THE PLAN OF OUR HEARTS
It has been over 4 months since I have preached a sermon, For ten years I preached almost every week, sometimes two different messages and at least four revivals that I can remember doing. Being away from the pulpit has made me long for the Word, presented with passion, and has opened me to hearing God’s message in my own life. I have noticed that in my own life many changes occurred that perhaps many of you here today can relate to. I started ministry with a passion to be molded and shaped in whatever ways God wanted me to be shaped and molded, but I readily admit that through the years I became set, hardened, like pottery put in the oven, I became hardened. The Bible tells us, that God wants us to have, or offer to Him a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. (Psalms 51:17) In other words it is hard for God to mold us if we have hardened, it is difficult to be used if we are not properly shaped, and we can no longer be shaped if we think we have all the answers, and know what the plan should be.
One of my favorite passages is in Proverbs 16, verse 9 reads “In his heart man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” We as a people want have the answers, we want to have the plan, BUT it is God that will make the end product, we are simply to be the vessel.
A young woman brought her fiance home to meet her parents for thanksgiving dinner. After dinner, her mother told her father to find out about the young man. The father invited the fiance to his study for a talk. "So what are your plans?" the father asked the young man. "I am a biblical scholar," he replied. "A Biblical scholar. Hmmm," the father said. "Admirable, but what will you do to provide a nice house for my daughter to live in?" "I will study," the young man replied, "and God will provide for us." " And how will you buy her a beautiful engagement ring, such as she deserves?" asked the father. "I will concentrate on my studies," the young man replied, "God will provide for us." "And children?" asked the father. "How will you support children?" "Don’t worry, sir, God will provide," replied the fiance. The conversation proceeded like this, and each time the father questioned, the young idealist insisted that God would provide. Later, the mother asked, "How did it go, Honey?" The father answered, "He has no job and no plans, and he thinks I’m God!" The truth is that God will provide, He will lead and direct, and show mercy and judge, and He wants to use you and I to do His work if we are willing to let Him. This morning we will be looking at a story that is very familiar to most everyone here, the story of Jonah, so if you have your Bibles with you this morning turn with me that we might look together at keys verse from a story most of us have heard from childhood.
Jonah 1:1-3 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me." 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.
The WORD came to Jonah, have you ever had this happen to you? Have you ever been sitting in church on a Sunday and heard God speak to your heart? Have you ever been in prayer and heard God speak to your heart? Perhaps like me, in retrospect you can see that it has happened many times, but perhaps it didn’t fit with your plans, perhaps like Jonah, you didn’t really want the task, change, or adjustment in your life at that moment, so you ran. Now I think that this story has so much more than the things we remember as children. I believe that this little story tells us about getting back to the place where our God can use us to be the children, the tools and the Christians He wants us to be. I think one of the most important details that might be overlooked in the story comes in the first chapter. After Jonah runs by getting on a boat and sailing away, the seas get rough. Listen to these verses;
Jonah 1:7-12 Then the sailors said to each other, "Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity." They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, "Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?" 9 He answered, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land." 10 This terrified them and they asked, "What have you done?" (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.) 11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?" 12 "Pick me up and throw me into the sea," he replied, "and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you."
The first point I would like to make in this story this morning is simply this, too many times in life we try to fix the blame of problems in our own lives and in our own journey’s on other people. It is easy to point the finger at someone else or at something that has happened to us, BUT more than likely the things that are wrong in our lives are to some extent, at least, our own faults. Here in this story, Jonah has enough wisdom to see that his decision to run from God has not only effected him, it has made an impact on others and left them in a bad place. What if we all took responsibility for the wrongs we have done and tried to make them right? What if, like Jonah we were willing to say, when we have done wrong, THIS IS MY FAULT?
The results of this story are simple, the distress Jonah’s decision was causing to the sailors stops, BUT Jonah has a way to go.
I would like to say that I have made bad decisions in my life that have effected others, I am sorry for these things. I am sure that if we were all honest with ourselves, we could see that decisions we have made have had a negative impact on others, and taking responsibility is the first thing that we must do. We must be willing to see that little bits of gossip have a large impact on other people, that being judgmental has an impact on others, and that ignoring God’s will for our lives also has an impact on others. So the men, first tried to save Jonah, but when there was no other alternative, they threw him to the sea. The scripture says this:
Jonah 1:15-17 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this the men greatly feared the LORD, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows to him. 17 But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
The acceptance of his running allowed the others to regain peace, BUT for Jonah it meant a period of time in solitude.
Folks, I would like to talk about this solitude for a bit. Many of us understand what it is to feel all alone. Most of us have had a period, a time in our lives where we felt alone. A place that might have many people around us, but still we felt all alone. Perhaps we were running from God, perhaps we had problems with relationships, addictions, finances, or something that we could not really share with someone else. This time in the belly of the great fish was such an example of being alone, and what is the first thing that we see Jonah do? PRAY !!
I can tell you that the last few months have been such a time for me. I too was running from God and I too have been placed in the belly of being alone. I too have turned to God in prayer. Listen to what happens in Jonah’s story.
Jonah 2:1-2 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. 2 He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
Prayer is the answer to so many of our problems, but I think that many of us need to be motivated to pray, what I mean is that to often we take prayer for granted thinking that it is a formal thing that needs to be done with some ritualistic form.
Three ministers were talking about prayer in general and the appropriate and effective positions for prayer. As they were talking, a telephone repairman was working on the phone system in the background. One minister shared that he felt the key was in the hands. He always held his hands together and pointed them upward as a form of symbolic worship. The second suggested that real prayer was conducted on your knees. The third suggested that they both had it wrong--the only position worth its salt was to pray while stretched out flat on your face. By this time the phone man couldn’t stay out of the conversation any longer. He interjected, "I found that the most powerful prayer I ever made was while I was dangling upside down by my heels from a power pole, suspended forty feet above the ground."
Here is Jonah in the belly of a very large fish. Not a pleasant place to be by any stretch of the imagination, and the first thing we read is that Jonah cried out to God in prayer, accepting that he was wrong, saying at one point, God I know that I have been banished from your sight and yet I am still looking to you and crying out to you.
I think we can ALL learn from this, I think that when we feel distanced from God the first thing we must do is cry out to God in prayer, accepting our own short comings and asking His forgiveness. I know that god is a god of MANY chances, He listens to our hearts and He knows our thoughts and when we are honest He answers us just as He answered Jonah.
So lets us see that accepting responsibility for own wrong doings and going to God in prayer are the first things we see in this story. The next is that God will provide another chance.
Jonah 2:10-3:3 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you." 3 Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh.
The word of God came to Jonah a second time, now I must say that there are times when we might question whether or not God is speaking to our hearts, we may have hardened ourselves to a place where we are unable to accept the word of God, where we are running and effecting ourselves and those around us, but God is GOOD, AMEN? Willing to give us another chance?
The questions is simple, what do we do with the second chance? Do we act upon His word, do we ignore and question His word, do we respond with the joy that would come from being given a second chance?
Jonah heard it again and ACTED accordingly. Folks, we need to ACT. We need to be the tools that God wants us to be, we must be His tools and we alone, through the guiding hands of a mighty God can change this insane world that we live in. With the love and compassion of a God that was willing to give jonah and later we see Ninevah, a second chance, we can change the world.
But perhaps this story is NOT really about running from God and then taking responsibility and praying and using that second chance that God so often gives us. In my opinion the REAL story, the REAL lesson comes at the end of this very short four chapter book. It comes after Jonah has made peace with God and allowed himself to be used. It comes in verses Jonah 3:10-4:4 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened. 4:1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." 4 But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
Perhaps this story is really about making up our minds about other people instead of worrying most about ourselves and our own short comings. Perhaps this story is to teach us that what is really important, is not judging others and making up our minds about what will happen to these people, and taking the focus off of where we are personally in our walk with Jesus Christ. Now I say these things as one who has done this before, as one who has made judgments about how God should handle the things that I see, and I know that others have done this to me and mine as well.
Jonah felt that he deserved a second chance but the people of this city did not. He was worthy of God’s compassion and mercy but the people of Ninevah deserved what was coming to them.
The story of George C. Wallace sounds like something from Paul Harvey’s “the Rest of the Story.” It comes in two parts: the sad, earlier life and the hard but hopeful remainder. Even more dramatic is a tragic event in the middle that brought life-changing consequences for the man from Alabama. In 1962, Wallace ran for governor on a platform that was blatantly racist. He promised to fight integration to the point of defying federal orders and personally blockading schoolhouse doors. He ended his inaugural address with the infamous statement, “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” That summer, he refused to allow black students to register at the University of Alabama until forced to do so by the threat of military intervention. Through his tenure as governor and a run for the presidency in 1968, Wallace spouted racial hatred while blacks were beaten and jailed, black churches were burned, and black children were murdered. Elected governor a second time in 1970, Wallace began to signal a shift in his racial stance. Perhaps he had grown weary of building his political aspirations on other people’s fears and prejudices. Or perhaps (as a good politician) he was merely sensing change in the cultural wind. But, by 1972, his message had become more populist and less bigoted. Then came May 15, 1972 – and the rest of the story. While campaigning in Laurel, Maryland, Wallace was shot five times, leaving him paralyzed and in constant pain. Two years later – confined to a wheel chair, divorced from his second wife, without the use of his legs, and lacking control of bodily functions – Wallace was a broken, pathetic figure. He was a man who finally understood the meaning of suffering. He was a man who had come to realize what suffering he had caused others. While being driven home one evening, he passed the open doors of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a black congregation where years earlier Martin Luther King, Jr., had stood in the pulpit and denounced Wallace for his treatment of African Americans. Overcome with remorse, Wallace stopped the car, was helped into his wheelchair, and wheeled up the aisle to the stunned surprise of the assembly. There, Wallace tearfully confessed he had been wrong, apologized for the suffering he had caused, and asked the blacks of Alabama to forgive him. It was an expression of remorse he was to repeat on numerous occasions in the following years – publicly, before black audiences on campuses and conventions, and privately, to black leaders like Coretta Scott King and Jesse Jackson. During two more terms as governor (1974 and 1982), he built bridges to the black community, developed relationships with prominent black leaders, and worked to undo some of the damage his own racist rhetoric had caused. Until the very end, while bedridden and deaf, he still received visits from friends, both black and white, and met with groups of both races for prayer. Not all blacks forgave Wallace. The damage he did and the pain he caused was great. But the story of George Wallace is not about forgiveness, but about penance. Here is a man who was tragically flawed and terribly wrong. It took five bullets and horrific suffering to bring him to his knees. But once broken, he had the courage to face his hatred and prejudice, repent, confess, and then spend the remainder of his life attempting to atone and make restitution. SOURCE: Tim Woodroof, Walk This Way: An Interactive Guide to Following Jesus, (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1999), 62-63
I think sometimes we can learn from this story. We should ask only one question of ourselves, WHO AM I?
Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth Would care to know my name
Would care to feel my hurt
Who am I, that the Bright and Morning Star Would choose to light the way
For my ever wandering heart
I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean Vapor in the wind
Still You hear me when I'm calling Lord, You catch me when I'm falling
And You've told me who I am I am Yours, I am Yours
Who am I, that the eyes that see my sin
Would look on me with love and watch me rise again
Who am I, that the voice that calmed the sea
Would call out through the rain And calm the storm in me
Not because of who I am But because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done But because of who You are
We are what we are and where we are because of what we have done in our lives, BUT because of what Jesus did we can have eternal life in heaven.
Where are you today?
