Join us in this thought-provoking episode as we explore the powerful message of God’s breaking process, using the biblical story of Jonah as our touchstone. Discover why many of us instinctively resist when God targets areas in our lives that hinder our spiritual growth. Through vivid storytelling, we see how Jonah’s relentless defiance led to profound consequences, not only for himself but for those around him. We delve into the nature of self-love and pride that blinds us to God’s loving discipline, and we confront the cost of escaping from God’s path. As we unfold Jonah’s remarkable journey, we
00:00:01 Introduction to God’s Lessons Through Pain
Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, October 24th. God will allow us to go through pain if that’s what it takes to mature us. Today, you’ll see what can happen when you try to escape your trials instead of looking for God’s lesson.
SPEAKER 02 :
Why is it that you and I resist God’s breaking process in our life? Remember what we said. The process goes something like this. He targets the area in your life which He knows is hindering what He wants to do in your life. Then God arranges the circumstances or allows them to be arranged in which you feel the pressure. then He chooses the tools. It may be somebody. It may be something financially. It may be a relationship. He chooses the tools. He governs or controls how much pressure is to be placed upon you, and He also controls the time. Now, when you and I think about that in our own lives, why do we resist Him? Well, probably for this reason. Some people are very strong. They’re strong personalities. They have a very forceful will. Some people are emotionally very strong. They can take a lot of heat, a lot of persecution, a lot of criticism. They can take a lot of rejection. They can do without a lot of loving. And then some folks are very strong-minded. They know how to manipulate, weasel their way out. They can figure out how to deliver themselves even from God’s breaking process in their life. The pressure turns on, they get busier. They’ve sent some setback and some failure and their sense of self-will, self-determination, their pride and rebellion just motivates them to go on and on. And in spite of everything God does, they just keep on moving on. It’s what Jonah did. Just think what happened. God sent him a storm, threw him overboard, swallowed him up, spit him out, had a revival, sent him a sunstroke. Nothing he did. All he said, I want to die, but I don’t want to be obedient to God. My friend, listen to me carefully. Some of you have already drawn yourselves a circle around you. You’ve said, I’m not letting anything in this circle but what I want. Not even God. Now, you’ve not put it in those terms, but that’s what you’ve said. Or you’ve drawn a line and you’ve said, this is as committed as I want to be. This is as committed as I’m going to be. I’m going to do whatever God says up to this point, but not beyond that. There’s a second part of this problem. Why we respond the way we respond. When you look at old Jonah, God said to him, cry against the wickedness of Nineveh. And what does he say? The Bible says, he says, I’m going to Tarshish. I’m leaving town. Now, here’s the problem. We fail to see God’s hand in our life when he’s trying to break us. And so the pressure comes on from somebody, maybe somebody we live with, maybe a husband or wife or children or parents, employer, a friend. We feel great pressure. Some circumstance, some situation we’re in, the pressure’s on. Instead of acknowledging that God is behind my circumstances, God is in my environment, and God may be using somebody whom I love dearly or maybe even my enemy as a tool to chisel and sand and cut away, what do we do? Instead of seeing the hand of God in it, we blame and we create our own avenues of escape. Now, what we don’t realize is this. We’re running from God. We’re blaming it on people. We’re blaming it on the circumstance. We keep running, rebelling, and rationalizing. Then there’s a second problem. Not only do we fail to see God’s hand, but another reason is, it’s just self-love. Now, what I mean by self-love is that unhealthy, unhealthy, unscriptural view of ourselves. God, I want it my way. Self-centered, self-seeking view. prideful, my way. I want to do it my way when I want to do it, where I want to do it. It doesn’t make any difference if it hurts anybody else. And so this idea of being macho and this idea of being self-made and self-centered, I can do my own thing. I don’t need anybody else. I want to tell you, my friend, there’s a bullseye right across your heart. God is after it. To break it. And to bring our emotions and our body and our spirit in submission to what is best for us. God’s only looking out for us. And yet we resume. And we keep running. And we manipulate our way out of it. And we think we’ve escaped. And I want to say again, there is always a price to pay in rebelling against God. In resisting God. In running from God. Always, not sometimes, always a price to pay. Now, let’s look at one other aspect here. And that is the result of this kind of resistance. Well, it’s interesting that God didn’t give up on Jonah. He just kept on pursuing him and kept on adding the pressure, changing the circumstance, kept on putting pressure on him. And here’s a man who lived his life and absolutely refused to be obedient to God. He never broke. Wonder what God would have done with Jonah if he had broken under his stubborn, rebellious resentment, his prejudice, his animosity and hostility to those Assyrians. I want to talk about the kind of price Jonah had to pay and then I want to come back and apply it to ours. But I want to say at this point, Jonah’s resistance to God’s breaking power in his life endangered someone else. and caused them to suffer. On board the ship, that ship was about to sink. All these sailors were scared to death. They didn’t want to throw John overboard, but they finally did it in order to save themselves. They suffered. They had to throw everything on board, overboard, so they lost all the cargo. They finally threw him overboard. Here’s what I want you to watch. I want you to watch what it cost Jonah to resist and rebel against God. And my friend, with all of my heart, I want you to listen carefully because what you don’t realize is what your resistance and rebellion toward God is costing you. It is a very foolish person who thinks that his ledger sheet is going to come out gaining when he’s running from God. You’re always losing. And if you look at this passage, Jonah went down to Joppa, down into the hull of the ship, down into the sea, because you see, the day you start running from God, I don’t know where you may have been or where you are, but the day you start resisting and running from God, you start down, and the price tag starts up right there. The meter on your life begins running. The day you say, God, I’m not going to do it. Or the day that you just ignore what you know is the will of God and decide to do your own thing. Brother, the meter starts running right then. I guarantee you, your losses will be several times your gain. And look at Jonah. First of all, it cost him separation from his family. He had to leave. The Bible says he went down to Joppa, bought him a ticket, heading out 2,000 miles in the other direction. Secondly, his conscience became very guilty. He was disobeying God. Thirdly, he had this estrangement between he and God. He had no relationship, no fellowship, no oneness with God. He was living in rebellion and resisting God’s will. The Bible says he went down and paid the fare up there. I don’t know how much it cost to go from Joppa to Tarshish, but 2,000-mile trip in those days cost him some money. My friend, it’s costing a lot of you more money than you realize to live in sin and rebellion toward God. He paid the fare thereof. Got on board ship. And what happened? He’s bound to have been frightened. This tremendous storm rocking this boat, throwing everything overboard. Can you imagine what Jonah must have felt when they picked him up and threw him into a stormy Mediterranean Sea? Can you imagine the agony and the horror that he felt when all of a sudden he realized he was being swallowed up by something? Well, he describes it. Listen to this. In the belly of the fish, chapter 2. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish. And he said, I called out of my distress… to the Lord, and he answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol, or hell. Thou didst hear my voice, for thou hast cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me, and thy breakers and billows passed over me. So I said, I have been expelled from thy sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward thy holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds were wrapped around my head, seaweed. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. He thought he was dying. This terrible death. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever. For thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. While I was fainting away, thought he was dying, I remembered the Lord. And my prayer came to thee. Into thy holy temple those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness. But I will sacrifice to thee with a voice of thanksgiving that which I have vowed I will pay salvation is from the Lord. Well, now he made a promise to God, but didn’t have a change of attitude. In the moment of the depth of overwhelming fear and unbelievable pressure and excruciating pain, he said, I will pay. Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land. God gave him another chance. Not because he deserved it, but because God had a job to be done. Think of the horror. Think of the experience. Think of what he paid. Then he had that long walk to Nineveh. And then think about him up here on the mountain looking down on Nineveh. Think of the anger and the hostility. Have you ever been angry and hostile and resentful? Imagine all the emotional turmoil. This man is in emotional bondage. He is a prisoner of his own making sitting there on the hillside watching to see if God’s judgment is going to come upon Nineveh knowing that it’s not really because they’re repenting of their sin. Imagine the emotional bondage that he’s going through, the suffering, the pain, the churning inside of this man. Can you imagine a man getting himself in that mess? Yes, you can, because that is exactly where some of you are. You’ve rebelled against God. You’ve said, I don’t want anything to do with the church. I don’t want anything to do with Jesus Christ. I don’t want anything to do with God. I’m going to live my own life. Well, you’re living it, and look what a mess you’ve made. Now, let’s be honest. Don’t turn it off. Listen. Think about what you feel, your emotions, your entanglements, your relationships, the anger, the hostility, the resentment, the bitterness, the emptiness, the loneliness, the estrangement from God, the hopelessness, the times of despair, those moments of depression, how empty your future looks. and all the relationships that you’ve cultivated and created, and all the affairs you’ve had, none of them have satisfied you. You just keep looking and longing and searching and running and trying and dipping into this and dipping into the other, trying to find something that’ll satisfy that awful, nauseating emptiness in your heart. My friend, you’ll never find it. There is only one place where all that can be satisfied. It is in a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. Look what it’s costing you. And you see, I want you to put a circle around this. You can’t sin against God, rebel against Him, resist His breaking power in your life without hurting somebody. And usually, we hurt the people who are the dearest to us. So I want to ask you this question, and I want you to be honest. Who’s hurting today because of your resistance to the will of God? Who’s feeling the pain today and the hurt and the despair and the hopelessness because you are running from God? Whose heart is aching? Who’s anxious and fearful for their future because you’re running from God? I wonder how many of you have small children, maybe eight, nine, or twelve, or maybe teenagers. And they’re hurting because their dads are betting against God. They’re hurting because their mom is resisting the will of God. Or you say, you know, it’ll all work out. It sure will. Listen, work out of you into them. And for years in their life, they are going to bear the weight of your sin and your rebellion and your resistance to the will of God. Your children suffer as a result of your rebellion. You see, that’s the part of the legislature you’ve not tabulated. You cannot resist and rebel against God without paying an awesome price. And oftentimes, the hurt and the damage to others is worse than to ourselves. Likewise, when you and I resist the will of God, we delay God’s purpose in our life. You know, a lot of people are going to stand before God in the judgment and realize that they never did anything They never found out God’s will for their life. And they just sort of moseyed their way through life or rushed their way through life. They never stopped to ask, God, what do you want to do with my life? Some people are going to resist Him until it is eternally too late. The clock’s going to strike. It’s going to be all over. All no second chances. Life will have been spent and wasted. But then for some others, listen carefully, you can run and resist and rebel until finally God says, all right, you win, but you lose. And God just puts you on the shelf, and there you are. But here’s what I want you to see most of all. Listen very carefully now. Jonah… did what God told him to do, finally, by going to Nineveh and preaching the message of repentance, they repented. But look what happened. Jonah missed the blessing. If he had submitted himself to God and gone there trusting the Lord and obeying Him, think of the joy and the excitement and the testimony and the story he would have had to tell. to other people as a result of how God used him? He had nothing to tell. He’s up there wanting to die. You know what’s going to happen to some of you? Because God puts the pressure on you, you’re going to go through life and you’re going to do a lot of things God wants you to do. But you will have missed the blessing and the joy and the peace and the contentment that only comes When you say, all to Jesus I surrender, all to you I freely give, I will ever love and trust you in your presence, daily live. Or you weasel your way out, but look what it’s cost you. It’s cost you the joy of living. So I ask you one final question. What is it that you’ve put such value on in your life? that you are willing to miss God’s best, you’re willing to resist and run from God’s brokenness, you’re going to insist on having your way, what is it that you’ve put such value on that you are willing to pay the awesome price of disobedience to a loving Father? What is it that you hold to that’s so valuable as that? My friend, when you stand in the judgment, you’ll recognize your hand was full of dust. Nothing you and I hold to that keeps us from the will of God, nothing has any more value than a hand full of dust. Foolish is the man, a woman, who resists God’s breaking process. Wise is the man, a woman, who says, Lord, not my will, but thy will be done.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to part two of Brokenness, the protest. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
