1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying,2 ”Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”5 And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.  Jonah 3:1-4

Our active participation in life with Him means we become authors in His story.  The story of Jonah is not just about a city that repents (Jonah 3) but it is also of a man who has trouble with the character and will of God.

Culture, nationalism, prejudice, and love of self, conspire to create resistance.  When violence and oppression is normalized we yield to fatalism.  The “good” act like “those evil people” will never change.  The “evil” act like they have run out of choices.  Until God interrupts our lie, we will not know the end of fate.

God gave grace to the king of Nineveh.  The king recognized a God who was rightly angry.  We would say there is a God who cares that all is not right in the world.  The king said, “Who knows?  God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

Fate would require no opportunity.  But we have a God who creates opportunity.  For three days His prophet traversed that great city with a warning.  The city repented  This is the end of fate.  People can change.  They can be changed through an experience of the grace of God.

Ultimately we have Jesus who traversed heaven and earth to conquer the greatest liar and prince of death, Satan.  Jesus is the end of fate.  He invites us into His Kingdom of life.

Thank you Lord for the grace to hear and know you.

It was soon tested.  Connie Cavanaugh writes about that first test in Following God One Yes At a Time:

Even though he felt different, like something had happened to him when he hasked Jesus in, Cesar didn’t think it would last.  Nothing ever had.  But the next day, on the soccer filed, a strange thing happened.  A player on the opposing team, a new guy who obviously didn’t know Cesar’s reputation, tripped him and then, for good measure, kicked him in the ribs.  Everybody froze. Neither team wanted to miss the beating Cesar would deliver once he got back on his feet.

Jumping up and facing his attacker Cesar balled his fists but before he could take a swing, something stopped him.  God loves you and gave His Son to die for you, he remembered.  You are a new creation.  His hands relaxed.  He shook his head and told his opponent who was crouching, ready to defend himself, “Iss okay, man.  Fogedaboudid.  Less play.”  He ran back to his position.  Shockwaves rippled across the field.  Cesar’s first Christ-like act generated so much buzz that he eventually introduced almost every player on his team to Jesus.  Nobody had told Cesar not to fight; it was the voice of the Holy Spirit he heard and said yes to.  He was beginning to grow in the simple way God designed–one simple, immediate, possible yes at a time.

It’s stories like this that  inspired me as I read Connie Cavanaugh’s book Following God One Yes At a Time: Overcoming the 6 Barriers That Hold You Back.  The life stories from her own life and that of her family and friends readily illustrate the biblical truth she presents to help us take a first step in following Christ again when we have gotten stuck.  God wants us to keep in step with Him.  But at different times in our lives we may find that we have a our feet nailed to the floor by fear, pride, guilt, shame, comparison or doubt.

Connie, who previously authored From Faking It to Finding Grace, has given us an book that is fuel for faith.  She celebrates discipleship in real life by rooting faith in two Gospel realities:  1)  Following Jesus is a call to say “Yes” to Him everyday of our lives.  And 2)  God is faithful to reveal Himself and provide enough for us to move on. You can learn more about this Canadian author at www.conniecavanaugh.com .  I enjoyed Connie’s book and was equipped and inspired to follow God one “Yes” at a time!

The problem with a grudge though, is that we aren’t trying to leave.  We harbour, nurse, feed our offendedness with rationalistic reasons for why we are right to feel the way we do and to keep holding onto it.  Before we know it a root of bitterness and resentment has turned into a habitual way of relating in relationships  making us over-sensitive, proud, and very self-righteous.  I know, I’ve been there.

As we have been reading through Mark in our journey with Jesus at Cityview I have been surprised at the way Mark correlates Jesus’ teaching with Jesus’ activity.  This pattern is evident in the text associated with Palm Sunday.

A.  Jesus enter Jersusalem as a triumphant king and proceeds to the temple where he looks around.  Mark 11:1-11

B.  The next day, Jesus examines a fig tree for fruit, and finding none, judges it.  11:1-17

C.  Jesus returns to the Temple and clears the Court of Gentiles, and announces that the redemptive purpose of the temple is not being fulfilled:  Is it not written, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?” But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’  Mark 11:13-19

D.  The chief priests and teachers are deeply offended and begin to seek in earnest a way to get rid of Jesus.

E.   The Disciples observe the withered fig tree and Peter is astonished.

E.  Jesus addresses two concerns He has for the Disciples:
1.  Faith-full prayer/conversation with God.
2.  Forgiveness in prayer of any people with whom they might hold an offense.

I believe Jesus recognizes a challenge for the disciples that will keep them from realizing their full redemptive potential in His Kingdom.  In the course of the ministry with Him, Jesus’ disciples will run into confrontations with people.  The Kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus confronts what is wrong in the world:  unbelief, abandonment to the flesh, idolatry, misuse of God’s gifts, and the abuse of people.  The disciples  had just accompanied Jesus on such a foray and I believe it would have been easy for them to hold “something” against the people who were now planning Jesus’ death.

An enemy thinks the world would be a better place without you.  And clearly these enemies of Jesus were headed down that path.  However, Jesus would have nothing to do with holding a grudge, planting bitterness, and nursing resentment.

In the future, these disciples of Jesus confronting a world of unbelief and opposition at times to the Gospel would discover that the world would not change as quickly as they might have hoped.  The now-but-not-yet nature of the Kingdom of God meant that they must look forward with faith in a good God who does complete what He says that he would complete.  Even Israel in celebration of the Passover where called out in this week to persist in their faith that God would prevail.  They must not retreat into despair or un-believing doubting prayer.  I do not believe the issue here is whether or not the disciples believed God could do something miraculous.  The real issue was in doubting the fundamental nature of God as one who cares.  Faith-full believing prayer maintains the revealed character of God in His Word as fundamentally good.  It is this quiet confidence and faith then that allows us to engage the sovereignty of God with faith in prayer.  His “no,” “yes,” or “wait” can be accepted and trusted.

And it is this observation that brings us to the first problem with a grudge.  We want to believe that a grudge or resentment is first and foremost a problem between me and the person, or me and the company, or me and that race of people, or me and individual in the past.  But Jesus makes a grudge or sensitive offendedness to a first and foremost a problem between me and God.

“And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”  Mark 11:25

The first problem with a grudge toward a person is that it is a problem between me and God.  If I am holding something against another person and believing that they owe me, it is a problem between me and God.  And it is such a problem that I will not be able to fulfill the full redemptive purpose of God for my life.  Jesus tells me that God refuses to bless this course of action in my interior world.  A grudge will cause me to be as lifeless and fruitless as the fig tree Jesus examined the day before this teaching.  A grudge will cause me to be as cluttered, busy, and void of the redemptive purposes of God as Israel was in the Court of the Gentiles.  A grudge, you see, is actually an persistent act of unbelief and treats the Gospel of Jesus’ grace, God’s unmerited choosing, as something small, trite, and of little consequence.  God will not bless grudge keeping, bitterness, and nursed resentments.  Unforgiveness keeps me from fulfilling the redemptive purposes of God and limits my generosity, kindness, compassion, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, joy, peace, self-control, and love.

What to do?

Well we can’t wait to forgive until the other person changes.  To pray is to change.  If I am in conversation with God I am the one called to forgive.  Choose over and over to say, “This person owes me nothing.”  I entrust them to God.  I entrust myself to God’s grace in the Gospel of Jesus.  God has abundantly blessed me…I can afford to extend such grace to others…even to others who wish ill of me.   Jesus has shown us how, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Our challenge is that because most of us who are habitually confronted with our ability to keep a grudge rarely enter into that pain because of our commitment to Jesus’ mission, we fail to make the connection between grudges, grace, and our experience of God’s power.  Our experience of such pain derives mostly from unmetabolized pain in our past and/or from the irritants  that accompany daily relationships common to us all.

When we stand praying and God reminds us of a offense we are holding onto, he is inviting us to a new level of living and relationship in the Kingdom of His Son, Jesus Christ.

It is possible that unforgiveness can become such a mountain in our soul that we are not sure we will ever be free of it.  The 70 times 7 challenges to forgiveness have  shown me that forgiveness is sometimes a  process of growth and experience of Jesus grace.  Thankfulness for the other person(s), Surrender of myself to God, Interecssion for God to bless the other person(s), and then finally imagining what the full redemptive work of Jesus’ grace could look like.  On the later, let me paint the picture I have:  Seated at the banquet table of heaven we raise our glasses to toast Jesus, the King of Kings, but instead he begins to toast us…he makes his way to me and blesses me, toasts me, welcomes me to His table as a loved and cherished son…a tear slips down me cheek and Jesus reaches out to wipe it away…I turn away and find that beside me is one who was an enemy, recognition crosses our eyes in an instant, and all I can think to say is, “Jesus is awesome isn’t He?”

You see compassion is to be moved toward another person by the reality of their condition.  In this case Jesus arrived on the other side of the lake with his tired and hungry disciples seeking a quiet place.  But instead of quiet they found a crowd.  Jesus “saw the large crowd and had compassion on them because they were sheep without a shepherd.  So he began teaching them many things.”

Obviously Jesus was an entertaining teacher; he taught through the day and past dinner.  But more than that was going on.  He recognized that the most desperate hunger of the crowd’s souls could only be met by truth, by Him, by the good news of His Kingdom.  So he taught them.  The truth could set them free.  Now before you shut Jesus and the church off, see what happens next in the account from Mark.

The disciples, probably being really hungry themselves, recognized that the crowds of people where in a desperate situation for food.  They were away from the towns and villages and the families that had spent the day with Jesus were now very hungry.  The Disciples wanted Jesus to send them away.  This is not compassion.  The disciples were not moved toward the people.  Rather, once they recognized the condition of the crowd, the disciples wanted to be done with them.  I love what happened next.

Jesus told the disciples to feed the crowd.  When they protested that it would cost eight months of wages, Jesus told them to see “what they had.”  In other words Jesus told them go find out what this community had.  When they came back with five loaves and two fish, Jesus took this community offering and fed them all.  They collected twelve baskets of leftovers.  Now that’s hard to believe.  And in case you are wondering the disciples had a hard time accepting Jesus’ authority of nature as well.  Just notice that even within the next twelve hours they were astonished that Jesus had this kind of authority.

My observations here are about the compassion of Jesus.  1.  He was moved towards people because of their condition:  their interior world was lacking  truth, specifically the truth about Him and the Kingdom; so, he taught them.  2.  He was moved towards people because of their condition the physical reality of hunger; so, he had his disciples gather what was already present in the community and share it beyond what one would have thought possible.

I believe Jesus was nurturing the spiritual motives necessary for His disciples to be a movement:  Complete trust and dependence in Him and compassion for the lost.  If we are to join Jesus in His work we must ask the Holy Spirit to nurture these motives in us.  Otherwise, we will keep our mouths shut in a culture that is suspect of truth proclamations and we will run away from people whose needs exceed what we have in our pockets.  Two aspects of our ministry of the gospel of the Kingdom that must be held together tightly:  proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus’ grace and the sharing of our community’s resources in the name, power, and character of Jesus.  Clearly Glenn Beck is not the first to struggle with Jesus’ ability to hold these two realities together, nor will he be the last.

Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.  ”Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.  Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners.’?”  Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  Luke 5:27-32

The party has been crashed.  The Pharisees are making a scene.  And Matthew (Levi) stands to be embarrassed.  Perhaps the music stopped and everyone gets quiet to see what would happen next.  Its Matthew’s party…but its Jesus who gets in the face of the Pharisees and challenges their self-righteousness with a statement of defence crafted not on the merits of the tax collectors and sinners, but rather on the merits of His own mission.  Jesus will not be divided from the people He has called out even when others call them down.

In our setting, self-righteousness comes in many forms and has many preachers.  The “new” self-righteousness may not be religious, but may actually pride itself in not being religious.  This self-righteous non-religiosity creates a pressure that can divide many followers of Jesus from living an integrated life.  It happens on Monday morning.  ”Hey, how was your weekend.”  Great.  ”What did you do?”  uhm…watched the game, went hiking with the family…

What’s missing?  A vibrant confession:  ”I got to hang out with some friends who have been accepted by Jesus Christ and consider how God is making a difference in… I’m amazed that this group of imperfect, diverse, people are drawn to Jesus and have been given life.  I’m really happy to be a part of this group.”  

Or whatever…but that’s the integrity test.  Its in the subtle ways we avoid pressure, question, conflict, and therefore never create the space to address one of the hot deafeaters of faith in Jesus:  the weaknesses and failings of Jesus’ own people.  Unless we confess with absolute joy and awe at what Jesus has done in accepting us–all of us who call Him Lord, then we will rarely have the opportunity to proclaim the gospel as a way of living that is neighter religious or irreligious, moral or immoral.  Unless we celebrate the mission of Jesus to us–to meet the sick and to heal them–and to call the sinners to repentance–then we will struggle on Mondays and Tuesdays and Fridays–and even Sundays to stand with the church.

 High school graduation is a major marker in the journey of growing up.  Today I was privileged to be a part of graduation interviews at Tupper High School.  I’m so impressed with the students I met and deeply appreciative of the variety of strengths they have landed on and are seeking to develop in the next years.  Some of them are shifting well almost on automatic, and others are in the midst of learning to shift.

I have been thinking during the day about the kinds of shifts that are needed and one hopes are well on the way by graduation.  Here’s a short list of shifts that I believe high school graduation signals are in order.  What do you think, are these expectations realistic?

1.  From dependence to independence to interdependence.

2.  From working on my weaknesses to living in my strengths.

3.  From trusting that others will solve problems for me to seeking solutions with others.

4.  From simply absorbing the values of others in order to please them to sorting out what really matters to me.

5.  From living for myself as an end to living for something greater than me.

6.  From fear of challenges to facing challenges.

7.  From the inertia of the familiar to the exhilaration of learning something new.  And from depending on others to do this for me to taking the initiative to sharpen my growing edges.

8.  From intoxication with power to the just application of power.

9.  From having others pay the bills to paying the bills myself.

10.  ……….hey what shift do you believe high school graduation signals?

 The first reality that the series deals with is that your alignment with Jesus may create anxiety in others.  For the follower of Jesus this is integrity 101 after the matter of honesty.  Our text Luke 2:41-52 opens a window on Jesus going to Jerusalem with Mary and Joseph and then staying behind without their knowledge.  After three days they find him in the temple conversing with the elders there.  His parents are astonished.  And Jesus himself seems genuinely surprised that they did not know where he was or what he was about.  Jesus’ alignment with His Heavenly Father created great anxiety for Mary and Joseph.  In a simple reduction of the problem we can say that when faced with the anxiety of others we are pressed into an integrity test.  Will we be a people-pleaser or a God-pleaser?  You can listen to the message at cityviewchurch.ca later this week.  The listening guide is below.

1.  Alignment with Jesus means you will be doing new things and establishing new patterns.  

“Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”  Luke 2:49
2.  Alignment with Jesus creates change in relationships.  

“When his parents saw him, they were astonished.  His mother said, “Son, why have you treated us like this?  Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”  Luke 2:49
3.  Alignment with Jesus does not mean you abandon all your commitments.   But it does require you to sort out your obligations.

 ”But they did not understand what he was saying to them.  Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them.”  Luke 2:50-51
4.  Alignement with Jesus propels you into essential areas of growth.  

“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”  Luke 2:52

Jesus fully met the demands of reality.  We do not and that problem reveals again why I need a Saviour and why Jesus was fully able to meet the reality of my sin:

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  2 Corinthians 5:21

If you are using a narrative passage of Scripture have someone prepared ahead of time to tell the story.  Then have someone read the text.  Then make your way, one question at a time through the following questions:  SPECKA

S  is there any SIN to confess or avoid in this passage?

P  is there any PROMISE to claim?

E  is there any good EXAMPLE to follow or bad EXAMPLE to avoid?

C  is there a direct COMMAND to obey?

K  is there any KNOWLEDGE about who God is or how He works?

A  what is the APPLICATION?
     1st.  What are the general APPLICATIONS from this passage?
     2nd.  What are your personal APPLICATIONS from this passage?

Enjoy.  And if any of you do this by yourself or with a group of friends please give me feed-back on how it went.