The God of Second Chances

He was supposed to go east. He was supposed to go to the largest city of the greatest empire and tell them that they were living the wrong way. He was supposed to be God’s mouthpiece to a depraved city.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he hopped on a ship and sailed the opposite way. He fled from his calling, but that was only the beginning of his story. A huge storm appeared and threatened to sink the ship, and it was his fault. So the crew threw him overboard, and then a giant fish swallowed him, took him back east, and threw him up onto the land.

The story of Jonah is familiar to a lot of Christians. We all know about the big fish that swallowed Jonah and swam him across the sea. We’ve all probably tried to image what it would actually be like to sit in the dark stomach of a fish for three days, thinking about how gross that would be. We know that Jonah did eventually go to Nineveh and preach the the Assyrians there, and they did repent and turn to God.

What we don’t often pay attention to is Jonah himself. Jonah was a prophet, an Old Testament man of God. His job was to do the will of God, and he didn’t. God comes to Jonah in chapter 1 and says, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” Instead of doing what he’s supposed to, he runs away.

As Christians, how many times have we done the same? We profess to be followers of Christ, but when he asks us to share the Gospel with someone else, we tuck our tails and run the opposite way. We’re all guilty of this in one way or another, and there are several reasons for why we do this. We’re afraid of being rejected, or maybe being ridiculed. We don’t think they will listen. We don’t know what to say. We don’t know all the answers. There are plenty of reasons we come up with to not do this.

We may be tempted to think Jonah was afraid the king would kill him or something, but if we look at chapter 4, we see the truth behind Jonah’s rebellion. When he finally goes to Nineveh, we see that he was angry that Nineveh repented. He even gets angry with God: “Is this not what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

The real reason that Jonah is mad is because he doesn’t think that the people of Nineveh deserve to hear about God. He has a bit of a perception problem. Think about it. The Assyrians have come in, taken over Israel, and carted most of them off into captivity. Certainly there are some bitter feelings toward the Assyrians on Jonah’s part.

But how many us would be any different from Jonah?

There’s a second part to the Jonah story, though. The fish vomits him up onto land, and God says, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

Notice anything?

Jonah is in the exact same place he was in chapter 1. Notice that God doesn’t say anything to Jonah about running away. He doesn’t reprimand Jonah for disobeying. He simply restates his request to Jonah.

There’s a worship band that I love, Rend Collective. They have a song on one of their albums called “Second Chance”, and the last line of the chorus is, “a second chance is heaven’s heart.”

God is a God of second chances. He doesn’t hold our failures over us. He doesn’t fling down a lightning bolt to smite us. Even in the Old Testament, where God is supposedly a God of vengeance and wrath, we see this kind of love. Jonah got his second chance. Nineveh got their second chance. We all get our second chance.

We may fail. We may stumble. We may rebel. But God is always there to help us back up. Every new day is a second chance for us.

Next time you think someone deserves a punishment or that “evil” people deserve to die, just remember that we all deserve that. If God is willing to give us a second chance, shouldn’t we do likewise to others?

Careless Words

Recently, a woman from East Point, GA was arrested for something she posted online. On Facebook, she posted a status threatening cops nationwide. Race issues aside, this scenario reveals a pretty common issue that social media has brought to our culture—the abuse and misunderstanding of the first amendment.

As a high school teacher, I’m very familiar with this attitude. I hear students all the time saying degrading things to others and justifying it with, “I’ve got the freedom of speech.” They don’t understand why they get in trouble for their rude comments. What they, and apparently many others, don’t understand is that freedom of speech is limited when it interferes with someone else’s personal freedoms. You can’t just go around making threats and not expect repercussions.

As Christians, however, we are held to an even higher standard of living. Jesus says in Matthew 12:36,37, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Wow.

We will give account for every careless word we speak?

Every careless word.

That seems a bit harsh, doesn’t it?

That’s talking about a lot more than threatening someone else. But what does Jesus mean by careless words?

Like many other issues that Jesus teaches about, it all has to do with the heart. A few chapters later in Matthew 15, Jesus says, “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.” In chapter 5, he says, “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

The problem we tend to have with this issue of careless words is that we focus on the words, not the heart. We put taboos on certain words in our culture but fail to acknowledge the intentions behind the words. Most of our taboo words originally had normal meanings and connotations. At some point, though, they became taboo because they were connected to derogatory meanings.

The same is true of Jesus’s statement. The original Aramaic phrase raca, translated as “You fool!” in our translations, is a derogatory phrase. What Jesus reveals here is that it’s the intention behind those words that is sinful. It’s the same as when he says that a man who looks at a woman has committed adultery. Once you’ve committed it in your heart, you may as well have followed through with it because it’s all sinful.

We have to be careful about the things we say to other people. It’s not just about four-letter words that we utter; it’s a deeper issue, an issue of the heart. Saying derogatory things to others is not just an anger issue, it’s a pride issue. When we degrade people, we are essentially saying that we are better than them. If we’re talking like this, then we aren’t uttering the godly things we should be. We are conceited rather than loving.

As James poses, “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?” You either have one or the other, but you can’t have both. You’re either offering uplifting words or derogatory words.You’re either known for being an encouraging person or a jerk. And as we’ve seen from Jesus, derogatory words reveal a deeper sin issue.

I have to admit that I’m often guilty of careless words. Not necessarily the four-letter words either. Others words, like “stupid” and “idiot” and the like. I have said things to others in moments of anger that still hurt years later. I’ve carelessly thrown around degrading phrases, often times under the guise of a jest.

Yet, we constantly justify this kind of talk by making the excuses that they aren’t cuss words or that we were only joking. But we’re called to a higher level of living. One that goes beyond the mere following of rules, one that follows the rules of grace, one which Paul clarifies in Ephesians 4 when he tells us, “Let no corrupting talk come our of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

We should be building up others, not tearing them down, believers and non-believers alike. And that’s not always easy to do. People are fallible. They make mistakes. They hurt us. They wrong us. Intentionally and unintentionally. And we often hang onto those feelings and wait for the perfect moment to strike back. But just a couple of verses later, Paul encourages us, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

It’s not enough to simply not say the few words our culture considers taboo. We have to rid ourselves of the sinful intentions inside our hearts. Otherwise, they begin to take root and poison our lives. We have to dig those roots out and get rid of them.

Maybe you’re in that same boat. Maybe you say things that you end up regretting later because of the effect it has on others. If that’s the case, don’t try to just clean up your tongue. Dig deeper down and find whatever bitterness or anger or hurt that is the real cause of it. Get rid of that and the tongue will then tame itself.

I Give Up: What It Means to Be a Living Sacrifice

In my early 20s, I underwent an identity crisis, like many young 20-somethings tend to do. I was just out of college, alone, and without a clue about what I was doing with my life. I entered into a career I had spent four years studying yet felt completely out of my depth. I felt completely lost, and that lost feeling seeped into my faith.

It’s difficult to describe what was going through my head, but I felt like everything that I thought was faith was nothing more than a cheap imitation. Worship was just a thing I did on Sunday morning because I was supposed to. I felt empty, like I had been living a lie up to that point, just going through the motions. In reality, that's pretty much what I was doing. Looking back, I see that it was really a maturation of my faith.

Essentially, what I realized was that I was right. My faith was a cheap imitation. I had effectively been imitating the faith of others that I knew. Much like a young boy imitating the actions of his father, I watched the people I considered spiritually mature and simply imitated what they were doing. While there’s is nothing inherently wrong with this initially, at some point faith has to grow. It has to become your own. The author of Hebrews explains it perfectly:

“for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:13,14 ESV).”

Milk is good for infants, but at some point, a child has to stop living off of milk and move on to solid food. The child needs something more that will provide the sustenance it needs to live. We would laugh at an adult who only drank milk. We would cook him a steak and tell him that he needed some real food.

In the same way, we cannot merely imitate the faith of others. It’s only a starting point. New believers need mature folks to show them how faith works. But just like learning anything else, there comes a time when we have to let go of the people we cling so tightly to and make a go for it on our own. Daddy has to let go of the bicycle sometime.

And that’s the point I reached one night while lying in bed. I had come to a breaking point and was ready to give up. I was tired of what I considered the "politics" of Christianity. And I was done with it.

“I can’t do this anymore. I give up. If this is what it means to be a Christian, then I’m out.” I vividly remember having this argument with God at 2 o’clock in the morning, and I was literally screaming at the darkness.

It turns out that this became one of the rare times when I felt like I heard God audibly talking to me. Maybe audibly isn’t the best way to describe it. It was more like a crystal clear thought in my head, but it wasn’t my voice. And it was a simple answer.

“You’re right. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about you and me.”

It wasn’t about what I was doing. It wasn’t about who I was imitating. It wasn’t about whether or not I looked like a Christian. It wasn’t about ministry plans, preaching calendars, or the next youth event.

It’s all about the vertical relationship between God and me. Everything else follows naturally.

Once that thought struck and sunk in, everything changed for the better. I stopped trying so hard, and I encountered a completely new way of life: worship.

Ask anyone today what worship is, and most people will respond something connected to singing songs at the beginning of a church service. This is a gross misunderstanding of the idea of worship.

So what is worship? In the first verse of Romans 12, Paul tells us to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Living sacrifices.

That’s worship. But what does that even mean? Isn’t a sacrifice something you kill? And I thought we weren’t under the Old Testament law anymore.

We have to keep reading through Romans 12 to find the answer. “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another (Romans 12:4,5 ESV).”

To be a living sacrifice means that we give up who we are for the body of Christ. It means that we have to die to ourselves, to our desires, to our selfishness, to our personal agendas. Instead, we take who we are and give it up for God, in order that he may use us for his purposes.

One of my favorites truths of life and God and faith that I’ve come across is this idea of worshipping as a living sacrifice. When I stumbled across this truth, I realized that God made me who I am for a reason. Then I realized that God wouldn’t create people who couldn’t worship him in the way they were created. He made me to love music and art and nature, and so those are the ways that I end up worshipping him best.

Paul expounds on that thought about one body and many members in 1 Corinthians. The foot can’t say it doesn’t belong to the body because it’s not a hand. The ear can’t say, “I’m worthless because I’m not an eye." Likewise, the eye can’t say to the ear, “You’re worthless and unnecessary because you aren't an eye.” Everyone has their own role to play and their own personality to go along with it.

That’s the beauty of God’s creation. Everyone can worship him in any number ways. Scientific people can worship him through science and logic. Creative people can worship him through creating. Talkative people can worship him through talking. Logical people worship him through the logic of his creation while experiential people worship him through the simple experience of his creation.

That’s why we can’t completely worship God through imitation. When we try to do that, we worship in a way that isn’t made for us. A Lee-shaped piece can only fit in a Lee-shaped hole. Anything else is uncomfortable and doesn’t fit right.

I have a tattoo that I got shortly after my night in utter darkness. I got it to remind me of that night. It's just one simple Hebrew word that means "surrender", or "give up" in my terminology. It's a constant reminder for me to give up myself in all that I do for the glory of God, which is my act of worship.

So what is worship? Much of it is dependent upon the individual, but for each one of us, worship is offering the person we are for God. Being who we are for the glory of God, that’s worship. Whether it’s through song or story or athletics or landscaping or mechanics or computer science. Worship God as your own individual living sacrifice.

What Does It Mean to Have a Relationship with God?

I can't even begin to count how many times I heard it growing up and still hear it today. I'm sure you have, too. If you want to be right with God, then you have to have a relationship with him. I was always told that when I grew up in church, but the problem was that nobody really explained what that meant. I know it sounds simple, but somehow I just missed something or didn't connect the idea well, and this concept always confused me. I didn't really understand what it meant to have a relationship with God. He wasn't around me and I couldn't see him, so how was I supposed to do that? Reading the Bible was beneficial for knowledge, but I didn’t really feel any connection to God. I prayed, but it more often felt like mailing a letter to Santa Claus.

One day a few years ago the realization hit me out of nowhere. Something clicked inside me and finally connected the missing link: having a relationship with God is the same as any relationship I have with anyone else. It’s so simple, and I was trying to make it out to be something it wasn’t. It’s not about some grand religious ceremony. It’s not about music or clothing or even denominations. It’s about the relationship. As soon I realized this, everything else started to fall into place.

When I think about my relationships with others, particularly with close friends, there are three key aspects that come to mind. Every good relationship in life will have these, and the same is true of a successful relationship with God.

Quality Time

You spend your time on things that are important to you. That’s the big secret, but it’s not really a secret. You make time for the relationships that are important to you, and the rest just drift away in the breeze.

My wife and I cannot have a successful relationship if we don’t spend quality time with each other. And what does that entail? It doesn’t really matter, honestly. As long as we’re hanging out with each other and focused on each other, it doesn’t really matter what we’re doing. Some of the best times I’ve enjoyed with her have been stupid jokes riding in the car. Deep conversations on long road trips. Sitting out in the yard on a warm day. All of it is quality time because we’re with each other sharing that moment in a manner that is significant to us.

The whole purpose of quality time is to allow you to get to know the other person. Think about when you first start dating someone. All you want to do is spend every free minute with them because you want to learn more about them. Even in the midst of a stupid joke that makes no sense, my wife and I learn each other.

The same is true with God.

You want to get to know God? Spend time hanging out with Him, and I’m not talking about going to church on Sunday. Spending time with God doesn’t need to be limited to one hour one day a week. It should happen all the time. It doesn’t always have to be something like praying or reading the Bible either (more on those in a bit). It’s just you and God sharing an experience in a meaningful way.

I hiked to the top of a mountain, and the incredible view from there revealed the beauty of God’s creation. A song randomly came on my iPod, and I had some profound thought about the nature of God. I was reading a book (secular or sacred, it doesn’t always matter), and it took me into the depths of humanity and the complexity of what it means to be human. And God created that. I narrowly escaped a major car accident, and I recognized how precious life is as well as the way God looks after me.

All of those are moments in my life where God was very real and very there, and they didn’t have to come at a church service for me to experience. Taking time regularly to hang out and get to know God a little more is integral to having a successful relationship with Him.

Clear Communication

A majority of the misunderstandings I have with other people usually stem from a lack of this. Whether it’s forgetting to tell my wife I’ll be late getting home or saying something to a friend in a harsh tone when I really didn’t mean it, clear communication is the second key factor in a successful relationship.

Communication and quality time go hand-in-hand. When you spend time with someone, a large part of that quality comes from communicating with each other. That’s how you learn a lot about someone else, by having conversations. And there are two sides to conversation—speaking and listening. Both are equally important, and neither should be neglected by each side of the conversation. There is a time for speaking and a time for listening, and they are not always equal amounts.

If a buddy of mine is having a really difficult problem, I’m not going to say much. I’m mainly going to listen. And vice versa, when I’m dealing with an issue, I’m the one doing all the talking.

Another element of clear communication is openness. I can’t hide my true feelings in the name of amicability. Part of clearly communicating with someone is being open enough to tell them the truth, even if it may hurt that person’s feelings. Now, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said in love, but we hold back something that needs to be said just because we’re worried about hurting feelings.

One of my college friends provided me with a wonderful example of this when we were in college. I was dating someone at the time, and he approached me one day and said that he needed to talk to me. He proceeded to tell me that he didn’t think that I needed to be in the relationship because it wasn’t good for me. He saw a lot in my relationship that he had experienced in a previous one and knew that it wouldn’t end well. Needless to say, I didn’t like what he had to say, and I didn’t listen to him.

He’s also the guy I spent a week with that following summer after things went south and the relationship ended. But I’ll always remember the fact that he was looking out for me and was honest with me, even though he knew I wouldn’t take it well.

If clear communication is important for successful relationships with people, how does that work with God? It’s not like you can have a face-to-face conversation with Him. I mean, Moses came as close as anyone, but he would have died had he looked directly at the face of God, right? And I’m nothing close to Moses. So how do we communicate?

Two simple answers: speaking and listening. Prayer is how we speak to God. And that’s all prayer is, having a conversation with God. Prayers don’t have to be in a dark room with your eyes closed and head bowed. There are times for that, but on a daily level, prayer is simply talking to God wherever you are. When I experience the things I mentioned above, I don’t leave it at the experience. I respond to God. Instead of always asking God for my needs, I thank Him for taking care of me. I compliment Him on His creation. I ask Him the deep questions that plague my mind.

And the listening part? That’s where the Bible mostly comes in. The Bible is God’s Word put onto paper, so when I want to hear from Him, I go there to find His response. There’s a lot to be said about knowing scripture and where to look for certain texts when I’m looking for answers to questions. It makes it infinitely easier to find the answers I’m looking for. I also find His responses to things I haven’t thought of yet when I read regularly through the Bible.

These certainly are not the only two ways to communicate with God. Communication from God is all about looking for Him in the everyday. God can speak to us through other people, a song on the radio, a book we’re reading, a TV show we watch, a dream, you name it. Prayer and reading the Bible help us learn to recognize God’s voice so that we can then hear Him in every other aspect of our lives.

The whole honesty and openness concept fits right into this relationship as well. Who says that we always have to be happy when we talk to God? Job is probably one of the best examples of clear communication with God in the Bible. Job didn’t hold punches when it came to talking to God. He said what was on his mind. He didn’t hide behind pride or a false sense of righteousness. He opened up to God and laid his heart out on the table.

One word of advice about this, though. Be careful. If you’re going to be open and frank with God, be ready for Him to do the same. Job laid his heart out alright, but God had a few words to say as well. I’ll let you take a guess on who won that argument.

Total Trust

Trust is the result of quality time and clear communication. This is the element that takes the longest to obtain. It takes patience and time. On a human level, trust usually takes years to really gain. By spending quality time and communicating effectively, the relationship grows in trust. I’ve found that difficult times in life tend to deposit the largest amounts of trust into the account.

I have a handful of extremely close friends that I’ve known for many years now. These are guys that I have complete faith in and would trust with my life. It didn’t start that way, though. It took years to get there. But as the years went on, scattered through the manifold times of ridiculousness, there were times when I needed someone to lean on to get through tough times. Their advice and the simple fact that they were there proved that they were looking out for my best interest. And through those times, I grew to trust them more and more.

Trust can be betrayed as well. I’m sure at one point or another you’ve experienced something akin to betrayal. Once you lose your trust in someone, it puts a roadblock in your ability to trust that person. Sometimes relationships never get past that roadblock; sometimes they do.

When it comes to trusting God, that tends to be the roadblock that a lot of people can’t push through. Spending time with God, praying, reading the Bible, those are acceptable for most followers. But what about trust? We say that we have faith in God, but how much trust do we really put in Him?

All throughout the Bible, scriptures show that God is always looking out for us. He always has our best interest in mind: to be evermore closer to Him. Yet, we seem to have a hard time following through on that belief. What happens when God tells you to give up something good and you have no idea why? What happens when God tells you to quit your job when you have no prospects of another one? What happens when tells you to end that relationship you’re in with a guy or girl that has all the appearance of being a good relationship?

What happened when Jesus asked the disciples to follow Him? They didn’t have a clue, yet the followed.

Trust is not something we easily give. We want to know what’s ahead. We want some proof that everything will be okay. We want to understand all the logistics before we leap. Faith doesn’t work that way, though. Proverbs tells us to trust in God with all our hearts, not our own understanding. Finite human understanding doesn’t hold a candle to the infinite wisdom of God.

So how do we get there? That’s the question that I can’t answer. However, I do know that this is the apex of a relationship with God. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, the disciples, Paul all distinguished themselves in the faith through their trust of God. They are the ones who didn’t need to understand. The only thing they understood was that God loved them and was looking out for them.

Trusting God with all our hearts. That’s the goal. It’s a long and arduous road, but when you come out on the other side, it becomes the greatest relationship ever. The only really left to do is leap.