Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is naive. And you've reached the Mosaic Church Podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community, and I'd love for you to be even more connected.
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[00:00:59] Speaker B: Such a fun series. Isn't this such a fun series?
This whole, like, old school thing actually has me on a nostalgia kick where I'm going back to reruns of shows that maybe I didn't see before, and I'm like, I gotta check these things out. So I don't know if you guys have ever heard of a show. It's called Murder, She Wrote.
Okay? All right, listen. I was a child when it came out, so I did not see it then, but I'm watching it now. And I have to tell you something else that I did discover. Kind of blew my mind a little bit, if I'm being honest, guys. Angela Lansbury doesn't do the murders.
I did not know that.
40 years. This is what I thought was happening. She actually solves them, which is shocking and also really fun information, because I didn't know that girls could, like, be detectives.
I thought that's what cartoon dogs were for.
Like, I'm a Scooby Doo. Like, that's how I was raised, you know? But I wonder if maybe it's my upbringing of all of these things by now. I get sucked in to a mystery, like, a really good whodunit. Anybody else just, like, completely gets sucked in. I'm like, give me a little tiny notebook and a little tiny pencil and point me in the right direction, because I am going to solve what happened before all of the people on the screen and definitely before the people in the room, which my husband says, it's only a fun game for me.
Like, listen, here's the deal, okay? It's not that I'm smarter than you.
It's not that the detectives even are smarter than Us. But I think a lot of times what happens when we can't figure it out is because we're looking at the wrong things.
See, we think that mysteries are about discovering hidden information.
We're focused on clues and different things that will point us to what we believe then will be a big revealed truth in the end.
But what the detectives have learned to see is the truth of whatever is right there in front of them. They've been able to learn to see things differently. And so that's what I want us to do today in the story that we're gonna go through. It's what we're kind of doing in this whole entire series of Old School is we're looking at Old Testament stories and going, okay, what are the clues that tell us what God is like from these stories? What do we know about who God is? And so, so far in this series, we've learned that God is loving and that he created you. Good. We've learned that God is faithful. Last week, Pastor Naim let us know that God is actually thinking about us and our hopes and our dreams for the future. And I realized just how true that actually was when I was prepping this message this week. Because eight years ago, almost to the day, this is the first Bible story that I ever taught to a group of people. And it wasn't preaching yet. It was not a sermon, but I had gathered a group of volunteers. We had another campus before COVID called Metro, that was in the Plaza, Midwood area.
And I had the honor of leading that team for three years.
And we were having this team night. And this was the story that I got to teach. And I want you to know, I can tell you for certain, not only from the story we're gonna do today, but in my own life, that God is very patient.
And that's what I want you to see today. God is incredibly patient.
When I think back to the leader that I was eight years ago, it was my very first ministry job. I had no idea what I was doing.
I was scared. I was fumbling. Maybe because of my defensiveness. I was a little stubborn, maybe a little. I don't know, maybe a little stubborn. But I realized in all of that just how patient God is. See, because what happens is I can see things now that I couldn't see back then, but now I'm able to realize that this is actually the future that God was leading me toward. And there were things that were missing and things that I needed to see before I could get here.
And so I know the Same is true for you.
I know that God has been showing you something. He's led you to this future right now that you're currently in, and he's going to continue leading you to the next.
And I believe that's why you're here, why you're watching online, or why you're listening later.
Because something within you is telling you, even if you can't see it quite clearly yet, that God is trying to show you something.
And I want you to know before we even start, that God is not mad at you, that you haven't figured it out yet. And he is not going to lose his patience or go, you know what, because it's taking you so long, I'm gonna revoke it and take it away. That's not the kind of God that He is.
He is right there with you, and he is patiently waiting for you to see what. What he has for you. And he's going to keep leading you toward it until you can see it.
So let's jump in to our story today. I'm gonna give you a clue, because I bet this is a story that, you know, one of the main characters you've probably been told is a whale.
What is the story, friends? Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. Look, I like your answer. First service was real hesitant with all their answers. Just bring it in full confidence, even if you're wrong. Okay? I love it. That's what we're gonna do. All right, so Jonah, in the Bible, I think maybe is a bit of a mystery. And we were probably taught, you maybe were taught that this is a story about obedience and about what happens when you disobey God. And maybe you were taught to look for clues in the story that then can relate to your own life. And I think that there is something to that. Right? But what I actually want us to see today is how God has been present all throughout the entire story and how this actually shows us the patience.
So Jonah is a prophet, and prophets were people who would speak the message of God to the people. And prophets were real and they existed. And also, especially as we go through Old Testament stories, we see that sometimes weird things happen in the Bible, right? Especially in the Old Testament, you read something and you're like, wait, what? Like, did that really happen?
So I will tell you that the story of Jonah is one that is debated a little bit, that some people think maybe it's just an allegory. Maybe it didn't really happen. Some people think, yes, it did actually happen. But even in the telling of this story, it's satire, which means that the recording or the narrative is intentionally exaggerated because the author of this story is trying to get us to see something.
Because good storytellers know that sometimes the best way to make a theological point is, is by being a little dramatic. Okay, so that's what we're gonna do in the story of Jonah today. We're gonna pick it up in verse two, where God is speaking to Jonah. He says, get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, announce my judgment against it, because I have seen how wicked its people are. And so Nineveh was kind of like the enemy city of Israel. And so I can see a scenario where Jonah was like, oh, I've been waiting for this.
I can't wait to go and tell them exactly what God thinks of them and what he's going to do.
But also, the Ninevites were known for their brutality and the really, like, graphic ways that they would treat the people that they captured in their conquests. So maybe that's why Jonah responds the way he does. In verse three, it says, but Jonah got up and went in the, what, opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. Now this is. Jonah was supposed to just like hop and skip and a jump over here to this town, but instead it's as if he left, like modern day Iraq and went to Spain.
Okay, this is what Jonah's doing. And so I hope that you're seeing the irony here already in this story.
Jonah, who is so connected to God that he's trusted to take God's thoughts and his messages and to speak them aloud to people, thinks that he can escape God by getting on a boat and crossing the Mediterranean.
So this is what's happening, right? Okay, so he's on the ship and a storm pops up and there's a whole bunch of different sailors on board. And Scripture tells us that they each start praying to their own God. These are not people who follow the Jewish faith. So they are not praying to Jonah's God. They're not praying to the Lord. We don't know exactly what gods they were praying to, but we know it was a lot of different people. So I just looked something, you know, like, let's just see. There was baal, who was the God of storms. Maybe they were praying to baal. They could have been praying to Yam, which was the God of the sea. There could have been Greek people on board who would have been praying to Poseidon, maybe even there were people there who were praying to Ariel and her dad, King Triton.
We don't know, okay? All we know is they were not praying to the Lord.
Meanwhile, while they're doing out and calling out to all these things, Jonah is underneath the ship taking a nap, because apparently deliberate disobedience makes you sleepy. Okay? So the captain goes down there in verse six to wake him up, and he's like, how can you sleep at a time like this? He shouted, get up and pray to your God.
Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives.
Their gods were not responding. They're like, this is not working, so can we try yours? Can you, like, phone a friend and see if he's going to intervene and help us?
But when the storm still didn't stop, they decided to cast lots, which is a fancy way of saying they basically wrote everybody's name on a stick and put it into a cup, and then you shake the cup until the gods make one of the sticks fly out. And that person would be then found to either have really important information or. Or be the culprit, be the one that was at fault here.
Guys, guess whose name came out of that cup? Jonah. Jonah, of course.
So they start giving him, like, the 20 questions, right? Asking him all these things about what God exactly did he prayed to and what did he do to make this God so angry. And so in verse nine, Jonah answers, I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the land.
So Jonah's like, I guess, throw me into this sea that my God made. And I was always taught to read this as a confession, where Jonah's like, all right, I'm gonna take the punishment that I deserve because I understand my disobedience and what I was supposed to do and how I didn't do it. But what I actually think is happening here, especially through the lens of satire, I think Jonah's doubling down.
He was like, no, absolutely not. I will go anywhere except Nineveh. So you go ahead and put me in the ocean.
And in verse 13, we see the sailors were very gracious. This is not what they wanted to do, says instead, the sailors rowed even harder to get the ship to the land, but the stormy sea was too violent for them and they couldn't make it.
Then the crew cried out to the Lord, what's it say?
Jonah's God.
Oh, Lord, they pleaded, don't make us die for this man's sin and don't hold us responsible. For his death.
Oh, Lord, you have sent the storm upon him for your own good reasons.
Okay, they're not praying to the Lord here for a faith conversion. This is not. All of a sudden, we got it. And we're going to worship Jonah's God. Number one, they didn't want Jonah's life on their hands. They didn't want the guilt.
Number two, they were trying to absolve themselves of whatever punishment was surely coming Jonah's way.
So this is more of them going like, hey, hey, Jonah's God. We just met him.
We know he's on our shit, but, like, he's now actually with us.
So we understand that you need to do whatever you need to do. You do, you boo. We got it. We're on your team, okay? We know that you have your reasons. And so they throw him in. And as soon as they do, the storm stops.
And then we get to the most well known part of the story. In verse 17, says, now the Lord had arranged for a what a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.
Now, the reason, again, we have to look for little details here that tell us things. The reason that Jonah was in the fish for three days and three nights and is because at the time, it was believed that if somebody was dead for three days, they were super dead. Okay? After three days, there was no coming back from it. They were like, this is for sure. This is the cutoff for the detectives in the room.
Who else was dead for three days with God? Jesus. Yes. Good job. With all the confidence. Okay? The difference was here, Jesus was actually dead and tucked into a tomb and Jonah very much alive in the inner workings of a great fish.
And I was thinking about this and have you ever thought, like, what this fish would actually look like?
Like, what kind of animal is so large that Jonah could have been in there and lived for three entire days?
And usually the story is told that it's a whale, right? I think because we're meant to depict like this big, massive creature.
But I like to nerd out sometimes and really find out, like, detail specific information.
So I looked up this phrase, great fish, and I went to like, the original Hebrew. And do you want to know what it translates to?
Big fish.
That's it.
Nothing specific. Not a specific species, just big fish. Which tells me that men on boats with fish have been embellishing since the dawn of time.
Okay? This is not a new thing in my mind when I picture these sailors. And they have to go back and tell the story of what happened. They have to make sure that people understand the imminent danger that they were in.
So I'm sure they told the story of a fish like this, right?
So many teeth.
But remember, all it said was big fish. So I just wonder if just maybe what they actually saw was more like this.
I'm just saying, like, how scary can a fish that God sends to save somebody be? You know what I mean? We don't know. We don't know, but this is what actually happens. We know that this is what happens in the story. They throw him in. He. He gets swallowed by a big fish. God sends a big fish to swallow him. And I wonder if just maybe God sent that fish not to save Jonah from the Ninevites, but to save Jonah from himself.
I wonder if God was like, you know what? I'm going to save you from you and the plans that you think you have for your own life.
Have you ever heard an apology that's not an apology.
There's a lot of words, but then you get to the end of it, and you're like, hold on, that's pretty much all of Jonah, too. Okay, so I'm gonna read you a little bit of it. Jonah is in the belly of one of those two fish, and he is praying to God. It says, in my distress, I called to the Lord, and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.
Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God's love for them.
Although Jonah, so do prophets, apparently, according to your example here. Okay?
But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will make good. I will say, salvation comes from the Lord.
So, see, we read this whole prayer, and we think that Jonah finally sees it. We think that he finally gets it, and he understands what he's supposed to do, and that he's going to now go and carry out God's message to Nineveh. Because I think for a lot of us, we've been trained to see heroism in our Bible characters. Like, no matter what's actually happening in the story, we've been taught that people in the Bible are always the good guys. But when we start to read in context and look a little bit deeper into the meaning of things, that's not actually what Jonah's doing here.
There's no apology, there's no repentance. This is not Even about him recognizing his disobedience. His language of making a sacrifice is his way of saying, I'm gonna show gratitude to God with an offering if he gets me out of here.
If he does this, it's a desperate promise of, like, God, if you save me, I'll bring you a really good souvenir back from this trip.
Those are the kinds of prayers that he's praying and prayers like that where we promise God something on the condition that he is going to do what we want him to do.
Those prayers aren't actually about his own future and what he has for us. It's not about us trying to see what it is that he's leading us to. It's our way to kind of attempt to manipulate God into doing what we want him to do.
But God, in his patience, listens to us. He also listened to Jonah. And so he tells the big fish to throw him up on the shore, I'll save you. The word that it actually says in Scripture, which is pretty gross. Okay? So God tells Jonah again, he's like, listen to me this time.
Go do what I said. Go to Nineveh. Tell those people how bad they are and that I'm about to destroy them.
And so we see in chapter three, this time, it says, jonah obeyed the Lord's command and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to see it all. It would have taken three days for Jonah to go around and deliver the message to all of the people. Instead, what happens is on the day Jonah entered the city, I can just picture it, he shouted to the crowds, 40 days from now, Nineveh will be destroyed.
That's it.
The original Hebrew, it's only five words. Jonah just walked into, like, the city. You know, the city line. And he was like, five word sermon. Got it good enough.
And somehow it was. Jonah's sermon had no mention of God. His message had no mention of what they were doing wrong or how they could potentially fix it. It was just bad news of impending doom. And somehow the whole city's like, okay, bet.
And they believed him. They're like, we got it.
Even the king of Nineveh, who's more like the governor of this city, took off his robes, his royal robes, put on Burlap's sack, and sat on a pile of ashes instead of on his throne.
And then he made this decree for the rest of the city as well. In verse seven, says, then the king and his nobles sent this decree throughout the city. No one, not even the animals from your herds and flocks may eat or drink anything at all.
People and animals alike.
People and animals must wear garments of mourning, like the sackcloth that he put on. And everyone must pray earnestly to God. They must turn from their evil ways and stop all their violence.
Who can tell?
Who knows, perhaps even yet, God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.
And so, just like the pagan sailors that we saw on the ships who were trying to appease their gods on that boat, this is what's happening here. The Ninevites believed from their previous experiences and the gods that they worshiped that if they performed certain rituals, then the gods would be favorable to them and if they did the right things, that they could actually change their own fate.
Now, they did not understand yet how the Lord was different from all of the gods that they had previously worshiped. But they were doing what they could. They were doing what they thought maybe was right to show God. Hey, we're listening. We hear your message and we want to try to do something about it. And what I love about God in this story and just in real life today is that we don't have to fully get it before God intervenes. Like, we don't have to completely understand what it looks like to live in a relationship with him, because that relationship is not about getting it all right.
I actually think it's our posture of humility like they showed. It's a willingness to listen, a willingness to learn that bends God's merciful heart toward us when we need it.
That's exactly what happens, as we'll see in verse 10, when God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, he did what?
He changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened.
God changed his mind.
Did you know that he could do that?
Other translations say that he relented or revoked the sentence, or that he reconsidered and had mercy on people.
I think it's really interesting, especially right now, when it comes to conversations of faith, how changing your mind is a hot topic.
There are some people that say, hey, when you change your mind, when you change the way you believe and what you believe about your faith, you can actually evolve and grow and find yourself in a deeper relationship with God.
But there are other people who think that anytime you try to change your mind about your faith and what you believe, but it's actually kind of selfish and you're just trying to twist things into your own personal narrative, they'll actually call it sinful to change your mind and what you believe.
And I know that some of you are wrestling with this right now, and you're in that place of trying to figure out what you even believe and if what you used to believe is what you still believe, and if you even want to try to believe something different, but you've seen something and God has shown you something.
And now you're wrestling with that idea of, like, wanting to go after what God has shown you while also hearing other people tell you that it's wrong.
And I know that it feels just as dire as it did in this story, because for some of you, it's not about yourself and changing what you believe, but you're hoping and praying that someone else that you know will change their mind on something that they're doing.
Because people that you love right now are doing and believing things that you fear will lead to their destruction.
And it is a really tender and difficult place to be.
But see, the plot twist here in this story is that every single person has done the opposite of what we expected them to do. And I actually think that's where the hope lies. I think our hope lies in knowing that the unexpected can happen.
So, just to summarize, we have this holy prophet, right, who rebels against God, yet God remains patient and faithful with him. We have a powerful king who has all the power and all the say over all the people.
And he decides to come down from his throne, humble himself, and encourage his people to change.
So then we have these pagans who in their own way, are trying to figure out how to humble themselves as well and to repent to the Lord in whatever way they think they can do it. And so because of all this, God also unexpectedly changes his mind and doesn't do what he said he was going to do.
And I think just maybe God is asking you to have patience.
God's asking you to have patience because he knows that in time, something is going to happen that you don't expect to happen.
But it's only gonna happen if you create space for that change to take place.
It's only gonna happen if you are willing to let change happen.
So as Jonah's watching all of this happen and he's hearing God respond, you think that he would have compassion on the people of Nineveh as well, right? That, like, it would make his heart tender.
But instead, Jonah gets big mad, big mad. And he starts, like, yelling a bunch of compliments to God. Look at this.
Chapter four. The change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry.
So he complained to the Lord about it.
Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord?
That is why I ran away to Tarshish. I knew that you are merciful and you are compassionate and you are slow to anger, and you are filled with unfeeling love. All this makes him so mad.
He's like, you are eager to turn back from destroying people, and you're always nice and you always save them, and you never have a bad hair day.
Just kill me now, Lord, he says.
I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen cannot stand to be wrong.
See, Jonah knows God so well, and yet he still can't see the world the way God sees it because of his own judgments and desires and what he thinks people deserve.
Just kill me now, he says. If you are going to be compassionate on the people that I can't stand.
And then we get to chapter four and we see the Lord reply.
Is it right for you to be angry about this? He says.
And apparently Jonah thinks this is a hypothetical question because he doesn't respond. He walks away.
He goes up on a hill where he has a view of the whole entire city, just in case, you know, God changes his mind again, decides to light it up, destroy all of Nineveh.
But what happens instead is that God makes a plant grow. A plant grows up and provides all the shade to cool off Jonah and his attitude.
And he gets chill and he sleeps.
But then in the morning, God sends a worm to eat the plant and make it go away. And God also makes the sun extra hot and the wind extra hot. And so Jonah's sitting there and he gets heated all over again. And God again asks Jonah in verse nine, is it right for you to be angry because the plant died, not learning his lesson? Yes, Jonah retorted, even angry enough to die.
Then the Lord said, so you feel sorry about this plant, though you had nothing to do with putting it here. It came quickly and it died quickly. But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness.
Not to mention all the pets. Guys. Okay, Shouldn't I feel sorry for such a great city?
Great not meaning wonderful, but big.
120,000 people. Picture like Wilmington, North Carolina.
And then the story of Jonah ends.
That's it.
No answers, just a question.
It's like those choose your own adventure books. Do you remember those?
Okay, you, like, get to a page and you're reading, and then, you know you had to have two different decisions. So in case you haven't read one. Like, let's say you're reading a book and, like, there's a big scary noise. And so it'll say, like, if you want to go downstairs and discover, like, where the noise came from, go to page 11.
If you trust your own instincts to, like, get the heck out of there, turn to page 13.
And you got to decide where the story went next. These are really fun for eldest daughters like me, who are always like, the good girl, because I got to safely play out a little bit of rebellion, okay? I would cheat, and I would go to one page and read it and read the ending and be like, nah, that's not gonna get me where I wanna go. And I would just go back and read the other one. Anybody else? Oh, yeah. Okay. All the eldest daughters just raise their hand. I see all of you.
That's what I think is kind of happening here, okay. In the story of Jonah, because there are no more pages to turn to.
And so, as the readers of this story, I think the question is now proposed to us.
Is it right for you to be angry about this? God asks twice. Twice is your anger.
See, our lives show what it is that we care about the most. And not just what makes us angry. Also what we grieve, what we worry about, the things that bring us joy, the things that bring us satisfaction.
And when we think about these things that we care about so much, we have to ask ourselves, are our feelings justified?
Or are we so focused on finding clues that will point us to some unknown truth that we miss the answer that is right in front of us, which is that things that God calls important and cares about are right in front of us.
The things that break God's heart are the things that he cares about the most.
I told you that eight years ago. I got to teach this passage at our other campus. And it was not long after that night that we were standing in a service. And I always stood in the back with Steve during worship so I could just see who was there and who was coming in. And I remember one particular Sunday where worship was going on, and I was standing back there looking around at this group of people that I, like, lovingly referred to as misfits in my heart.
And a lot of them had come in on their own.
A lot of them kind of snuck in because they were scared to try to be in church and be in a space again for the first time in a long time.
And because of who they were or choices that they'd previously made, they'd been Told by others that not only were they too sinful, but they were not worthy of being saved.
Not worthy of being saved.
Like Jonah, other people in their lives had refused to extend mercy or grace or forgiveness or patience as they were working to try to figure out who God was and what God was actually doing in their lives and the situations that they found themselves in.
And so I realized in that moment that in my very, very homogenous upbringing of only people who really looked and lived like me, that I could never pastor this group of people on my own because I had never had to care about what they cared about.
I had never had to think about how the things that they cared about had shaped them, how their choices or the choices of other people had shaped them and their relationship with Jesus.
I'd never had to consider that before, but it hit me in that moment. And so I prayed.
I said, God, show me how to see people the way you see people.
And you guys. It changed my life in a very unexpected way, in ways that I never imagined.
And so now, many years later, I no longer live my life looking inward, only paying attention to the things that will be best for me or people that are like me. Nor do I look through people looking for clues that will tell me how good they are so I know how to interact with them or how to treat them.
And because I was willing to let go and trade my view and my perspective of people in the world for Gods, I've been able over the last couple years to become an ally and an advocate for many marginalized communities.
Actually, just yesterday, we launched the Women of Welcome Local Charlotte chapter right here in this room.
Yes, it's a national organization where they help women come together and care for immigrants and refugees right there in their local community. And so I had no idea what was gonna happen. I just knew God kept telling me to start that chapter, start that chapter. And I just kept waiting and just kept waiting, but I did it. And we had the first meeting yesterday, and we had 50 women here, 50 women who decided, you know what? I don't completely understand policy. I don't know what to do. I don't even understand how we got here. But I know that the call of a follower of Jesus is to love my neighbor better. So please help me, educate me. I'm here. I'm showing up to do it.
And please hear me. This did not happen because I'm a good person.
Took me 30 years to get here. Took a very long time.
But this happened because God was patient enough to use everything that he could to get my attention and to show me what he really cares about and what is actually worthy of my righteous anger.
See, the moral of Jonah's story here is not what happens when we disobey. It's that we keep God's love from other people when we can't see beyond ourselves.
Faith in God, friends, while mysterious, is not a mystery.
God is mysterious. But Christianity is not a mystery where we have to look for certain clues and try to find the right clues that will lead us to some mysterious answer about who God is.
Deeper relationship with God happens when we learn to see his presence in plain sight, in our own lives, in other people, in the unexpected places that we would have never considered God to be in.
God has been patiently waiting for you to see something.
Patiently waiting because he's showing you something. And he will continue to patiently wait until you really see it.
He is showing you something.
We're about to enter into response time and we're gonna do one more song.
And we're actually gonna sing the song that God used to get my attention eight years ago.
And so you have a couple of different options here. You can light a candle on either side of the room just to represent a prayer that you are praying today. You can put your prayer on the cross over there. We'd be happy to come alongside you as a staff and pray for that this week. You can also take communion from either side of the room.
Or you can just stay where you are and think about these words and think about what they actually mean.
It might be the most dangerous prayer that you ever pray, but if you are ready and you're like, God, I want to see the world like you see it. And I want to care about the things, God, that you care about. And I want to love people as best as I can the way that you do.
It starts by learning to extend patience to other people, to make mistakes. It starts by learning to see other people the way God sees them.
Even the people that we really don't wanna love and that we really don't wanna even have to talk to on behalf of God.
And so maybe for you today, you're just gonna start by asking God to help you see differently.
I'd love to pray that for us this morning, God. We just confess, Lord, if we've become people.
You are so inwardly focused, God, that we miss your presence right in front of us, God, Would you help us to see the places, Lord, where we're looking for clues, God, where we're so busy being distracted by the wrong things, God, that we're missing where you are in plain sight. God, that we're missing what it is that you care about the most right in front of us.
God, we confess if we've become people, Lord, that are so focused on everything else that we've missed you, even if we've been a follower of yours for years, God, even if we have been in relationship with you for forever, God, would you open our eyes to see where you are?
God, would you open our eyes to see not just the places where we're not being obedient because, God, there are places where you're telling us to go and do something and we know it and we're not going.
God, there are things that you're telling us not to do that we're doing anyway and we know God and all of this matters.
But God, would you also help us to see where we're focused so hard on the wrong things?
God, where your presence is in the world around us in our own lives, in the hard situations, God, in the things that just make sense, God, would you open up our eyes and help us to see people the way you do in Jesus name.
Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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