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00:00 And I want to take us back to the main theme of the book of Jonah. And of
00:05 course, the main theme is running from God. And specifically because God gave
00:11 Jonah a specific task and he ran. He ran away. Now we come to
00:19 chapter three. And chapter three is a shift. He now runs for God. So let's
00:26 let's read again chap verse 10. and Gloria read the whole chapter, but let me just read again verse 10. And it says, "When God saw what they did and
00:34 how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon
00:40 them the destruction he had threatened." Verse 11. And so Jonah son of Amiti
00:47 praised God for his compassion and his love towards the city of Nineve, and he
00:53 went home. The end. What? No verse 11?
00:60 Not in your Bible. But shouldn't there be a verse 11?
01:07 Because he was running from God and now he runs for God.
01:15 But there's no verse 11. He runs for God
01:21 and probably becomes the greatest missionary in all time because 120,000 people get saved and he's angry about
01:29 it. Now, what's interesting about the book of Jonah is is very real for all of us.
01:36 Let me start off with a very simple question. Let me ask you, where are you
01:42 now in your life? And if I ask you and myself, are you running for God? What
01:50 would your answer be? Here's a guy who ran for God, did
01:56 fantastic results, and he was very unhappy about it. Let me let me put it
02:01 in in a simpler English for us. If we say running from God means God gave a
02:08 specific task, a specific purpose and and he ran away and now he runs too.
02:15 Let's say if I I gave you a piece of paper and I ask you to write down on that paper for 207,
02:25 what does God want me to do? Would you be able to do that?
02:31 And we had this in our men's accountability group and we found out oh we can't write this. So so where are you
02:38 now in your life at your work in church? Have you ever
02:45 thought about what is God's specific purpose for you? And here's the
02:50 interesting thing because some people would tell you well God's purpose for me
02:55 involves my talents. God's purpose for me involves my passion.
03:02 But what was God's purpose for Jonah? Something he absolutely
03:07 hated to do. He completely didn't want to do it. And that was God's purpose for him. So this
03:14 morning I want to ask something which is for all of us to reflect as we start the year.
03:21 The question is, are you and I running for God? And are you running in the way
03:29 that pleases him and from your heart? And my prayer for all of us is that
03:36 sometime this year we can take out that piece of paper and write with conviction, this is God's purpose for me
03:45 this year. This is what God wants me to do at work. This is what God wants me to do at home.
03:53 This is what God wants me to do with my family and community.
03:59 Think about this. God has a purpose for each one of us. How do you discover
04:04 that? Let's come before the Lord in prayer. Lord, we we come to a a shift in
04:10 this chapter and and we know, Lord, that life isn't just about waking up uh fitting you into a pattern and going to
04:16 church and just looking after ourselves. Lord, we sang this morning that Jesus,
04:22 you are the center of everything. But Lord, do we really mean that?
04:27 How is Jesus the center of my work, my church, my life? Or have I just gone
04:33 into a routine? So Lord, this morning we ask you just you just we hear your voice through the
04:40 thunder and the noises the same way Elijah heard through the earthquake and
04:45 through the fire. And then he heard God, you know, whisper, "Speak to us, oh
04:52 Lord." And we understand what it really means to run for you. And we say this in
04:59 Jesus name. Amen. Now, I'm going to define running
05:05 away from God as when you know God wants you to do something
05:11 and you don't want to do it, you run. Question one. any of us doing that
05:17 difficult question, right? But here's the second thing. He runs now for God. His heart is not in it. So let me give
05:23 you four points. Okay. Number one, run to God before you can run for God.
05:32 Really important. Number two, a question for all of us and in particular
05:38 Christian leaders. Those of you who are elders, preachers, deacons, ministry
05:44 leaders who sort of sit there and says, you know what, I don't have this problem. Actively serving in church, my
05:51 personal life is good. Here's a question we ask. Are you running for God or running for yourself?
05:58 Thirdly, this chapter really deals with Nineve. The narrative shifts from one
06:04 person to a whole group of people. And chapter three and four is about the
06:09 collective. And so running for God requires
06:14 companions. It's never a solo effort. And lastly, this one all business people
06:20 know. You set milestones in anything you do. You set targets. You benchmark. So
06:27 it is in the business world. So it is in self-development. So it is in our
06:33 spiritual maturity. Let me just basically take a whole wrap
06:39 up first and he ran to Tashish. That's chapter one. Chapter three, he goes to
06:45 Nineve. What happened in the middle? What made him shift from running from
06:52 God to God? Now, let's be fair to Jonah. Whatever it is, we all know we read in
06:59 chapter 4, he was very angry with God. But whatever this God used him, God used
07:05 him and 120,000 people got saved. And we know that because Matthew tells us that
07:12 the men of Nino together with the Queen of Sheba will at the end of days
07:19 judge of all people. They will judge Jerusalem. So we know that that the
07:24 salvation is beyond just physical. So what happened? What caused that shift
07:29 for a guy who ran so far away? Suddenly shift to follow God. The fish occurred.
07:37 The fish. But what happened in the fish? And I think uh last week uh brother Eden gave
07:44 us a very heart uh warming message on this. And what did he do in the fish?
07:51 He prayed. Now here's here's one thing I want all of us including myself to sort of just
07:57 pause. You see after a while life becomes routine. You
08:03 wake up, go to work, come home, spend time with your family,
08:10 do this, you do that. Sundays you go to church. Then the routine goes on again.
08:16 Some of us maybe we do a bit more for church, some less. Here's this question.
08:21 Are you running in a circle? Is this what God wants you to do? Have
08:27 you sort of like taken God and fitted him into your schedule?
08:34 That means on Sunday, I sort of put God between 8:45
08:39 to, you know, 11:00 and then maybe some other time the week
08:45 I fitted God in again. He's in the schedule. But what happened was this. You must understand about Jonah.
08:52 Jonah is a mature Christian. He's a prophet, you know. And what caused him to move to Nineve? A calamity.
09:01 And here's the thing we want to just ask all of you. Don't don't wait. Here's a simple thing. Your life is normal and
09:08 then something happens. It's only when something bad happens, we stop and think. And suddenly all the preparations
09:13 for Chinese New Year and all the angals, all the dinners suddenly don't seem important. So I want to pause and ask
09:19 you the first thing we do is we contemplate and we pray but here's the
09:25 thing completely missing from his prayer is a great prayer on one hand on the
09:30 other hand it's not a very good prayer because you read it again and many
09:35 commentators have picked it up you know what's completely missing in Jonah's prayer
09:42 anything to do with Nineve completely missing
09:47 So you see, first you run to God before you can run for God. But running to God
09:54 requires you to pull up all those things that you struggle with. And he didn't do
10:00 that. Let's break it down a bit. This is what he says after God saves Nineveh. He
10:07 says, "But it displeased Jonah accidentally and he was angry and he
10:14 prayed to the Lord." Now, one thing about the book of Jonah is the way it sort of uh uh bal there's a
10:19 counterpoint. There are two prayers. The first prayer is when God saves Jonah and
10:25 he's really grateful. Here's a counterpoint now. God saves Nid and he
10:31 prays. Whoa, different prayer. Completely different prayer. So when God
10:36 saves him, oh God, you're full of praise, good, good God and so much. But
10:41 when God says neither way, wow, the tone completely changes. And look at this. Oh
10:47 Lord, is this not what I said when I was in my country? That is why I made haste
10:53 to flee to Tish. And here's the real reason. For I knew that you are a
10:58 gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love,
11:04 relenting from disaster. He knows his Bible. He's a Bible scholar.
11:12 He knows his scripture. You know what he's saying? He's saying, "God, you're a good God
11:20 for me." Not for them. These are the bunch of
11:26 cruel, merciless, evil barbarians. Your grace, mah,
11:33 not them. Now, how deep does this go?
11:39 I mean you really got to really look at the nuances of the text you know and you'll find is very real. Now here's
11:45 something in our prayer because prayer life you can pray and you can pray God
11:50 pray shopping list or you can pray and pull out all the
11:58 hurt because when you don't God's going to put you in a position where it comes out. You see, God's trying to really
12:06 bring things out about Jonah so that Jonah understands something about himself. How much do you think he hates
12:13 Nid now? As you understand, the last few weeks we've been looking at it. Nid is the city of Assyria. The Assyrians are
12:20 cruel people. But how far does he really hate them? Let's look at the text. See
12:26 what he says. Now, Lord, take away my life. Is better for me to die than to
12:32 live? Second record of a suicidal prophet in the Bible. The first was Elijah because he were depressed. This
12:40 one he's angry. And he repeats it twice again. Three times in the text. He says,
12:47 "Better for me to die than to live." There are two things happening here. Number one, he hates the Assyrians so
12:54 much. He rather die than have them as his brothers and
12:60 sisters. That's what the text is saying. The hate is that deep.
13:06 Now, don't put it down because maybe he saw the horrors
13:12 inflicted on his family. Maybe he saw family members dragged up by Assyrians
13:19 and cruy tortured before they were killed. Don't put him down.
13:25 Number two, you know what he's doing to God? He's trying to blackmail God. You know,
13:31 he's trying to tell God, you know, either I die or they die. That's what
13:38 he's trying to tell God. You know what, God? Dude, you got it wrong. You can't save them. You're going to save them.
13:44 Okay, kill me. That's what he's saying. You're going to you're going to save this bunch of peep. Really, God? Okay,
13:50 kill me. That's what he's saying. And God gently tells him on two
13:55 occasions and this is where grace comes in. He says, "Is it your right to be
14:01 angry?" And there's where grace what Masimo and and Yidian talk about
14:06 undeserved merit for an unobligated giver to quote Yiden. And it's so
14:13 important it comes out twice. So here's what God is trying to teach
14:18 all of us. You want to run for God. Knowing God is this is knowing yourself.
14:28 And I put it to all of us. We don't know our identity as much as we think we do.
14:36 Here is a man who's a Bible scholar who went to give a message. 120,000
14:42 people got saved. Wow. That's a real record, man. And he doesn't know himself. why he
14:49 doesn't know his identity. And I want to tell you there are two words that anchor our identity as a
14:56 Christian. And I want to I want to just tell you for me this has been pivotal in
15:02 my life. Every time I hit a brick wall in life and there are a lot of walls in life at work, at home when things just
15:09 go really bad and especially when I meet people and we all meet people we don't like. These are two words. The first is
15:17 what Masimo and Yiden have been emphasizing. What is that word congregation? Come on. This word called
15:24 grace. But grace in itself is not enough.
15:30 We see this very clearly because the apostle John when he when he introduces Jesus into the world in John chapter
15:38 one, he uses two words. He says grace and truth. And then he expands what
15:44 truth is. Meaning grace works with truth. If not, it becomes what we call hyper grace. See, God's grace is on me.
15:51 I can do whatever I want. See, God God is such a good God. God loves me. Tomorrow I can sin. I can do bad things.
15:59 God loves me. A lot of churches teaching that abounding grace.
16:05 And what Jonah has is the kind of grace where is centered on ma
16:11 himself. So here's the other word which really God is pulling him out and it's
16:17 this word forgiveness because forgiveness is the active word
16:23 of grace. Because forgiveness recognizes this one thing. Many churches
16:29 don't talk about sin. Don't talk about sin. God's love me,
16:35 God's grace. You hear in a lot of popular Christmas songs nowadays. Pick up a popular Christmas song now and find
16:42 out and do a Google search on the word sin. You find 90% of all popular songs
16:47 now don't have that word because we sort of diluted God to just
16:53 grace and God loves me. But where's sin? And the key to sin is forgiveness. Why?
17:01 Because I sin. I need God to forgive me. And then I remember when people sin
17:08 against me, I must forgive. And the two go hand in hand. This is our gospel ad.
17:16 Run to God. Hide in him with this. If not, you're running with baggage. And he
17:24 does a lot of terrible things. We're going to unpack that later. Let me let me do a diagnosis of his situation and
17:31 and his issues. And they're very common to all of us. Number one, he's got unresolved hurt.
17:38 Don't tell me you don't have it. We all have it.
17:44 People in the past who hurt us or things and we we bottle it right right deep
17:49 inside them. We we sort of clock it away and it comes out
17:55 comes out in many ways. And because we don't deal with that, we don't we don't
17:60 go to God with that. It comes out in some other things. I'm better than them.
18:07 See these Assyrians, they are burn in hell.
18:13 I'm better than them. And because it does that, there's a
18:18 spiraling effect. You then say, "I deserve God's grace, which is really an
18:24 oxymoron." They don't. You see, you can take this and and you
18:31 can you can tweak it any way because all of us have our baggages. It could be lust. It could be deceitfulness. It
18:36 could be bitterness. It could be anger. You can name all your seven deadly sins and more.
18:43 You don't pull it out. What happens? You run with baggage.
18:49 And what we have with Jonah didn't have is we have the cross.
18:55 And in the cross, we see God's grace. We see God's forgiveness and we focus on
19:01 that. And what what God is telling us is that you know what it doesn't remove it
19:08 but it slowly makes it better if every day you focus on me. If if I have someone whom I I really hate I'm not
19:14 going to tell anyone church because it's politically incorrect to say you hate someone in church but I hate the guy
19:20 with so much it it just and I bottle it inside. But what God is saying, come to him and look
19:27 at the cross and every day you look at the cross. The pin goes off one inch,
19:33 two inch. Do that year after year and God's grace and his forgiveness
19:42 becomes you. That's what you are as a human being.
19:49 And that's why scripture tells us this. He says, "Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ens snares
19:58 us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." And then the challenge this morning again for
20:04 each one of us at this moment I I want to ask this as a brother who loves all
20:09 of you. What is that sin that entangles?
20:15 Go to God in prayer tonight and pull it out. Here's the second thing. You see,
20:22 if you don't deal with that, it becomes quite dangerous because it becomes a
20:28 matter of are you running for God or running for yourself. You think you're running for God, but you may not be.
20:36 Here's a simple damning evidence of this. If you look at what we call a Protestant church, how many
20:42 denominations are there? Thousands. Each church is telling you they are
20:48 right. Everybody wants to start his own church after his own start their own church. He
20:54 wants to write his own book, start his own organization. Now obviously people are doing this.
21:01 They say they're doing it for God. But quite obviously there's a lot of selfactualization going on.
21:09 Why is it then the church is so split? Because everyone says I'm running for God. Actually you're doing it for
21:14 yourself. You just can't tell. You're blind to it. So let's try to unbreak
21:20 this in an applicable manner. You see again Jonah just position two
21:26 statements. Number one this came from the king of Nineve. The word reached the king of Nineve. He arose from his throne
21:33 removed his robe covered himself with sackcloth set in ashes. He started to repent.
21:39 He started to repent when he heard what God said. But when what God said came to
21:46 Jonah, this is what he did. Jonah went out of the city, sat to the east of the city, made a boot for himself, sat under
21:54 the shade till he could see what will become of the city. When I first read
21:59 it, I say, "Oh, this stupid fell." It's really straight. God already said, "I'm not going to destroy Nidway." You know
22:06 what he's doing? He's still hoping God will destroy Nineve.
22:12 He tried to blackmail God, you know, kill me. So maybe he thinks, okay, I just maybe God will change his mind.
22:19 That's the extent of his head. So you can put in two parts. You have first
22:25 this pagan barbarian king, completely barbarian. He's repentant.
22:31 And what he does, he submits to God's will. This righteous
22:37 church leader, pastor, preacher, deacon cannot forgive
22:43 wants his will to be done. Now let let me unpeel this because I
22:48 think it's quite important because the question is what I'm doing in church
22:53 now. I say I'm doing it for God and God is saying really you sure?
23:01 Maybe you're trying to bend my will to your will. What's a classic case for everybody? They say, "Oh, God asked me
23:06 to do it." Really? I I mean, some sometimes you hear this very sad stories, you know, and and we
23:13 do a bit of counseling, you know, in this church and and you meet people and it breaks your heart and they tell you,
23:18 you know, um I'm going to change the facts. My my husband walked out on me and blah blah blah blah blah. It could
23:24 be your wife. My wife walked out on me and I'm waiting for him to come back. And you say, "Why? God showed me a
23:31 sign." And they tell you convincingly after how in the last few months God showed many signs and God has told me,
23:39 brother Arnold, I have to wait and she will return to me. I know it in my
23:44 heart. And you want to go out to that sister or that brother and just say, you
23:50 know what, he's not coming back. You want him to come back. He says, no,
23:57 it's God's will. and you just really want to hold that person's hand and say, you know, it's
24:03 not God's will, it's your will.
24:08 You see where we go with this? It's so easy. You see this again and again in
24:14 church where we hijack God's name and say, "God wants me to do A B CDE E."
24:20 It's not God, it's you. Now, how do we discover this? And I one
24:27 one of those interesting this is the management theory you find this in TED talks if you guys watch TED talks I
24:33 watch a lot of TED talks this is the new guru on a on a management scene his name is Simon Synynic don't know how many of
24:40 you know him successor to Simon Kovi Steven Kovi and he codified something interesting he
24:47 codified that the way people work is we should start with the why but most
24:52 people start with the what and he gave an example example of Martin Luther King and how Martin Luther's king
24:59 conviction with God led him to do what he did. Let me break this down for you because it's really quite interesting.
25:06 Let's do this. This is what they call the golden circle which I think is quite quite true.
25:12 What did Jonah do? What did he do? Went to Nidway. He went to Nidway.
25:20 Now this like us why why are you here? came to church
25:26 Sunday. Come to church. You see what we're doing? Why? Why? Why? Why do you
25:33 uh why you doing it? Go for doing my ministry.
25:38 You see this? It starts with a what? Here's an important interesting question. How he did it? I think he gave
25:45 the worst sermon in the Bible. If you read the thing and the Hebrew is interesting because the Hebrew is
25:52 sarcastically comical. In the Hebrew there only five words. The English is
25:57 longer. 40 more days and Nino will be overturned like duh.
26:05 It's very carefully constructed because 40 days is symbolic because as you know 40 years in the wilderness Elijah walked
26:12 40 days. Jesus fasted 40 days. 40 days is judgment. He carefully constructed a
26:19 sentence. He walked around probably with play card. 40 more days will overturn
26:25 big city you know why there's every commentator picked it up
26:30 there's no passion he didn't go up and says look you got to repent God's going to destroy you didn't go up to the king
26:37 he probably just walked around 40 more days we have a big bellong 40 more days
26:44 you're going to you're going to die 40 more days we don't know but it's the
26:50 most terrible sermon in the Bible. Completely terrible. No PowerPoint, no
26:57 jokes, no nothing to connect. Why?
27:02 And here's the real reason. Isn't that so?
27:09 He didn't want them saved. He wanted them to die because in his
27:16 mind they didn't deserve God's grace and forgiveness.
27:22 Now this is really important. I think pause because what God is pushing Jonah
27:29 and understand who Jonah represents. Jonah is representing the average
27:34 churchgoer in particular the mature churchgoer. The so god mature churchgoer
27:41 is a prophet. Hello. That means this text talks to people
27:46 like us, preachers, pastors, elders, all of us who think we have got our act
27:51 together. And this is what God is telling us. You begin with the why and you pull out.
28:02 And you realize when you stop and begin with the why,
28:08 your motives aren't so godly. You know, here's a simple thing, very simple
28:14 evidence. I run a ministry. Ministry doing very well. I'm doing it for God.
28:21 But once you until it, how do you do it? I'm very structured. I do this and do
28:27 that. But you don't let anyone tell you what to do. None of the elders can come in. I'm not
28:32 I'm not judging anyone. Come in and say, "Can you do it?" No, no, no, no, no. I've been doing the last 10 years. Your
28:38 territorial on your ministry. It sounds familiar. Probably most churches have that problem. Why? Because the real
28:45 reason why you're doing it is it makes you feel important as a person.
28:52 You say you're running for God, but in reality, part of it is running for self.
28:59 So this is what we do in prayer. Pull ourselves out. And here's the third point which is really what I I want to
29:06 just mainly close with. Running for God requires companions. And Peter is going
29:12 to take us next week about the city of Nineve. So I won't go through this. But
29:17 you find one thing the Bible talks a lot about is this is about collective of
29:23 peoples. It's always about land nations and cities.
29:29 always all over the Bible. Why? Because we tend to take our faith and move it to
29:36 an individual basis. Is me and God.
29:41 The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible is about people. Here's one simple example.
29:48 Twice in the book of Jonah, Nineve is described as the great city. Chapter one
29:55 verse two, go to the great city. Chapter 3, verse two, go to the great city.
30:02 Verse three, Nineve was a very important city. You see that
30:08 it's an important great city. Now, what was the problem with this important
30:13 great city? They were violent. Everybody, 120,000 people. There was
30:21 another city in the book of Genesis called Sodom. What was the city guilty of?
30:28 Immorality. The entire city. Nineve. The entire
30:34 city. Violent. What did Jeremiah tell the exiles when they landed in Babylon
30:40 in Jeremiah 29? Prosper the city and you will prosper
30:46 also. So what God is telling us is we don't live in isolation. Your
30:54 environment influences you or you influence the
30:59 environment. So the collective is important. Let's
31:04 break this down a bit. Now let's look at this from Israel's perspective. Okay? I
31:11 will give you two verses. As God's mercy to Israel in the southern nations there
31:16 two verses. One is in the book of Exodus. This is when when God is angry because the nature of Israel is
31:23 grumbling and Egypt is hot on the hills and Moses intercedes for the Israelites
31:29 and says why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought
31:35 them out to kill them the Israelites in the mountains and to wipe them off the
31:40 face of the earth. And God same here like here relents.
31:46 But a more interesting verse is found in the book of Joel and locusts have attacked Israel and armies at the gates
31:53 and Joel has almost done the same thing here. He's told the king put on sackcloth same as Nineve and say this
32:01 spare your people Lord do not make your inheritance an object of scorn a by word
32:07 among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples where is their God? So
32:13 what is the case here? Israel is saying you know what prosper us
32:19 bring your compassion to us bring your mercy to us then everybody around will
32:25 look at us and say wow God is real like it's like us in Sububang Jaya and all
32:32 see God's compassion is on us God's mercy in us and the people of Sububang
32:38 Jaya will look at us and says wow God is real but what happens when you turn the
32:44 tables when is God's mercy to the nations in the sight of Israel
32:50 same thing the language is almost identical when God saw what they did this is Nineve and how they turned from
32:57 the evil ways he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened have you noticed it's almost
33:03 parallel to Joel and Exodus but what's the difference now Israel
33:08 does does Israel accept it Israel says what they don't deser deserve your
33:14 mercy. You see, the story of Jonah isn't about Jonah per se. Jonah represents
33:22 Israel because everyone in Israel hated the Assyrians.
33:29 The irony is this, generations down, the Assyrians will take them into captivity
33:36 and they will live among the people they hate. And God is almost preparing them for
33:42 that. And then the same with the Babylonians. Israel hates Assyria.
33:50 Assyria is gone today. There is a new Israel
33:56 is called the church. And there is a new Assyria.
34:03 What is that Assyria? That's us. You know where Nineve
34:10 is around you. Ninovi is at your doorstep.
34:16 This is America's Nino. This is our Nino.
34:23 Get a bunch of guys together and put them in a chat group. Someone will start a talk about somebody from another
34:30 group, another racial group who support another political party. Another guy
34:35 will jump into it. After what the trail of of discussion has only one word in it
34:43 hate that's your n
34:48 you see where we going is about collective and if we as a church encourage this we
34:58 are Israel and if we as the leaders don't bring
35:03 this up we are Jonah let me give how subtle this is. You know,
35:10 there's there's an organization in America and you know, we we had a new incoming president. I don't want to go
35:15 into that. Uh but one of one of the things we must
35:20 recognize is that a lot of Christian groups lobby for the current president. This particular group lobbed for the
35:27 president. Now, I don't want to throw stones. Yeah. I made a vow this year not to mention them by name, but they're
35:33 very influential in Malaysia. They have a radio show. I read their books.
35:39 In fact, they're so uh influential and and a lot of us you don't you can ask me
35:45 privately who their name is. You know them. They the forefront of protecting the family and that's very very
35:52 admirable. And to recognize marriage is between man and woman not because any
35:58 gender and they've done a lot to rescue families. This is the parent
36:04 organization and they do a lot of stuff. They they lobby people in America to be salt and light.
36:11 But this is where you go from one step to another step. And the same
36:17 organization posted this online and I got the video. I I posted it to one of the church groups
36:24 and I read this is a 15inute video. You you want it, I can send it to you. It's on WhatsApp.
36:30 same organization that teaches you about God's grace and compassion and family values and I read 15-minute video
36:37 besides the complete inaccuracy about this religion is factually inaccurate and it connected everything from Iraq to
36:45 ISIS to the birth of the religion what was so obvious and when you hear
36:51 the claps was the hate you know the hate was you wanted to say my god
36:58 God, the venom that came out about this religion,
37:06 that's your nine. So, what's it got to do with running
37:11 with God? Let me tell you why. Because running with God starts with the big
37:16 picture, not with me and God. What do you want me to do in my life? It's all self-centeredness. It's self-actualization. You start with God's
37:24 plans for the nations. You got you start with God's big plan
37:29 and then you go down. You go down and then God along that way will give you
37:35 his purpose. You see, here's the reality. We got to learn to break down walls for
37:43 he is the one that broke down the hostility between Jew and Gentile. We
37:48 learned that in the book of Ephesians. So do what? Do
37:53 learn to run with the right crowd. And I want to ask this because as we
37:58 start 217 I I want I want to I want to encourage that we as a church we run
38:04 together in in two months time. Let me tell you something. The church will be unveiling
38:11 the vision for the church. This is something that we all have been working on a while and I pray that we can run
38:17 with that vision. That vision just doesn't involve us and our holy huddle.
38:23 It involves us and the community and the nation run. But here's the other simple thing
38:30 to to sort of just wrap this up a bit. Who are you running with? Let me let me ask you a simple question. If I ask you
38:37 name me one or two of your closest friends, we all have some people your your drinking buddy, your whatever khaka. But if I ask you to take your
38:45 friends and ask you name me one or two people that encourage you that that's difficult, right? You find they don't
38:51 match, you know? Because finding people that encourage you and help you run are never the same
38:57 people who you want to hang out with and have a beer or or play games together, watch movies.
39:04 It's about intentional relationship. I'm at a point now in my life where I
39:09 meet some people and I have completely nothing in common with them. If I sit
39:14 down with them, I probably feel uncomfortable. But I tell myself a Christian that if I
39:20 hang out with that person, his godliness is going to rub off on me. And I tell
39:26 intentionally I have to know that person. And that's what I suggest we do as a church because as iron sharpens
39:32 iron, so one person does to another.
39:37 Find people this year. This is how you run. Find people you can run with. They
39:43 may not be people you want to hang out with, but look at their godliness. Look at their grace. Look at their
39:49 forgiveness. And hang out with them intentionally.
39:55 You do this in small groups. You do this in prayers. You do this out there. And
40:00 they will rub on with on you. If not in the collective, the bad things will
40:07 rub out on you and you'll be running in the wrong direction. So, let me close.
40:14 Running requires milestones. Again, I go back to the same thing we started. If I
40:20 ask you to put on a piece of paper and says, you know, what does God want you to do? Can you fill it in? I'll tell you
40:26 about myself. I can't. But I think this is what God is saying. God is saying just run
40:34 and he will show me the way. But I focus myself on my identity on the cross.
40:42 I bring people with me to run. I'm conscious. Am I doing it for myself
40:47 or am I doing it for God? And I run. And as you run,
40:54 God will whisper in your ears. I want to encourage you this year as we start
40:59 2011. You ask yourself, what is God's specific, very specific purpose for you
41:06 in your family, in your work, and in your church? very
41:13 very specifically and if you're like me like most of us right now we can't tell it but bring
41:21 this before the Lord if not we are just going around in circles
41:27 and we don't have a relationship we have religion let me wrap up with an animated example
41:35 this is what most of us are come to church and we walk we do we go do do
41:41 this to do that. And I want to encourage you to not make this your Christian
41:47 life. It's it's meaningless. Pray. Go deep and ask God to pull things out.
41:57 And once you do that, get ready. He's going to give you his gospel identity.
42:05 Put the cross in front of you. And then what we do, church?
42:10 What do we do? You run and as you run
42:16 storms will come. Storms in life bad year can't pay the bills. Marriage
42:26 doesn't go quite right. Storm gets worse. You try to do good. People snap at you.
42:34 You serve in church. They don't appreciate you. You feel lonely
42:40 and at one point the storm just overwhelms you
42:46 and it can be any storm and you just feel like giving up and the cross
42:51 doesn't seem so real. What do you do as Y then says
42:58 you get up and you pray and you pray
43:04 and the storm is still there and then God will say run.
43:10 And you keep running and as you run, you'll bring people to run with you and
43:16 you're accountable to that person. And as you follow him, you see that he has gone through what you've done and he's
43:22 still running. And then people look at you and they follow you and they run too. And as you run,
43:30 the storm doesn't seem so bad because you're running together. And one day
43:37 the storm would end. And one final day
43:42 you will reach that finish line.
43:49 I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.
43:54 I have kept the faith. May that be your prayer
44:01 and my prayer.
