We concluded our SeeWorld series this week as we examined the fourth and final chapter of Jonah. In it, we find Jonah's unlikely response to Nineveh's repentance found in chapter three. Jonah just wants to die! He reveals for us his fear from the very beginning - that God would be as merciful to the people of Nineveh as he has been to Jonah and his fellow Israelites. Jonah is not comfortable with that fact.
What makes you uncomfortable about the Gospel? What gives you comfort when the city around us continues to move farther and farther from God? What can we do to move beyond our comfort zones and see the city the way that God sees the city?
5 comments:
I don't know about everyone else, but the thing that sometimes makes me uncomfortable is that the Gospel allows the most vile and evil people to, despite all their wickedness, find redemption through Christ.
I think that the best way for us to shake this, and to really see the Metroplex, particularly the area around us, is to move outside our circles of exclusively Christian relationships and begin to form more and more relationships with those outside of faith.
I'm not sure I see a city moving farther and farther from God. I see God moving into the city. I'm not sure the city is aware of it. But God is working everywhere. Calling to people. Sending those of us who know Him out there in every interaction we have every day.
I once heard TD Jakes say that he'd been reading the story in the Gospels of the feeding of the 5,000 all wrong. He said for years he thought his congregation was the 5,000 and that he was feeding them. He said one day God revealed to him that his congregation wasn't the 5,000, it was the 12. You know. The disciples. The ones with the baskets. Jesus created the food, but the 5,000 actually got fed through them carrying the baskets of bread to the people.
At Crosspointe, we get to be the 12. And it occurs to me that carrying bread isn't nearly as stressful as preaching destruction.
Yep, I'm totally into carrying bread.
Being one of the twelve may not be as stressful, but it leaves us open to being skeptical. The Twelve were, based on the text, incredulous of Jesus' instructions. If CrossPointe is like the Twelve, I wonder if we're equally incredulous about what we're being instructed to do now?
I love both of your insights. I love the thought of God moving into the city. That is the message of Jonah.
As for the disciples versus the masses, I love TD Jakes perspective. We are the twelve no doubt in my mind. Does that make us any less incredulous? I doubt it. In fact, that may be part of what God is teaching us - to believe that He is moving into the city and desires to use us to accomplish His Divine plan.
I don't think it's a matter of us being less incredulous at all. Rather, I think we are very well AT LEAST as incredulous as the disciples. It's easy to think that God can't or won't perform miracles as large as the feeding of the 5000 in our time. Our American culture seems to like being cessationalist, thought most won't talk about it. But look at overseas...there miracles this large are expected. Miracles like this take place.
Perhaps we get into such a fixation with logic and reason in the American church that we leave no room for the miraculous to be done?
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