Saturday, February 19, 2011

Its not that Important

I am glad that God did not listen to my statements of “I will not” and “I will never”. I am glad that God works hard to convince me of the importance of things that I once thought were insignificant. My life has been blessed because God did not take no for an answer.
We all, by our actions and attitudes display what is important to us. However God often works hard to change that. The story of Jonah reminds us of the extent to which God goes to change our "no" into a "yes”. Most of us praise God for this fact and are glad that we were allowed to hear His call more than once. With this being true, I want to answer the question, why does God work so hard to get us to follow His call into service?
God will go to great lengths to position us for His service because of what is at stake. The following is what we learn from Jonah chapter three. Crab your Bible and and take a look.

1. There is a message” v.1-23
2. There are things of which people must be warned. V.4
3. People can change. V. 5-9
4. Because God can, and desires to turn His wrath away. V. 10 (see also 1 John 1:1-3)

So the challenge is for each of us to make the decision that what is important to God is important to us. Look at verse three as translate in the Young's Literal Translation, "and Jonah riseth, and he goeth unto Nineveh, according to the word of Jehovah. And Nineveh hath been a great city before God, a journey of three days."(YLT)To live up to this challenge we may have to face some issues that we once sought to escape. When Jonah did this he became an example of what Jesus teaches in Matthew 21:28-31. Here Jesus states, "What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' 29 And he answered, 'I will not,' but afterward he changed his mind and went. 30 And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first."
Matt 21:28-31"(ESV)

Is what He asking you to do important enough?