Throw Your Life Away
March 12, 2010 • groundZero • Comments Off
Jonah 1:12
“Throw me into the sea,” Jonah said, “and it will become calm again. For I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.”
If you do not know the story of Jonah let me catch you up to where we are at this point in the story
- God told Jonah to go preach
- Jonah got on a boat and went the opposite way
- God sent a hurricane after that boat.
If we were to take an honest look at our lives we would quickly realize that the large majority of storms arise as consequences of our choices. When God spoke to Jonah to go preach to Nineveh he instead decided to run the opposite way, to take his life into his own hands. What God wanted Jonah to do was different than what Jonah wanted to do. This decision caused his life to be Self-Centered rather than God-Centered. He broke his covenant to serve God and began serving himself. Many teenagers want to serve God in the interesting times (Youth Church, Conferences, Events), but want to do what they want when it comes to the uncomfortable times of serving Christ (Purity, Servanthood, Persecution)
Almost immediately Jonah found himself in a storm threatening to take his life and the life of those around him because he wanted to keep control over his own life. Most of the storms in our lives occur when we decided to follow our own way when we know it is opposite Gods way. Sometimes Gods way to relationships is a lot harder than ours, Gods way serve others is a lot less glamorous than we would like it to be, and Gods way to be holy is just too high of a standard. Many teens want to give God a Sunday or Wednesday Night, but keep control of the rest of their life, and soon find themselves stuck in a storm of their own creation- God wants all of you or none of you.
Like Jonah, we are all faced with the choice to either leap into the roaring seas that is God’s will or we can stay in control of our own life always trying to row against the waves to our own destination. The choice to jump is scary, and few have decided to allow themselves to fall into the unknown that God has for them, but those that have jumped have found that when they die to themselves they come alive in Christ.
“Christianity isn’t a crutch for the weak; it’s a stretcher for the dead.” -Michael Kelley
