Some of the things we go through at times can make us uncomfortable and annoyed even!
But we must realize God's plan is bigger and he has our good in mind! Pastor Juan's KEY THOUGHT last Sunday was: Your annoyance may be God’s arrangement. God is more concerned about your wholeness than he is about your comfort! Jonah was not comfortable, but he was safe due to God’s arrangement. Even when he was trying to run from God. Running from God is like running on a elliptical machine… You exert all your energy, but you ain’t going anywhere!They only way God can get us to stop is to restrict us. Can you imagine how restricted it must have felt inside the fish’s stomach? Smelly from all the rotten fish and algae… and not to mention all the stomach acids! Believe it or not, God uses restriction to provide healing. Broken bone + cast = restrict movement = healing. It was in the belly of the fish that Jonah began to develop the right spirit within him! How do we know that? His prayer and worship. You can tell a lot about people by the way they pray and worship in the midst of their trouble. We can have a pity party, or a praise party. SO, HOW DO WE FIND HEALING INSIDE OUR FISH? 1. Recognize God inside your distress. (Jonah 2:1-2) Let’s go directly to God in our time of distress. It’s interesting how we can be so precise with our worries and so ambiguous with our prayers. 2. Recognize God’s arrangement, not your annoyance. (Jonah 2:3-6) The ship crew physically threw him into the sea, but God spiritually arranged it for Jonah’s salvation. Jonah was not ignoring facts, he just knows that facts were altered by God. 3. Recognize God’s word as your prayer of hope. If you don’t know what to pray, learn His word and start praying his word over your life! That’s exactly what Jonah did. This was his heart’s prayer, intertwined with God’s word. Whenever you complain about being three days in the belly of the fish, remember that your savior, Jesus Christ, spent 3 days in the belly of the earth… But that didn’t contain Him… It didn’t stop him! Victory became His! And victory is yours! Join us us this Sunday for Part 3 and bring a friend!
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Last Sunday, we kicked off the new series - Jonah! It's a story many of us heard about growing up but may have not gotten into the true significance of what God is trying to say behind this timeless tale.
God has a calling for all of us and we may not always respond the right way. We may even run like Jonah! The running usually happens when God is trying to stretch our faith through His word. We need the word of the Lord in a time where people’s word don’t mean anything. Our society is filled with alternate truth and the WORD of God is the unhindered, unbiased, and inspired word of truth. We must remember, our lives are not our own according to Romans 8:9 and God wants to use us in mighty ways. We must ask ourselves, do we live by human speculation or divine revelation? There are 3 Things we must realize. ONE: The Word of the Lord will NOT always be what we want to hear. The last thing Jonah wanted to hear is to go to Niniveh and try to save the people that is a direct enemy of the Hebrew nation. We may have a script of how our lives should be, but if you belong to God, you must let Him rewrite that script. TWO: If you want to run from God, there’s always a SHIP that will take you in the wrong direction. There’s always a RelationSHIP, PartnerSHIP, counselorSHIP, listenership or friendSHIP going in the wrong direction. It all depends which SHIP you are boarding: Are you underGod’s LordSHIP or on your Stubborn SHIP. THREE: If you avoid (run from) God, expect to be swallowed up by your circumstances. (see Jonah 1-3) The point of this is not that a Fish swallowed Jonah, but of God’s faithfulness in the midst of Jonah’s unfaithfulness. Jonah willfully and willingly wanted to go His OWN way, and God pursued Him. It is during the Storm that Jonah begins to really understand WHO he is in Christ! If it wasn’t for the storm Jonah would have kept sleeping and kept going in the wrong direction. So how do we avoid avoidance and running the other direction? Surrender! The cure for avoidance is surrender. Jonah eventually surrendered to God's plan that ultimately saved him and a whole city! Join us this Sunday at 1 PM as we continue with Part 2. God wants you to be in fellowship and communion with him and no better way to do that then when we gather together! |
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January 2021
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