Pursued by Mercy | What Happens When You Stop Trying to Outrun God’s Love

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[music: That's Who My God Is]

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- Hey everyone! My name is Emily.

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I'm the Crossroads Anywhere student pastor.

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And if you didn't know, this church gathers

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across the globe and communities just to get closer to God.

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And it is that simple.

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And I'm so glad that you have joined us this week

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because we're celebrating life change.

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We believe that the Bible speaks truth, and life

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and lives have been and will continue to be changed

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because of its epic stories.

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You're about to hear a story of a man named Jonah

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who time after time was running away from God,

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so far, he even found himself in the belly of a whale.

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So if you've ever felt far from God,

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I'm so glad that you're here.

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Just as God did for Jonah,

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I know my God is going to meet you right where you are.

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So do me a favor, here's a challenge:

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Pause, take a deep breath, lean in,

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and let these lyrics tell you that

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you're never too far gone to feel God's love.

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- God is doing amazing things here at Crossroads,

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but the most amazing and the most beautiful

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is what He's doing in each of your individual hearts.

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And we've heard from our community that

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when they go outside of the buildings

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or the walls that they meet in,

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maybe it's your living room or a coffee shop.

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When you go outside, your faith is stretched and grown

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and you become more connected with God.

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Well, good news, Go Trips for 2026 are up and available.

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We have our sign ups available at crossroads.net

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for you to check it out.

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If you're interested in going outside your comfort zone,

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experiencing adventure like you've never have before,

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this is for you.

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When I've gone on a Go Trip

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I have never left the same way I went in.

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I've always gone out with more friends

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in the group of people that I went with,

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connected to God in a way that I didn't expect.

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And I've seen more of the world

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that just left me in awe and wonder

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of how big and bold His creation is.

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So you won't want to miss it.

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I want this for you and go sign up on our website.

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Another exciting thing that's coming up is Revival.

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Revival is back and happening October 31-November 2,

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and I can't wait to see you there.

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Last year I went, it was amazing.

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But I guarantee you that this year is going to be

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bigger and better because we know that

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Jesus goes where He's wanted.

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And as a church, we have asked and we will receive.

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Jesus is going to show up in your heart

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on Base Camp land on October 31st and November 2nd.

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And this isn't just for the people in our buildings.

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This is also for people in our Anywhere communities,

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no matter where you live.

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And we know that it requires effort

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for you to travel far and wide to get here.

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And we want to make that easy for you.

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We want to break the barriers down

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so that you can experience community in person

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this one time of year with people

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who are experiencing Crossroads the same way you are.

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So if you're traveling, we'll pick you up from the airport.

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You don't have camping gear.

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You don't want to shove it into a checked bag.

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We'll provide it for you.

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We have a special spot on the land just for you

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to bond with the community around you

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and experience Jesus in a remarkable way.

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So for more information,

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check out Crossroads.net/Revival.Anywhere.

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And one of the most powerful ways to see

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God move around here is through generosity.

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Not only does it spark movement in your own faith,

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but it allows you an opportunity

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to see God move in your finances that maybe

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you never had even known was possible before.

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This past fall, we kicked off something called the 10X Push,

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where people in our community have stepped up

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to give above and beyond what they normally do

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to see God's impact grow times ten.

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And guess what? It's already happening.

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This is something that you can also be a part of.

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It's never too late to join.

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So let's hear a story from a couple in our community

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about how they've experienced God show up

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in their finances through the 10X Push.

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- My name is Dave Beckman.

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- I'm Tracy Beckman, and I'm his better half.

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And we've been married 49 years. - Mhm.

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- We grew up Catholic

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and when we walked away from the Catholic Church

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we had nowhere else to go.

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So we actually ran after the American Dream.

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You know, the job and you know the big TV and the fast car.

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And we had a friend invite us to Crossroads.

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And I always felt Jesus in my heart,

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though I didn't know I could really have

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a relationship with Him,

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until we went to Crossroads and heard that.

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- I went kicking and screaming a little bit.

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I had no real interest at that point

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in getting involved in something like this.

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But, um, the reality is it was like

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the best decision we have made.

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And we started in the summer of 2003, the spring of 2004.

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We ran the 10k at the Flying Pig.

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And I collapsed at the finish line with sudden cardiac death.

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- Through that, the church, the community,

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the church family just engulfed us

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in their arms and their love.

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- It just taught us so much about the faithfulness of God,

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the support of the community.

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It gave us an opportunity to consider

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giving back at a higher level.

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I mean, we are the trajectory of our faith journey

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at that point, just like skyrocketed.

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- Because of his sudden cardiac death,

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we didn't think he'd be able to handle all the yard work.

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So we moved to a condo in Mason.

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And it was really cool because they were

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just starting up a launch team,

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and we were invited to be on that team.

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And we just dove in, you know,

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whatever you need, give it to us. We'll handle it.

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- We did reach out. We did the prayer team.

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We did set up, tear down.

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We had our hands pretty much everywhere

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to get that site running.

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- And it was beautiful. - It was great.

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We were there about five years, um,

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and things seemed great.

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And Tracy came home one day and said,

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"I feel like God wants us in Columbus."

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And I'm like, "What?"

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There are a lot of really great churches in Columbus,

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and we probably hit half of them,

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you know, just church shopping.

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And over the course of probably a year plus after we moved,

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uh, you know, we just come to realize

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our hearts are with Crossroads.

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So that happened kind of about the same time

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Crossroads was starting to look at

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expanding outside of Cincinnati.

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We thought, that's a great idea.

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That's the best thing we can do

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is create Crossroads in Columbus to satisfy us.

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But really to grow the Kingdom.

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So we started inviting a few people

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that we met early on into our basement.

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And essentially we have service there every weekend.

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People are inviting others.

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We did some semblance of a Thanksgiving Food Drive.

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We were trying to basically reproduce

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what our experiences have been in Mason and Oakley.

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We had 22 people or so showing up at our house

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every weekend, and we had two baptisms in our hot tub.

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- We got a phone call from somebody at Oakley

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and they said, "Go for it. Just keep it up.

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Go for it, keep it up."

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And like they said, they were very supportive.

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- When 10X came around and expansion was, you know,

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one of the territories that God had given us.

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Did that excite you guys?

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- My first feeling was, wow, this was really big.

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Almost felt too big, but then I know Crossroads,

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and Crossroads can do big things.

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And then the second thought was

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I am so happy Columbus is part of that.

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- We've been praying for a building.

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We've been praying for a community that grows.

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Now our prayer is that this building becomes Oakley,

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and we have all kinds of little churches around Columbus.

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- This place is on its way to big things.

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And, you know, we'll be there,

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but we'll also be dealing with these issues, too.

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I mean, you look back and I still wonder to this day

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why we're in Columbus.

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But look at Crossroads Columbus.

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We have the best medical team through LSU

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that anyone can ask for.

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You know, there's just so many good things

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about coming here that have played out.

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You have to look for those good things

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no matter what's going on in your life.

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- I hope that my legacy is that people

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can see how Jesus worked in our life,

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and that we've always been joyful and grateful.

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I mean, I think that's a pretty big legacy.

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- For somebody who was maybe where you were

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when you first started saying yes to God,

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what would you say to somebody that was,

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you know, 20 years behind you?

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-It's not an audible voice.

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It's as simple as a nudge.

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It's as simple as a thought.

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And if you have it, go for it.

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See what happens. Do bold things.

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Go out and love the community and be a part of it.

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We look around now and we're amazed and we're so grateful.

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And we're looking for more. Just looking for more.

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- I love that story.

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My name is Ali, and it's great to be with you.

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I had the pleasure of interacting with Tracy

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at a women's event I did up in Columbus a few months back.

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And she wouldn't hear of missing it.

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And we're sitting there together talking,

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and she just got really hot

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and didn't look well for a second.

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Then she pulled off her wig and she goes,

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"I don't want this thing anymore. You take it

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because it'll remind you to pray for me."

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So I have her wig.

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And it's amazing to hear their story

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about just continuing to follow Jesus

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wherever He leads them.

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It reminds me of how satisfying it felt for me

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and for my family to also be a part of

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the first handful of people that many years ago,

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started asking and dreaming and praying

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that there would be a site on the east side,

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close to our friends and our family,

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which is now a thriving site of Crossroads today.

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Maybe sitting right here in here are people

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who will follow God into a new site or a new city,

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and be part of a team

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that plants a brand new Crossroads site.

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You just never know where Jesus is going to lead.

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I love that story because it is about them following God.

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But today we are actually going to jump into

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a Bible story that's about a guy who did the opposite.

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He actually ran from God.

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His name was Jonah.

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Now, probably you've heard of Jonah,

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and I'll bet if I asked you the one thing

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you remember that's in the story of Jonah,

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you would tell me it's a whale, right?

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That's, of course, what we all know

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about the story of Jonah,

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and that's what we were all taught,

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was the most epic thing in the story.

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I remember learning that story, and I was thinking,

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"Where was the first time I heard that story?"

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I think it was way back in a Sunday school class

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where they would put things up on a felt board.

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Do you remember the felt board's. Not very epic.

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The whale was not very epic on the felt board,

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but I learned the story went something like this.

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I learned that the story of Jonah was like,

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somehow this guy gets tossed overboard of a ship

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and a giant whale comes up and swallows him.

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And because God is awesome,

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He made the whale spit Jonah out on the beach.

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And he lived. Amazing.

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And Jonah lived happily ever after, I guess.

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I don't really know where the story went after that.

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I'm not really sure what the beginning of it was.

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I guess I really didn't know the story very well,

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and I think that's where a lot of us

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are probably walking into the story of Jonah today.

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And I want you to leave knowing that

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what's epic about this story is not the whale.

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And that the story of Jonah actually leads us

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straight to the baptisms that are going to happen

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right here in all our communities, right here today.

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The story of Jonah, the epic thing about it

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is that no matter how far he ran,

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he couldn't outrun the mercy of God.

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The most epic thing about the story of Jonah

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is the mercy of God that he encounters.

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And I hope by the end of our time together

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you're thinking, "If it's big enough

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for all the people in this story,

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it's definitely for me too."

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Let me pray for us.

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Lord, I ask that You would make Your mercy

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apparent to everyone in here today.

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That in some way that we haven't understood

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or imagined to receive Your mercy,

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that we would do that deeply and freshly today.

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In Jesus's name, Amen.

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Well, Jonah was a prophet.

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The book of Jonah is actually only four short chapters.

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Like, if you went to read it, you'd probably

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be done with it in about 15 minutes.

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It's actually not very hard to read through.

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And he was a prophet and the story is pretty much

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about what God called him to do

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and then what happened after he got his assignment.

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And to put it mildly,

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Jonah was really unhappy with his assignment from God.

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God comes to Jonah and he says,

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"I want you to go to this city called Nineveh,

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and I want you to deliver a message."

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And the message he asked Jonah to deliver was basically this:

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Tell them to stop doing those evil things and repent

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and come, come to Me, or I'm going to destroy their city.

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So you go on and tell them that and tell them I said so."

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And Jonah was so upset.

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And this is when he begins to run from God

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because God wasn't making any sense.

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The reason why really is hidden in the city of Nineveh itself.

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See, that city was the capital city of a nation called Assyria.

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Assyria might still go down in history as one of

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the most brutal, oppressive, just utterly godless nations.

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Jonah had no doubt interpreted Assyria

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as his own personal mortal enemy.

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It certainly was of the nation of Israel.

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They were a looming superpower

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that was very close to Israel at the time.

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And Jonah may well have had friends

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who were killed by people of that nation.

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I mean, this was a looming, oppressive enemy of Israel.

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And this is what God asks him to do.

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And Jonah's like, "Why? Why them? Why me? Why this?

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What the heck, God?"

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God didn't make any sense to Jonah and he ran.

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I like it when God makes sense, actually.

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I like it when things make sense in general.

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I'm a pretty logical person, and I don't know

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if you've ever had this experience

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where you're following the blue line on your GPS

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and suddenly it reroutes you and you're like,

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"Am I going to do that?

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Or do you know something I don't know?

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Should I do what I wanted to do

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and follow the line that was there or take the new one?"

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I had this experience when I was driving to Columbus,

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to a couple hours up on I-71.

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So I'm like most of the way there.

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I'm following a blue line and suddenly it tells me to --

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It pushes my ETA up like 39 minutes

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and takes me on all these country roads.

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And I have a decision to make.

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I'm like, "Does it know something

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or something crazy happening?"

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Because honestly, the blue line has let me down before.

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I put the address in and followed the line

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to like the back of a high school

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that I can't figure out how to get to the front of.

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Or like an empty gravel lot that sort of kind of

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has the same address as the one I put in.

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So the blue line changes on my way to Columbus

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and I'm like, I don't know what to do.

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I'm going to have to make a decision right now.

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There's the exit.

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And I was like, nope. Gonna go my own way.

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So I keep going, and I sat in three hours of traffic.

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The whole highway got shut down.

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There I was thinking my way is the better way.

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I know better. I know what makes sense here.

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And something like this is taking place for Jonah.

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God isn't making any sense.

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What he asks him to do on no level,

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on no theological level, no personal level.

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I mean, his very life would have been at stake.

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And God wasn't making sense to Jonah,

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so he took off and ran.

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And we're going to look at three places

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that Jonah ended up in this story,

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and how he encountered the mercy of God

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in every place he ran.

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The first place that he went was straight into resistance mode.

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He ran into the mercy of God first when he started to resist.

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Here's what happens in the very early part of the book.

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It says:

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Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.

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He went down to Joppa,

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where he found a ship bound for that port.

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After paying the fare, he went aboard

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and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

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That was his goal.

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I want to put as much distance

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between me and God as I possibly can.

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Now, you and I know that that geographic distance from God.

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Does that make sense? I don't know.

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But he was like, there's a God who's telling me

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to do a thing, and I don't want to do it,

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and I'm going to head the other way.

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Now, I really want you to embrace

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just how committed he was to running.

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So I want you to look at this map with me.

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Here's where Jonah started out.

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He started out in the country of Israel.

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That's where he was.

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And it says he went to a port called Joppa.

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But here's Jonah right here.

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Now up here, this is Nineveh. Still a journey.

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We're in the ancient world, right?

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No high speed trains to get on or anything,

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but relatively speaking, a short journey.

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Now, here is what Jonah did.

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He gets on the boat and he heads all the way over here.

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That's pretty far.

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This is not just far. Tarshish, this part of the region

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was actually thought to be the very edge of the world.

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So Jonah so committed to running that he runs as far away.

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He buys a ticket, basically, for as far away from God

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as he can possibly get, like point of no return running.

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That's what Jonah does. That's how Jonah responds.

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He just wanted to put as much distance from God as he could.

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And this is what happens.

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And some of us, maybe not geographically right now,

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but we're pretty far down the path from God.

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Like, somehow, someway, we've ended up

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totally separated from God.

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We're into something that we're running away from

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having to deal with Him on.

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Were just entrenched in all kinds of fears or doubts,

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or we've just said, "No, no, God, no,"

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so many times that this is the kind of distance

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that we're feeling in some way from God.

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I ran from God when I was in college.

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I didn't know I was going to end up in Tarshish.

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I didn't know how far my route

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was going to take me away from God.

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But I'm, I mean, in college, am I right?

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So I go to college, and I had come into

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a relationship with Jesus when I was a junior in high school.

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And I kind of sort of wanted to keep following Him,

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you know, like it would have been good.

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But so I checked out the only campus organization

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that was like a gathering of Christians.

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I gave them one meeting, one hour my freshman year

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and said, hard pass, and never went again all four years.

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I resisted God in such a significant way.

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When I went to gather with like the only people

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I knew how to reach in college, they were thinking,

00:23:31

like, pancakes and PJs at midnight, like a fun party.

00:23:35

And I'm thinking more like togas and bars at midnight, you know?

00:23:38

And I just went, "No, I'm not doing this.

00:23:41

I know better. My friends are more fun.

00:23:44

I'm not going to do it this way, God."

00:23:46

And over the course of those four years,

00:23:48

I pretty much ended up there.

00:23:54

Maybe you have a part of your life, a part of your story.

00:23:58

But the end of my story,

00:24:01

or at least in that phase of my life,

00:24:03

was that God didn't leave me there.

00:24:06

He showed me the same mercy that He shows Jonah in this story.

00:24:10

When we are in resistance mode, when we run from God,

00:24:14

the mercy of God looks like Him coming after us.

00:24:19

God came after Jonah, like, really came after him.

00:24:23

And think about this.

00:24:24

God could have said, "Okay. See ya."

00:24:30

He probably had other options.

00:24:31

He probably could have called someone else

00:24:33

to do the job for him, but instead He pursues Jonah.

00:24:37

He goes after Jonah.

00:24:40

When you run, when you resist God, His mercy to you

00:24:44

is that he comes after you.

00:24:46

We see this theme all through the Bible.

00:24:48

Even Jesus tells stories about about God coming after us.

00:24:51

He tells parables about lost coins and lost sheep,

00:24:54

and a father who runs to a lost son that's coming home again.

00:25:00

This is a massive theme that

00:25:02

God doesn't leave us when we run from Him,

00:25:04

that His mercy is that He comes after us.

00:25:08

And so He comes after Jonah, but He wants something.

00:25:12

When He comes after you, when He came after Jonah,

00:25:15

He wanted something in His pursuit,

00:25:18

and He wanted Jonah back.

00:25:22

So he started pursuing Jonah and giving him mercy to return.

00:25:27

And so the next place we find Jonah

00:25:29

is where he's in this process of returning to God,

00:25:33

and he keeps finding His mercy.

00:25:35

But when we need to make our way back to God,

00:25:38

mercy comes in some very unusual packages, let's say.

00:25:43

So I want to take you into the next part of the story,

00:25:46

where Jonah starts to encounter

00:25:47

what turns out to be the mercy of God.

00:25:51

Jonah 1:4 says:

00:25:53

Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea,

00:25:55

and such a violent storm arose that

00:25:58

the ship threatened to break up.

00:26:02

Now it doesn't say a thing about mercy,

00:26:05

but when we need to return to God,

00:26:07

mercy doesn't come in sweet packages. You know?

00:26:10

We're resisting. We're running.

00:26:12

We're pretty far gone sometimes.

00:26:14

And God pursues Jonah with a storm, like a violent storm.

00:26:19

Not just any storm. A storm in the raging sea.

00:26:22

And I think when we think of the mercy of God, like,

00:26:26

if someone were to just say that word to you,

00:26:29

you would think of sweet things, right?

00:26:32

Like, oh, God's mercy.

00:26:33

And you might think of, like, softness.

00:26:35

Something soft. Right?

00:26:37

Something nice, something comforting.

00:26:39

Maybe something that's going to feel like a hug.

00:26:42

I got to tell you, the mercy that Jonah started to find

00:26:45

did not feel like a hug.

00:26:47

It felt like a violent storm.

00:26:50

Jonah knew the terrible chain of events

00:26:52

that he's about to go through.

00:26:54

He had a sense that it was God.

00:26:56

He was on a boat with some of the people

00:26:59

that he had boarded the ship with,

00:27:01

and the violent storm begins.

00:27:03

And he actually kind of says to them

00:27:05

I know what this is about.

00:27:09

And here's what happens next.

00:27:11

Then they took Jonah and they threw him overboard,

00:27:14

and the raging sea grew calm.

00:27:16

And at this the men greatly feared the Lord,

00:27:18

and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord

00:27:20

and made vows to Him.

00:27:22

Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah,

00:27:27

and Jonah was in the belly of the fish

00:27:30

three days and three nights.

00:27:33

The mercy of returning.

00:27:35

When God offers us the chance to return to Him,

00:27:37

the mercy of returning looks sometimes not sweet.

00:27:41

It looks terrible.

00:27:45

It's the opposite of what we think Mercy's going to be.

00:27:49

But He has to stop us.

00:27:50

He's got to put something in our way.

00:27:52

He has to stop us, pause us,

00:27:54

halt us in our path of running.

00:27:56

And so the mercy of God often looks really uncomfortable.

00:28:00

Jonah encounters God's mercy in a storm,

00:28:04

in a near drowning,

00:28:07

and now, inside the belly of the whale.

00:28:13

Jonah's in the belly of the whale

00:28:14

and he's alive, but barely.

00:28:18

I want you to just imagine for a minute

00:28:21

what would this have actually been like?

00:28:23

Not theoretically, like a fairy tale,

00:28:26

but actually been like in the belly of the whale.

00:28:29

And sometimes the mercy of God feels exactly like this.

00:28:35

It puts us in a place where we can't see a thing.

00:28:39

Jonah wouldn't even have been able to see

00:28:41

his own hand in front of his face,

00:28:44

surrounded by things that are touching us we can't identify.

00:28:47

We're hearing noises we've never heard,

00:28:49

and the walls seem to be closing in on us.

00:28:54

Even the breath you take makes you feel like you can't breathe.

00:28:59

He would have been breathing in acid

00:29:01

that would have been burning his skin.

00:29:06

And the pulsing walls of the belly of the whale

00:29:10

would have tried to push him towards someplace

00:29:14

he probably knew he didn't want to go.

00:29:18

In the dark, unable to breathe, unable to move.

00:29:22

Doesn't know where he is. Doesn't know how to get out.

00:29:24

Can't escape. Can't fix it.

00:29:26

Doesn't know how to save himself.

00:29:29

And there he is in the belly of the whale

00:29:31

three days and three nights.

00:29:34

Not dead. Not done. Just trapped.

00:29:40

Could the belly of the whale be the mercy of God?

00:29:45

Sent not to destroy, but to pause us,

00:29:50

to save us from ourselves.

00:29:51

Not to punish, but to interrupt

00:29:54

the way that we're running from Him?

00:29:56

Is it possible that the darkness and the uncertainty

00:30:00

and the utter terror that Jonah was experiencing

00:30:04

in the belly of the whale could end up

00:30:07

being the mercy of God?

00:30:12

Sometimes that's what it takes to get us to cry out to God

00:30:16

in the way that Jonah did inside the belly of the whale.

00:30:20

These were his words.

00:30:22

- In my distress I called to the Lord,

00:30:26

and He answered me.

00:30:28

From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help

00:30:32

and You listened to my cry.

00:30:35

You hurled me into the depths,

00:30:38

into the very heart of the seas.

00:30:42

And the currents swirled about me.

00:30:44

All Your waves and breakers swept over me.

00:30:48

I said, "I have been banished from your sight.

00:30:53

Yet I will look again toward your holy temple."

00:30:57

The engulfing waters threatened me.

00:31:00

The deep surrounded me.

00:31:02

Seaweed was wrapped around my head.

00:31:05

To the roots of the mountains I sank down.

00:31:08

The earth beneath barred me in forever.

00:31:12

But you, Lord, my God, brought my life up from the pit.

00:31:17

When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord.

00:31:21

And my prayer rose to You, to Your holy temple.

00:31:25

Those who cling to worthless idols

00:31:27

turn away from God's love for them.

00:31:30

But I, with shouts of grateful praise,

00:31:34

will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good.

00:31:39

I will say salvation comes from the Lord.

00:31:47

- Salvation comes from the Lord, that's where Jonah got.

00:31:51

Inside the belly of the whale he cries out

00:31:53

before he got spit out.

00:31:55

He actually comes to the point in the dark,

00:31:58

in the terrible mercy of God.

00:32:01

He somehow arrives at the point where he says to God, okay.

00:32:06

Any life that I have left, it'll only be because You save me.

00:32:11

And that's exactly what God wanted him to understand.

00:32:16

It's exactly why God put him in the belly of the whale,

00:32:19

so that he could come to the point where he understood

00:32:23

it's God who has my life. It's God who saves.

00:32:26

And then here's what it says right after that.

00:32:28

After he cries out to God, it says:

00:32:31

And the Lord commanded the fish,

00:32:33

and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

00:32:36

Did you ever think of the mercy of God as vomit?

00:32:39

That's a new one, right?

00:32:42

He finally got it. He was inside the whale,

00:32:45

the pain, the darkness, it was the mercy of God.

00:32:49

See, we don't get to define mercy.

00:32:51

It's God who says what needs to happen in our life

00:32:56

so that we get to the point where Jonah got to.

00:32:59

And I don't know what that's going to be for you.

00:33:01

It might -- It might not be three nights

00:33:03

and three days in the dark.

00:33:04

Maybe it's three years in the dark.

00:33:07

Maybe it's some other kind of struggle or pain or difficulty.

00:33:13

And all the while, you're blaming God

00:33:15

or you're looking elsewhere for a solution.

00:33:18

And the whole time God is going, "You know what I want?

00:33:21

I just want you to turn to me and say,

00:33:25

'You're the one that can help me out.

00:33:27

You're the one that can save me from this.'"

00:33:30

That is mercy, whatever brings you to that point.

00:33:35

And I've been reading the prophets lately,

00:33:37

and it's fascinating how many times God sends

00:33:39

someone over and over and over with the same message

00:33:43

just saying to His people, "Come back to Me,

00:33:48

stop running from Me, know Me, return to Me,"

00:33:52

over and over and over.

00:33:54

And he's doing the same thing in our life.

00:33:57

He's chasing us down.

00:33:58

It's just that the mercy of God doesn't really look like

00:34:01

we want it to when we've been running from Him.

00:34:05

Instead, it looks a lot more like this.

00:34:09

And God will do whatever He can do,

00:34:13

because His idea of mercy is to get you

00:34:15

to the point where you come back to Him.

00:34:18

That is what mercy is, and yeah, the whale is epic.

00:34:21

And the story about the whale is epic.

00:34:23

But it's only epic, really, because that was the location

00:34:27

that God pushed Jonah to so that he finally got it,

00:34:32

that he finally reached out and said,

00:34:34

"Salvation will only come from You. That's it."

00:34:39

And so when I was a kid,

00:34:41

when Jonah gets spit out onto the beach,

00:34:44

I guess I thought that was the end of the story.

00:34:46

It seems like a good end, right?

00:34:49

Um, and so if you go and read Jonah,

00:34:51

that's really, really not the end.

00:34:54

But it seems like it could be.

00:34:56

So Jonah gets spit back onto the beach,

00:34:59

and there's a good part.

00:35:00

Good part happens here, Jonah, you know, he repents.

00:35:03

God gives him another chance.

00:35:05

He sends him back to Nineveh.

00:35:06

And this time, Jonah goes.

00:35:09

He's obedient to the Lord.

00:35:11

He goes to the city of Nineveh,

00:35:13

and he delivers the message, this really tough message

00:35:17

that would have put his own life at risk.

00:35:19

And Jonah's got it.

00:35:20

He's going to be obedient to God.

00:35:21

And he goes there and he delivers the message.

00:35:23

And wouldn't you know it, it was a success.

00:35:27

The people of Nineveh actually repent.

00:35:30

Unexpected twists in the story, right?

00:35:32

So Jonah is worried about all the things.

00:35:35

And he goes in his mission is a success.

00:35:37

And this would have been another good ending for the story.

00:35:41

And this is also really, really not the end.

00:35:44

Instead, something really strange happens.

00:35:48

Jonah gets real mad at God, like, real mad.

00:35:52

Jonah 4:1 says this:

00:35:54

But to Jonah, this seemed very wrong and he became angry.

00:35:59

So the this that's being referred to

00:36:01

is the saving of all those people,

00:36:04

the fact that they repented,

00:36:06

the mercy that God showed to Nineveh

00:36:09

was what really made Jonah mad.

00:36:13

I was about to say something else.

00:36:16

Just substituted that right in there.

00:36:18

Really made him mad.

00:36:20

And he got mad at the same God who chased him down

00:36:24

and found him and brought him back.

00:36:25

The same God who just saved him

00:36:27

out of the belly of the whale, and the same God

00:36:29

who just made his mission successful

00:36:31

and saved an entire city full of people.

00:36:34

Now try to explain to me, why is Jonah mad?

00:36:38

Jonah's mad because he never wanted them saved.

00:36:46

He was mad at God for saving his enemy.

00:36:50

He was mad at God for not giving them

00:36:53

what he thought they deserved.

00:36:55

This brutal, godless enemy of Israel,

00:36:57

he wanted God to destroy them.

00:36:59

So he gets really mad when God doesn't destroy them.

00:37:03

And he hasn't given up on God destroying them

00:37:05

and so he gets a little object lesson from God.

00:37:11

And it's really, really interesting.

00:37:14

And it makes Jonah face up to the last place

00:37:17

that he finds God in the story, when he's angry

00:37:20

at a piece of God's character, at who God is,

00:37:24

he finds mercy again in reckoning.

00:37:28

Reckoning. We don't use that word enough.

00:37:31

I love it, I'm kind of a word nerd.

00:37:33

And the idea of reckoning is like, um,

00:37:37

reconciling yourself to some kind of unchanging reality.

00:37:42

There's a wall,

00:37:43

there's an unchanging reality that's just true,

00:37:46

and it's not going to change and you reconcile yourself to it,

00:37:51

establish facts that you adjust around.

00:37:55

And so Jonah goes through a reckoning with God

00:37:59

because there's an aspect of who God is and what God did

00:38:02

that Jonah really, really wasn't on board with.

00:38:07

And, you know, God was the unchanging reality

00:38:11

that Jonah kind of ran smack into here.

00:38:13

I've tried to adjust to my own unchanging reality in my life.

00:38:17

I think I'm finally there.

00:38:19

It's taken me a few years, but I have finally

00:38:24

come out from under what I like to call my Michael's delusion.

00:38:28

Now, if you have you been in the store called Michaels?

00:38:31

It's like a crafter's heaven, right?

00:38:34

Some of you just wooed. Awesome.

00:38:39

So Michaels is like a crafters heaven.

00:38:41

Sometimes I'll go in there.

00:38:42

One of my kids will, like, need a specialized art thing,

00:38:46

and we'll go in Michaels for it.

00:38:48

And I start to see all the things and the DIY projects

00:38:53

just they come to me and I start looking around going,

00:38:56

I can do that. I could do that.

00:38:59

I can paint that look.

00:39:00

I can just imagine my fall mantle.

00:39:03

I was just going to glue on some leaves.

00:39:05

I'm going to put some gold dust on the pumpkins.

00:39:07

It's going to be the prettiest thing you've ever seen.

00:39:09

Look at all this. I can do it.

00:39:12

And then I gather up stuff and I buy it, and I take it home.

00:39:15

And 24 hours later, my cat's paw is, like,

00:39:18

glued to a piece of board.

00:39:22

And I'm, like, cussing at the glitter on the toilet seat.

00:39:25

It goes everywhere.

00:39:26

How did it get on the toilet seat?

00:39:29

And I don't know how to get the hot glue off my floor,

00:39:32

because I didn't lay anything on it

00:39:33

when I glued on the leaves.

00:39:35

It doesn't look anything, anything like the picture.

00:39:38

And I finally have decided

00:39:40

I've run into the unchanging reality enough

00:39:44

that I have just decided to reconcile myself to it.

00:39:47

I am not a crafter. I'm not a DIY guru.

00:39:51

I'm never going to be. I don't have it in me.

00:39:54

I can see the vision, I just can't get there on my own.

00:39:57

So I think every time I think I've embraced it,

00:40:00

then I go to your house and you have

00:40:02

a really pretty wreath on your door and you go,

00:40:04

"I made this.

00:40:08

I'll show you how."

00:40:09

And I'm like, okay.

00:40:12

And then we do the whole thing again.

00:40:14

And I go like, "Ugh, I'm done, I'm done.

00:40:17

I'm finally done."

00:40:18

I've run into the wall,

00:40:20

the unchanging reality of who I am a number of times.

00:40:25

And now I think I have finally finished my reckoning.

00:40:28

I am not a crafter. I will never be a crafter.

00:40:31

Stop telling me to do projects with you. I will not.

00:40:35

I'm fully reckoned.

00:40:38

This is what happens, this is the process

00:40:41

that Jonah is going through with God

00:40:43

in the final, very weird chapter and end to this book.

00:40:48

Jonah has to reconcile himself to who God really is.

00:40:53

See, he thought God was one way.

00:40:55

He is grateful that he was saved by God.

00:40:58

He repents. He does his assignment.

00:40:59

But guess what?

00:41:01

He still doesn't like some things about Him,

00:41:04

and he has to reconcile that somehow.

00:41:08

And God allows him the mercy of the time

00:41:12

and the space and the patience and the help

00:41:16

through this reckoning.

00:41:18

God gives him a little object lesson.

00:41:20

This is such a funny little part of the book.

00:41:23

Jonah goes outside the city and he's actually watching.

00:41:28

He stays to watch because he's still hoping

00:41:31

that God will destroy it.

00:41:33

Even though he knows they're repenting,

00:41:35

he goes outside the city and he just sits and watches.

00:41:38

He's like, "You know what?

00:41:39

Maybe God's going to change His mind

00:41:41

and He's going to do what I wanted Him to do.

00:41:43

I think I'll just hang out for a while and see.

00:41:46

So he takes, he sees a plant that God has made grow,

00:41:50

and he takes shade under it, and he's relieved by it.

00:41:54

And God's like, "Oh, you like that? That's great."

00:41:56

He sends a worm.

00:41:57

The worm eats through the bottom of it,

00:41:59

the shade falls over and Jonah's like,

00:42:01

"What are you doing to me, God? What is happening?"

00:42:05

He took away his shade.

00:42:06

And God's like, "Do you understand yet? Do you hear me?

00:42:12

Do you understand that I'm the one who decides? I'm Him."

00:42:16

That's what LeBron says, right?

00:42:18

"I'm Him. My name is literally I AM.

00:42:22

You reconcile yourself to Me.

00:42:24

I'm the one that makes the decisions.

00:42:26

I will give shade to whoever I want.

00:42:30

I will have compassion on whoever I want.

00:42:34

And whether or not you understand Mme,

00:42:37

whether or not you like Me,

00:42:41

you need to reconcile yourself to who I am."

00:42:44

And He tries to help Jonah out.

00:42:46

And actually, we're not really sure if Jonah ever gets there.

00:42:50

Listen to what he says to God.

00:42:52

This cracks me up. It really does.

00:42:55

Yes. Sometimes you can laugh when you read the Bible.

00:42:58

That's me.

00:42:59

You can just imagine me cackling as I read Jonah.

00:43:02

I'm going to use the voice I think he's using with God here.

00:43:04

Are you ready for this?

00:43:05

He goes, "Isn't this what I said,

00:43:07

Lord, when I was still at home?

00:43:10

This is what I tried to forestall

00:43:11

by fleeing to Tarshish.

00:43:13

I knew you were a compassionate and gracious God,

00:43:17

slow to anger, abounding in love,

00:43:19

a God who relents from sending calamity.

00:43:22

Now, Lord, just take away my life.

00:43:23

It's better for me to die than to live."

00:43:28

But the Lord replied, "Is it right for you to be angry?"

00:43:33

Again He pushes Jonah.

00:43:35

Again, He tries to help Jonah understand

00:43:39

you need a reckoning to Me.

00:43:42

You need to understand who I am

00:43:45

because I am the unchanging reality.

00:43:49

And He gives Jonah the time and the help

00:43:52

and the space and the patience to do that.

00:43:55

And He doesn't have to. He really doesn't have to.

00:44:05

And the book ends with the funniest --

00:44:08

I think this might be the oddest end of any book in the Bible.

00:44:11

Are you ready for this?

00:44:13

This is the final verse of the entire book.

00:44:16

You tell me if you think this sounds like an ending.

00:44:19

This is God.

00:44:21

And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh,

00:44:25

in which there are more than 120,000 people

00:44:28

who cannot tell their right hand from their left,

00:44:31

and also many animals?

00:44:35

That's it. End of the book.

00:44:38

What? Are you kidding me?

00:44:40

Some of you are like, "I knew my dog was going to be in heaven.

00:44:44

I knew He saved the animals." You know what I mean?

00:44:46

Like, so what? Why?

00:44:52

I have a love hate relationship with this ending,

00:44:54

because that's not an ending. That's not an ending.

00:44:56

But also, I think the fact that it's undone

00:45:00

just represents what we do with most of our,

00:45:04

we call it growth. We call it spiritual growth.

00:45:09

I'll tell you what we do.

00:45:10

We run into God and we reconcile ourselves to Him.

00:45:13

And then we run into God and we reckon with who He is.

00:45:16

And then we run into God, and we adjust around

00:45:20

the unchanging nature and love and mercy of God,

00:45:25

whether we like it or not.

00:45:27

See, Jonah loved the mercy of God when it was pointed at him.

00:45:32

Even though he spent time in the belly of the whale,

00:45:34

the mercy of God just spit him right out on the beach.

00:45:36

It was great.

00:45:37

But now, now your mercy is going to save people

00:45:40

that I don't know that I don't like,

00:45:43

that I don't agree with?

00:45:45

We fall under this delusion sometimes

00:45:47

thinking that we understand all the thoughts

00:45:50

and ways and the epic mercy of God,

00:45:56

and that it should agree with our view of reality.

00:46:01

And instead God says, "You know what?

00:46:04

I'm the one who decides who I have mercy on.

00:46:07

I will have mercy on who I have mercy,

00:46:09

and I will have compassion on who I have compassion."

00:46:12

And we spend our lives reckoning ourselves

00:46:15

to the unchanging reality of a God that says, "I am."

00:46:21

And you know, this reckoning that Jonah goes through,

00:46:24

it actually foreshadows for us a bigger story

00:46:27

in the later parts of the Bible,

00:46:30

in the New Testament when Jesus comes.

00:46:33

Because the message of Jesus, the mission of Jesus

00:46:36

was to bring the message of God's mercy

00:46:39

for all that He had made.

00:46:42

That's the exact message that Jonah has a beef with.

00:46:45

And Jesus runs into

00:46:46

a whole lot of people who don't like it either.

00:46:49

And God sent him on a mission to come and to say,

00:46:52

"Guess what? The salvation that I provide is for all.

00:46:55

The mercy I provide is for all.

00:46:58

Not just for the cleaned up religious people,

00:46:59

but for all the people, even the brutal, godless enemies.

00:47:04

And oh, by the way, that's everybody."

00:47:08

We all start as an enemy of God.

00:47:10

And He comes after us, even when we resist us.

00:47:13

And He gives us the time and the space to return to Him,

00:47:16

even in terrible, wonderful ways.

00:47:18

And then He asks us, "Would you please stop running?

00:47:22

Would you reconcile yourself to Me,

00:47:24

because My mercy is for all of you."

00:47:26

And that was the message that Jesus brought,

00:47:29

and people hated Him for it.

00:47:32

Because they thought they controlled

00:47:34

the flow of the mercy of God.

00:47:35

And Jesus gave it out to adulterous women

00:47:39

and insignificant children and a half breed Samaritans

00:47:43

that they wouldn't even let in their temple,

00:47:45

and to all kinds of tax collectors that everybody hated

00:47:48

because they thought they'd been cheated by them.

00:47:50

They were enemies of the people.

00:47:52

And guess what? Jesus said the mercy of God

00:47:55

is for your enemies too, not just for you.

00:48:00

Not just for the people that you think deserve it.

00:48:02

It's for everybody.

00:48:04

And so the religious people He's talking to

00:48:07

that one day and they say, "Okay, sure.

00:48:09

Like, if we believe that You have the authority to,

00:48:13

you know, do this and to be who you are

00:48:15

and to say what you're saying, give us a sign."

00:48:19

And Jesus responded by referencing the story of Jonah.

00:48:25

Luke 11, listen to what He says.

00:48:27

This is a wicked generation.

00:48:29

It asks for a sign, but none will be given it

00:48:31

except the sign of Jonah.

00:48:35

For as Jonah was assigned to the Ninevites,

00:48:38

so also will the Son of Man be to this generation.

00:48:42

The men of Nineveh will stand up

00:48:44

at the judgment with this generation and condemn it,

00:48:48

for they repented at the preaching of Jonah;

00:48:50

and now something greater than Jonah is here.

00:48:54

Jesus says, "Jonah and I, we had a similar mission.

00:48:58

We were both sent into evil people,

00:49:02

an evil generation, an evil nation to say,

00:49:06

'The mercy of God is here.

00:49:07

Repent and return to God.'"

00:49:13

And Jesus insults them by saying

00:49:17

the Ninevites actually repented.

00:49:19

They reckoned with who I was.

00:49:21

They repented and they returned to me,

00:49:23

which is way more than you're doing

00:49:26

when someone greater than Jonah

00:49:28

is standing right in front of you with the same message.

00:49:31

The book of Jonah prepares us for the gospel.

00:49:37

It prepares us to see that God's mercy is for us,

00:49:42

and that God's mercy is not just for us,

00:49:46

but it's for all that He made.

00:49:49

Every single person has the same opportunity,

00:49:55

the same mercy He gave to Jonah,

00:49:58

the same mercy He gave to Nineveh,

00:50:00

the same mercy He gave to all that heard Him

00:50:04

while he was alive, is the same mercy that you have

00:50:07

the opportunity to receive right here, right now, today.

00:50:14

And this is Jesus standing, saying to you

00:50:17

through the story of Jonah, "Stop running from Me.

00:50:23

Return to Me and reconcile your life to mine.

00:50:28

Let's go forward together."

00:50:32

That is the message of the gospel.

00:50:34

That is the story of Jonah.

00:50:36

And some of you have been waiting for a sign.

00:50:41

You haven't gotten baptized for whatever reason.

00:50:43

You've been waiting for a sign.

00:50:45

And what did Jesus mean when He said the sign of Jonah?

00:50:49

All He meant was that there's a person

00:50:51

who's standing in front of you saying,

00:50:53

"Repent, turn around. Come back to God.

00:50:57

Stop running, receive His mercy. Go forward with Him."

00:51:01

Guess what your sign is today? Me.

00:51:08

The person who happens to be here,

00:51:11

standing in front of you today saying,

00:51:12

"If you're looking for a sign, this is it."

00:51:15

It doesn't get any better than this.

00:51:17

It doesn't get any better than to sit

00:51:20

in the air conditioned auditorium

00:51:22

and to have somebody say,

00:51:25

"Do you know how much God wants you to return?

00:51:28

Do you know how big His mercy is

00:51:30

for anything you're running from? Do you know that?

00:51:33

Do you want that? Because it's for you."

00:51:37

That is your sign.

00:51:39

The only question is: do you believe that's for you?

00:51:42

Will you? Will you receive it today?

00:51:48

Because it's waiting, and it's more than waiting.

00:51:51

It's been chasing you around.

00:51:53

It's been pursuing you

00:51:55

from before you even knew that you were running,

00:51:59

God has had plans to bring you back to Him.

00:52:01

And maybe, maybe today is that day.

00:52:03

And you're sitting there going,

00:52:05

"I didn't plan on getting baptized."

00:52:08

We got you covered. Don't you worry.

00:52:12

And I want to tell you what's going to happen to you

00:52:15

if you get baptized here today, you're going to go on

00:52:18

the same journey that Jonah went on,

00:52:20

and you're going to go on the same journey that Jesus went on.

00:52:24

Because the story of baptism is that

00:52:27

you go into the death of Jesus, into the darkness,

00:52:31

into the belly of the whale, and you get spit out alive.

00:52:36

That's what's happening here today.

00:52:39

That when you go under the water,

00:52:42

you are going into the darkness, into the death,

00:52:45

and it will be full of God's mercy for you.

00:52:49

Let me just tell you

00:52:51

this a way better journey than Jonah took,

00:52:53

and this is a way better one than Jesus took,

00:52:55

because He went straight into death itself,

00:52:58

three days in the grave, and He got up on the third day,

00:53:03

and He's inviting you into that life.

00:53:05

Romans 6 says this about baptism:

00:53:08

Don't you know that all of us

00:53:10

who were baptized into Christ Jesus

00:53:12

were baptized into His death?

00:53:16

We were therefore buried with Him through baptism

00:53:19

into death in order that just as Christ

00:53:22

was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,

00:53:24

we too get to live a new life.

00:53:27

When somebody breaks the surface of that water

00:53:29

after going under, it's a new day for them.

00:53:32

It is a new life for them.

00:53:33

And it is mercy, mercy, mercy from this point forward,

00:53:38

the mercy of God reigns over that life.

00:53:41

And Jesus went into the belly of the whale

00:53:44

to secure this life for you,

00:53:46

and He's inviting you into it today.

00:53:51

Let me pray for you.

00:53:54

Lord Jesus, You are the one that saves.

00:53:58

We just collectively acknowledge that just like Jonah did.

00:54:02

You are the one that saves.

00:54:04

And so I ask that right now, by Your Spirit,

00:54:06

you would be calling your people to receive Your mercy

00:54:10

and to receive their new life in Christ.

00:54:13

I ask that You would be at work here

00:54:16

in the hearts of every person here,

00:54:19

to either come get their new life

00:54:22

or celebrate the ones that are.

00:54:26

And I ask that You would be extra alive in our midst today

00:54:32

and that You would save. In Jesus's name, Amen.

00:54:41

- Come on, stand on your feet

00:54:44

as we celebrate what God is doing

00:54:50

right here, right now. Come on.

01:00:11

- New life in Jesus. Come on.

01:00:21

Come on. We can celebrate new life,

01:00:23

transformation in Jesus.

01:00:28

Death to life is what He's called us to. Come on.

01:11:59

- How amazing is that? It's so cool to see.

01:12:02

It reminds me of when I was baptized

01:12:04

as a freshman in high school at

01:12:05

a Crossroad's Student Camp myself.

01:12:07

And just this past month, in July,

01:12:09

we had middle schoolers and high schoolers

01:12:10

represent Anywhere for the first time at Student Camp.

01:12:14

We had four Anywhere baptisms.

01:12:16

So Zaria, Shalom, Lacey and Reagan,

01:12:18

I'm so proud of you girls.

01:12:20

You are so loved and I'm so excited

01:12:22

to see what God does with you

01:12:24

in this new life that you stepped into.

01:12:26

And hey, if this is stirring something in you

01:12:28

and baptism is something

01:12:29

that you want to consider for yourself,

01:12:32

we urge you to take that step

01:12:33

and don't feel like you need to do it alone,

01:12:35

with Crossroads Anywhere you can fully belong,

01:12:37

no matter where you live, and that includes baptism.

01:12:41

So if you're ready or you're curious,

01:12:42

we will go to you, literally.

01:12:44

We have regional leaders across the US

01:12:47

that are ready to go to where you are to get you baptized.

01:12:50

So shoot us an email at anywhere@crossroads.net

01:12:52

and we'll take care of the rest.

01:12:54

If you just need someone to talk to

01:12:56

or someone to pray for you, head over to the chat

01:12:58

in our website or in our app and we would love

01:13:00

someone on our team to get personally connected with you.

01:13:04

We're in this together. Don't do it alone.

01:13:07

And until next time, remember,

01:13:08

as we say in Crossroads Students,

01:13:10

you belong here and your friends do too.

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