, literal, complete opposite direction of where God was calling him to go. And it wasn't just a little bit far away. For them in those days, what their maps indicated to them is that Tarshish was about as far away, about as far west as you could go. They essentially thought that was the edge of the earth, literally. So not only did he not want to go east, he went as far in the opposite direction as he thought he could go. It would be like me asking you to make a trip over to Savannah and you deciding to go to Australia. It's an incredibly different task. And to put this a little bit more bluntly, the fact that he was called to go to Nineveh would have been on land, just like our trip over to Savannah would be on land, relatively easy, relatively quick. He decided to go to Tarshish, which was to get on a boat and sail across the ocean. So a completely different picture. It's hard to overstate just how much Jonah was like, I'm out, I'm not doing this, I'm gonna go as far away as I possibly can. Now, it's easy for us, it would be easy for us on this side of the story, especially those of us who know kind of where this narrative goes, to look at that and knowing how it ends, how it turns out, to kind of go, what's the deal, Jonah? Like, why would you not just go where God's called you to go? Be obedient. He gave you a very clear directive, just follow it. He obviously has a plan, just go with it. But before we begin to throw shade at Jonah, I want us to pause for a moment and just maybe look inward a little bit, because isn't it true that there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us? There is a little bit of Jonah in all of us. Isn't it true that there are things in life that we run from? There's things in life that God has called us to, maybe that God has instructed us to do, maybe that we've read in scripture a certain way we know we should act, behave, and we kind of go in the opposite direction. It doesn't seem like it's that harmful for a while. So we kind of run from it. Maybe for you it's something really big in your life that you've just said, you know what, I know I'm supposed to be obedient to this, but I just don't want to do it. I think there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us. And like I'm not saying that avoiding the dentist is unbiblical, okay? I'm not talking about avoiding those things in life, the normal things that we don't like. But I do think most of us have avoided God on some level. There's always an escape route, there's always an escape patch, right? There's always a parachute, a ripcord to pull, there's always another way out. And so Jonah gets on this boat looking for his way out. He heads toward Tatarshish in the complete opposite direction. But God's not quite ready to let him go. And so I want us to dig in a little bit further. Avoidance always has a price tag, right? We talked about this. Avoidance always has a price tag. I want us to see what this is gonna cost Jonah in verse 4. It 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. A violent storm, a great wind. Now we know that God created this storm. We believe that scripture is true. We know that God created this storm as it says, and I want to pause there for a minute because I think this can lead to a very natural question for most of us. And the question that we might want to be asking right now is okay, so God created this storm. I've been in a storm before in my life. Does that mean that God creates all of the problems that we experience? It's a very normal question to ask, very fair question to ask. I do believe that God allows things in our lives to happen. Does he cause all of them? Probably not. In fact, over the course of my life and over the course of ministry and just studying and what we've learned over the course of time, I believe that there's probably several different types of storms. I mean, we could probably name multiple of these, but for the sake of today, I want to talk about four very quickly, uh, just four storms that I think we can find ourselves in. See if these maybe sound familiar to you. The first one is just simply storms of a broken world. They're storms of a broken world. If you're a follower of Jesus, if we go all the way back to the book of Genesis, we know that Adam and Eve chose to eat fruit that God had told them not to eat. He had forbidden them from eating it. As soon as they disobeyed, as soon as disobedience came on the scene, sin came with it. And so as a result, we've been dealing with it ever since. And so we live in a broken world. We live in a fallen world. Just open up the your favorite news app or turn on the television. You can see countless examples of the fallen world, the broken world that we live in. And sometimes the storms that we find ourselves in are just a direct result of that. Second kind of storm that I think we can find ourselves in are storms of consequence. Right? Storms of consequence. Very similar to storms of a broken world, but these are the ones that we have created essentially ourselves. Right? It's kind of that old adage, you made your bed, now you got a lie in it. We make a decision, we make a choice, we go in a certain direction, we get engaged in something that we shouldn't get engaged in, whatever that mess is that maybe we've created, well, now there's consequences to those actions. And at times we find ourselves in storms of our own consequences. It's often that we find ourselves in storms of other people's consequences as well. And I want to be really clear about that. Sometimes you didn't even make the mess. Sometimes you're dealing with the fallout from someone else's mess. A third kind of storm is a storm of opposition. This is one that we don't really talk about a lot. I think we should probably talk about it a little bit more. We have a very real enemy. If you're a follower of Jesus and we are in a very real spiritual battle, we have a very real enemy that scripture tells us his sole purpose, his sole goal is to steal, kill, and destroy. It's not a great agenda, and that's coming against us often, trying to separate us from other followers of Jesus, trying to separate us from God Himself. Storms of opposition. Sometimes we find ourselves in a storm that a very real enemy has created to throw us off track. And then the fourth storm, it's a storm of God. And this is the kind that I believe that we find our friend Jonah in. Jonah is caught in a storm of God. And those storms are the ones that we look at at times and we realize that God will allow those to happen. And yes, I believe he will cause those to happen, oftentimes in an effort to kind of bring us back. We've begun to drift a little bit, and it's going to let me just, you're kind of veering off course. Let me just uh let me just intersect here with your life, and let's just bring you back and let's get you going back in the right direction. As hard as it might be to see sometimes, especially when we're in them, those storms, I believe, are an extension of God's grace toward us. I believe often they're an extension of God's grace toward us, and we know in this circumstance it was an extension of God's grace toward Jonah. What we see in this narrative is that Jonah had given up on God. He had given up on God. He got a very clear directive from God, and he said, No, I'm I'm not doing that. I'm I'm going in the other direction. Don't want any part of this. But what we see throughout this narrative is that God hadn't given up on Jonah. He hadn't given up on Jonah. And so the storm comes up because he needs to get Jonah's attention and get him back on track. Continuing now in verse 5. All the sailors were afraid, and each cried aloud to his own God. And they threw cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. Jonah has created a mess, and he is nowhere to be found. He's completely oblivious. You've got seasoned sailors, an entire ship terrified of what's happening. They're terrified. These are seasoned sailors, and they have no idea how to respond to what's going on. They're throwing cargo overboard, they're praying to every single God that they've ever heard of, trying to figure out how to get out of this. Verse 6 continues The captain went to and said and said, How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God. Get up and call on your God. Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish. Then the sailors said to each other, Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity. And they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. A couple of things happening here. First, the the captain, I I probably would have used stronger language, but goes to Jonah. He's like, What are you doing, man? What are you why are you sleeping? Okay, look, we've all called on our gods. That's not working. Can you try yours? Maybe he'll pick up the phone when you call. Can you do something? And then the sailors gather around and they want to cast lots to kind of figure out who's responsible for this. Like who did something wrong that we're now enduring this? Casting lots in that day was kind of like if you think about in our culture, uh drawing straws or uh rolling the dice. The mystical side of this for them then, though, was that they would look at this as kind of a almost like tempting God. Like, we're gonna we're gonna cast these these lots, we're gonna figure this out, and we're gonna this we're gonna allow God to use this to kind of show us who's at fault or make a decision for us. They really believed that their God would intervene in whatever that was. So it would be like us looking at drawing the short straw and assuming that God's gonna intervene to make someone draw this short straw on our behalf because of what we want, our own agenda. So they're casting lots in this, and it falls on Jonah, or falls toward Jonah. Verse 8 continues. So they asked him, they're now looking at Jonah, feeling very clearly that he is responsible for this. Uh tell us who is responsible for making all this trouble for us. Like, what have you done? Where have you gone? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you? Jonah looked at him and he answered. He said, I'm a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. So he's initially, he's now right out of the gate saying, I am, I worship the God that made all of the things that we're now afraid of. This terrified them, and they asked, What have you done? Now we get this little addendum here. This they knew he was running away from the Lord because he had already told them so. But can you imagine being in that situation? You're one of these sailors and you're looking at him like, What have you done? Why have you done this? What have you done that has caused this to come upon us? We talked about this a moment ago. Avoidance comes with a price tag, it comes with a cost. Jonah's private rebellion has now put every person on that boat in danger, everyone in danger. And not just their lives, but their livelihoods, the people around them, their families. There are ripple effects when we do this. When we run from what we are supposed to do, there is a ripple effect. You can be sure. You can be sure. If you go out to the lake and you throw a boulder out in the lake and those ripples go far and they go far and they go all the way to the shore, it rarely only affects us. When we run, when we avoid, when we do something that we're not supposed to do, when we're disobedient, when we sin, it rarely simply affects us. There is a ripple effect. Now every sailor on that boat is in danger because of Jonah's disobedience. Verse 11 says this. 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? What should we do to you? We need the sea to calm down. Your God is allowing this to happen. So what do we need to do to you in order to get him to stop punishing us? And Jonah offers a really strange solution in verse 12. He says this. He looks at them, he says, Pick me up and throw me into the sea, and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you. This is so significant because for the first time, Jonah is actually beginning to take some ownership of what he has caused. He looks at them in full vulnerability and transparency and says, Yeah, this is my fault. This one's on me. And that's the first step often in beginning to change the narrative of what we find ourselves in, isn't it? To actually name it, to actually say something about it. You see, you can't change what you refuse to acknowledge. You have no hope of changing anything in your life if you're not even willing to acknowledge what it is. And the crazy thing about this, to just get an example, an idea of how far our hearts can go in rebellion in order to get what we want. Jonah looks at these sailors and he's like, just throw me overboard. I would just rather die. I don't, I mean, I've caused this massive problem. I don't want to obey what God has called me to do. I don't want to live this life. I certainly don't want this storm to impact you guys any longer. Just throw me over. He would rather die than obey. And if I could be so bold, I don't know what everyone in here is carrying with them. I don't know how this lands with you, but I do want to acknowledge if you're in that dark place right now, if you're in a place where you're looking around and you're thinking, you know what? Everybody in my life would just be better off if I wasn't here. If, like Jonah, you're thinking that life would be better if you just got thrown overboard. That's not what God wants for you. That's not what God has for you. I don't think it's an accident that you're here today to hear this message, to be encouraged. I want you to hear me. God is not done with you yet. He's not done with you yet. He's got an incredible plan for your life. He's got an incredible plan for your life. He'll allow you to run. Maybe you're running right now. He'll allow you to run for a period of time, but he will pursue you. And he may even bring a storm up in your life to gently pull you back in the right direction. Not to punish you, not to hurt you, not to harm you in any way, but because he loves you. Look, it's so easy for us to believe. When we get in places like this, it's so easy for us to believe that we've done too much, that we've gone too far, or maybe we've run too far for too long. You don't know what I've done, you don't know where I've been, you don't know the things I've seen. You don't know what's been done to me. It's so easy to get in that place. I just want you to know. God's not finished with you yet. He has got an extraordinary plan for your life. And I want you to pay close attention to the remainder of this story, and I want you to come back next week because it gets even better. I want you to see how God responds, how God loves Jonah and how much he loves you. There is no amount of depth, there is no amount of sin, there is no amount of distance that can come between you and God that he won't chase, that he won't pursue. Verse 13, kind of wrap up our narrative for today. Instead, this is instead of throwing him overboard initially, instead, the men did their best to row back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. Then they cried out to the Lord, not to their God, not to one of the many gods they had been praying to, but the God of Jonah, the God that we serve, the God that loves us. They cried out to the Lord, please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man's life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased. Then they took Jonah and they threw him overboard. In the raging sea, just as Jonah said it would, it grew calm. At this, the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him. This is incredibly significant. These sailors are doing everything they can, but eventually they run out of options and they realize, you know what, we're gonna have to do what Jonah has asked us to do. We're gonna have to throw this guy overboard. But they're praying to our God. God, we're doing what you believe, what we believe that you have asked Jonah to go overboard. We're doing this for him. Please don't punish us. And when they see that the sea grew immediately calm, they praised him. They made vows to him. This is so significant because the very people that Jonah was trying to avoid going to Nineveh to minister to are the same kind of people who are on this boat. These are pagan sailors, pagan outsiders, not the kind of people that Jonah would have been spending a lot of time with. The very people that Jonah assumes are so far from God end up responding to God more quickly than Jonah did. I mean, think about that for a minute. The very people that Jonah was trying to avoid, the very people that he was like, God, I really don't want to go. I don't want to minister to these people. I'm not really concerned with outsiders, I just want to go in another direction. He's being disobedient. The very ones that he thought would be disobedient are now obeying. They're yielding to God's plan. They're getting in alignment with God faster than Jonah does. And what that tells us, what that tells us is that God never wastes a moment. God doesn't waste our worst moments, does he? He works through them. He doesn't waste our worst moments. This is arguably Jonah's worst moment. He's disobedient. He's assuming that he's going to just end his life. This is his worst moment. And what does God do? He accomplishes something anyway. He accomplishes something through him. He accomplishes something in the lives of these sailors that we never saw coming. That's who God is. That's what God does. God has this incredible, miraculous way of taking all the junk in our lives that we put together and make into this awful, gross, ridiculous mess. And he has this way of smoothing it out and straightening it out and making something beautiful out of something that we have created chaos. He takes our messes and he makes it beautiful. That's who God is. That's what God does, and that's what God does in this moment. So with that, we're going to pause our story about Jonah. We're going to come back next week. I'm going to leave you hanging on that for a moment. But so far, we've learned a lot. We've learned a lot about God. We've learned a lot about us. We've learned a lot about others. So with that in mind, and to wrap us up, I want to ask you a question. It's a very simple question. What are you running from that you should be running to? What is it that you're running from that you should be running to? For some of you, it came to mind immediately. You're like, oh yeah, okay. Shoot. Knew I shouldn't have come today. Right? I mean, you're like, ah, dang it. Now I've got to go do that thing that I've been running away from. I get it, and we're right here with you, and we would love to walk through that with you. For others of you, you're not really sure what that thing is. Maybe nothing's coming to mind. Or maybe you've already on the other side of that equation. Maybe you're about to walk into it and you don't know it yet. For others of you, I would encourage you to maybe ask the same question in a different way. Maybe ask it like this. What is the one thing that you keep that I keep putting off that God keeps bringing back up? What is the one thing? Is there something in my life that I keep putting off that God keeps bringing back up? I'm gonna start yelling in a minute so I can talk over this rain. Goodness gracious. What is the one thing in your life that you keep putting off? And I'm not talking about the bathroom tile that needs to be replaced. Go ahead and replace that. I'm talking about the bigger things in your life. I'm talking about the things in your life that you know you're avoiding and it keeps coming up and it's kind of nagging at you. That difficult conversation that you know you need to have that you really don't want to have, and you've been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. Listen, this week, as I was getting ready for this message, I had to put my money where my mouth is, right? I've been putting off a conversation with we all have bosses, right? I have a boss too, our senior pastor, Chris. We know Chris, we love Chris, but I had a hard conversation that I needed to have with him. At the end of the day, it wasn't that big of a deal. I just really didn't want to have it. But I finally said, you know what? I cannot stand up on this stage with any authority and talk about having a hard conversation if I'm not willing to do it. So I leaned in this week, and you know what? It's like we talked about earlier. I had spent so much mental energy thinking about how this might go and what he might say and how we might navigate this. It was not anywhere close to what I thought it was gonna be. Everything's fine, it's great, not a problem at all. I want to encourage you, if you're putting off that conversation, stop. What are you waiting on? It's not gonna be nearly as bad as you think. You need to have that conversation. Maybe it's a difficult decision. You've been kind of going back and forth trying to make a decision, something you need to start doing, maybe something you need to stop doing, maybe a job decision, maybe a family decision, a financial decision, whatever that is for you. Why are you putting it off? What are you waiting on? You don't need to wait, you don't need to be afraid. Maybe there's a bad habit. You've gotten yourself into a really bad habit lately, and you know it's not what God wants for you. You know it's not God's best. It's time to lay that down. What do you keep putting off? What are you running from? What are you avoiding? What are you delaying? Anything coming to mind for you right now? Maybe it's asking for help. Maybe somebody's meant it to you. You know, it might be good to talk to a counselor. Maybe it would be good to see somebody. Maybe it would be good to talk to a pastor. Maybe you need to go to the church and speak to somebody. You keep putting it off because it's hard. It's hard to raise your hand and say you need help. We live in a culture that we want to be self-sufficient. We want to know that we can handle all of our junk on our own. You're not meant to do that on your own. Ask for help. What does that look like? Maybe you're putting that off. Or maybe the last thing I'll mention is forgiveness. Maybe there's somebody you need to forgive. You know you need to forgive them. And you're just holding off. Let them go. Relieve them of that debt. It's time. You've waited long enough. I know it was painful. I know they hurt you. I know you didn't deserve it. What are you running from? What are you avoiding that God is so plainly putting in front of you? This is something you need to address, and you just simply refuse to do it. That's your homework today. Figure out what that thing is. And I'll give you a couple of hints on kind of what to do with it when you find out what it is. The first thing you've got to do is you've got to name it. You've got to name it. You've got to call it what it is. You've got to write it down somewhere. If you don't know what that thing is, I would encourage you to get on your knees in front of the Lord and pray and ask God to show you. He will show you. If you ask him, if you seek that out, he will show you what that thing is in your life. But you've got to name it. You've got to acknowledge it. Talked about this a moment ago. You cannot change anything if you refuse to acknowledge it. So you've got to name it. Second thing you've got to do, you got to check your boat. You got to check your boat. Jonah was on a boat with a bunch of other people. They had nothing to do with him, but they were caught in his storm. Somebody else is caught in your storm right now. Somebody else is snagged in your sin. You've got to look around and check your boat. Where are the ripple effects going? How far are they going? It's not a matter of if they are there. They are. It's just a matter of how far the fallout is. You got to check your boat. The third thing you need to do is you've got to tell somebody. You got to tell somebody. You got to tell somebody. I can't say it enough. You were never meant to try and do this alone. You don't need to do this alone. We say this all the time. Life is better connected. The reason we say that is because it's true. It's not just a good saying. We believe that life is better connected. Your faith needs friends. You need to be around people who are going to spur you on, hold you accountable when you need accountability, love you and support you when you're down. Celebrate life's good things when things are going well. You need somebody in your life like that. If you don't have somebody in your life like that, wow, the rain just completely went away. Quickly as it came. If you don't have somebody like that in your life, we want to help you find somebody. Small group, a volunteer team, please come talk to me. Whatever you need. If you've got a spouse, a coworker, a friend, whoever that is, you need to tell somebody. You need somebody in your life that you can look at and you can raise your hand just like Jonah did and say, Yeah, this is my fault. Yeah, that's on me. I did this. I've gotten myself into this mess. I've got to say it out loud to somebody. Jonah stood in front of those other sailors and took ownership of it. He took ownership, and we've got to take ownership. You've got to tell somebody. You don't need to do this by yourself. And then the last thing is you just take a step. Just take a step. I don't want to minimize this. I don't want to say that this is easy to do. It's not. It's not. If you've ever walked through something like this, you know that. My prayer is you're on the other side of it, and maybe you can help someone else who's walking through it right now. But just take a step. What would it look like for you to take a step? Not to solve the whole thing today, not to get everything right back where it needs to be, not to get all the way back on track. But that storm you're facing, whatever it is, what would it look like to just take one step to begin to move away from it? To begin to move back in the direction that God has called you to be. What if you stop trying to make sense of all of it? What if you stop trying to make excuses? It's very easy for us to make excuses. We can explain it away. Well, I'm only doing this because X, or I'm only doing this because Y. That's easy. It's easy for us to do it. Stop striving, stop running, and instead start asking. Ask people around you, what do you see in me? Start praying. Ask God. God, what is it that I'm doing that I need to stop? Where am I running when I don't need to be running? Where do I need to run toward you? Start running toward all the things that God has for you. See, the beautiful part of this first portion of the narrative of Jonah is that we see very plainly, time and time again, that God wasn't done with Jonah. He wasn't done with Jonah, and he's not done with you. God wasn't done with Jonah. And he's not done with you. The very last verse in chapter one is where we're going to stop today. And it says this, verse 17. Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. The fish is coming next week, and we'll talk about that. And God's got something incredible for us in the midst of that story that I can't wait to share. The fish is coming next week, but first, before the fish, there had to be the storm. And sometimes the storm is the most merciful thing that God can do. The storm that you're facing right now may be the most merciful thing that God can do. Name it. Tell somebody. And then just take a step. That's what Jonah modeled for us. That's the way of Jesus. Let's let that be our way as well. I'd love to pray for us. Heavenly Father, we just um God, thank you that thousands of years later, uh, you can still use the story of a prophet named Jonah to encourage us, to inspire us, to challenge us, to convict us. God, I pray that wherever this lands today, that you would just give us wisdom to know exactly what to do with it, Father. And God, above all, right now, I just say thank you. Thank you for the fact that you never stop coming after us. You never allow us to get too far. We're never too far for you to find us. You pursue us, you chase us, you love us. And even for the storms that maybe some of us are walking through right now, we say thank you. Because we know that it's your grace extended to us to bring us back, to get us back on track, to get us back in alignment with you, in obedience to you, Father. So, God, would you just give us wisdom wherever this lands, whatever it is that we need to do, would you give us the courage to name it? Would you give us the courage to check the boat around us, to see the ripple effects? Would you give us courage to raise our hand and tell somebody about it? And then would you give us wisdom to know what step we need to take to begin to get back on track, Father? God, we love you. As always, we thank you for this incredible time of worship, time to gather in this space, to sing to you, to worship you, to hear your word spoken. And we pray that you would just do in our hearts what you want to do now. We pray this in Jesus' name.