How to Actually Do God’s Will

We're in week three of a series called How to Know God's Will. Has this series been fun? Today we're going to dive in, so I have one question for you: are you ready for the Word?

Would you find Jonah chapter 1 in your Bible? We're going Old Testament today. We've actually mentioned Jonah every week of this series, but today we're going to study the man himself. I'm going to read three verses. If you don't have a Bible, I also have it on the screen right behind me.

Verse 1 says this: "The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.'"

Don't you wish God was always that clear? "Go to the city of Nineveh." You're like, "God, if You would just be that specific with me, I would listen too." If He just said, "Go to GCU," you'd be like, "GCU? Got it." Am I supposed to go to New Mexico, or am I supposed to stay in Phoenix? God, can You speak to me? I just have to know. If God could be that specific, I would listen. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm supposed to change careers. God, can You speak? I'm trying to figure out if we need to have more kids. God, can You speak?

It comes so clearly to him. And of course Jonah hears the word of the Lord and decides to obey it. No, he doesn't. Verse 3 says this: "But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord." You know it's a bad day when you are fleeing from God.

Today I want to talk about how to actually do God's will. We've been talking about how to know God's will and how we make decisions. But today I want to talk about how we actually do God's will.

God, I want to thank You for today. Lord God, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the way it guides and corrects and sustains and teaches. Lord, it is perfect. It is powerful. But more than that, Lord, I thank You that it's personal. Lord, may You speak to every one of us. We're listening. We love You. In Jesus' name, amen.

Choose freely, listen closely, obey quickly

I'm really excited about today. This series has been so helpful for me, and I hope it's been helpful for you as well. Before we jump in, I want to recap where we've been so we can all have the same foundation.

The very first week of the series, I talked about the different wills of God. I explained that God has three wills. The first one you'll see in the Bible is what's called God's sovereign will, and that includes anything that has ever happened at any point in history. Nothing has ever happened outside of God's sovereign will. God has never been surprised a day in His life. God's sovereign will includes anything good that has ever happened, but it also includes anything bad that has ever happened, without making God the author of that thing.

Within God's sovereign will, God has a spoken will, and that is His Word. His Word gives us the guidelines. His Word gives us the boundaries of everything we need to do. His Word teaches us how we are to live.

But within God's spoken will, and this is the one most people want to know about, is God's specific will. People are like, "Okay, Brad, I get it. The Bible says I need to marry a Christian. My question is which one?" I know I'm supposed to be an example in my workplace. I know I'm supposed to be a light. I'm just trying to figure out which workplace I'm supposed to choose. I know I can be a light for Jesus in any city. I just need to know what city I'm supposed to be in. I will show Jesus wherever I'm at. I just need to know what college.

So often we want to know the specific will of God. And my entire argument in week one is that most of the time God does not communicate through His specific will. He communicates through His spoken will. Most of the time, God gives you the ability to make a decision. God is not always going to text you what you need to do. "God, can You just send me an iMessage? Chick-fil-A or sushi?" And God is like, "Hey, I'm going to let you pick on that one." The right answer is the Lord's chicken, every time.

He's not always going to text you what you need to do. But what He has done is give us guidelines, and within those guidelines He gives us freedom. You see this with Adam and Eve. They're placed in a garden, and God says, "You are free to eat from any tree, except you cannot eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because if you eat of it you will surely die." You see the wisdom of God in the way He sets up kingdoms. He creates laws we are to follow, and within those laws He gives you freedom. You need to follow the speed limit, but if you're under the speed limit, you can talk, you can listen to music, you can drive in silence if you're like that. Why are you like that? But you can do whatever you want within that space.

In week one I was hopefully trying to take some burdens off of you, because you realize God has given you the ability to decide. If I were to put that message into two words, they would be these: choose freely. You get the ability to make a decision.

Week two, I talked about how we actually make those decisions. God has given me the freedom to make decisions, but how do I make them? I talked through various lenses we need to use. The first lens is the Word of God. I put on some glasses that weren't so cute. I'm up here making a fool of myself as long as you can remember. Whenever we're making a decision, we always have to ask, is this decision biblical? It is the first filter God has given us.

Once we've made that decision, the Bible also encourages us to use wisdom. All throughout the Bible, God commands us to use wisdom when we make decisions. So I explained a couple of lenses we can use, like wise counsel. If you're a teenager, listen to your parents. There's some wise counsel there. Life circumstances can be a source of wisdom. Logic can be a source of wisdom. Stewardship can be a source of wisdom. Whenever we're making a decision, we have to make sure it lines up with the lens of Scripture, that it lines up with wisdom, and then we have to decide.

The challenge is that sometimes you can do all of that and still be confused as you look at two equal options. And we said that when it becomes hard to see, we have to hear. We have to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, who is leading and guiding. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is going to say go. When He says go, what do you do? You go. If He says stay, you stay. If He says wait, you wait. And if He says nothing, you keep moving in alignment with the Word of God. You just make a decision.

So the first week I was trying to teach you to choose freely. The second week I was trying to teach you to listen closely. And today I want to talk to you about obeying quickly.

It's one thing to choose freely. It's another thing to listen. But you can choose and you can listen and still not obey. You can still not actually move. We have to choose freely within the boundaries God has given us. We have to listen closely to His Word, His wisdom and His Spirit. And then we have to obey quickly.

How do you actually do God's will?

My prayer is that you would be addicted to the approval of God, that everything inside of you would want to please Him. That there would be a point where God has just started His sentence, and before He's even done, your feet are already moving. He's like, "I need you to..." and you're like, "I'm walking. Tell me where." That you would want to walk so quickly in obedience to God.

I know so much about how obedient my kid is by how quickly he runs to me. My boy Saint. I love that guy. If I go to Saint and say, "Hey buddy, here's what I need you to do. I need you to clean your room. I'm going to work, and when I come back I want your room to be clean," then when my garage door opens, I know everything about whether or not Saint was obedient. If he runs to me and says, "Dad, my room's clean!" I know. But often that garage door opens and Saint is nowhere to be found. Why? He heard the garage door and thought, "My room's not clean," so he's running through his room trying to clean it.

What am I trying to say? When you're obedient to God, you run toward God. When you're not obedient to God, you try to run away from God. It's the exact same way in our lives and in Scripture.

And that's where we find Jonah. God tells him to do something, and instead of listening, he does something odd. He runs away. God speaks to him as specifically as so many of us want Him to speak to us, but he runs.

Watch this. Verse 1: "The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh.'" You need to know this: Nineveh was a major enemy of the people of God. Think of a nation today that is so against our nation, that is brutal, that will attack and try everything it can to destroy us. That was the city of Nineveh. And God said, "I want you to go to that city and preach against it." You would think Jonah would say, "I don't like that city. I will happily preach against it." But he doesn't.

1. Discover God's will

Here's what we need to do in order to step into true obedience to the Word of God. The first thing you have to do is discover. Before you can do the Word of God, you have to discover the Word of God. The challenge for us is this: we can never obey what we don't know.

And so often we spend so little time actually discovering what God's Word says for our lives. My question is this: the things we're struggling with in our lives, do we actually know what God's Word says about that issue? That relationship you're struggling with, do you really know what God says about that? Your marriage, do you really know what the Word of God says about that? The way we're supposed to handle our emotions, do we know what God's Word actually says? The way we're supposed to steward our finances, the way we use our bodies, the way we get over addiction, the way we deal with our workplace, the way we follow our calling. Do we actually know?

Because we'll say, "God, if You just speak, I'll do it. Speak to me through a burning bush like You did with Moses, and I will listen. If You write on the wall, I will listen. If You write it in the clouds, if You are that specific, I will do it. If You speak through a donkey, I will do it. If You spoke to me like You spoke to Jonah, if it was that clear, I would actually listen."

And I think sometimes God is like, "What do you think this is? This is as clear as it gets. This is black and white." But so often we're like, "God, I will follow You if You write it on the wall, but I will not follow You if You write it in Your Word."

We say, "God, I will follow You specifically," but we won't even follow Him generally. How do we expect Him to lead us specifically when we will not even follow Him generally? "God, can You provide for my business?" But I'm not going to steward the finances You've given me right now in a way that honors You. "But God, can You provide?" "Lord, can You just show me who my wife is? I'm not dealing with any of my addictions, but I just know that when I find her, all of those addictions will magically disappear." The married people are laughing because they know it doesn't work that way. Marriage is a multiplier.

The scary thing is that a lot of us can go our entire lives without actually discovering the will of God for our lives. It's a travesty. And whenever we're in that place, we're always going to experience pain. Whenever you live outside of the will of God, you are always going to experience pain.

How does God's Word protect you?

I remember some of my first experiences with pain. When I was young, we would always go to the beach in South Africa. We'd go to St. Lucia, South Africa, which isn't the bougie St. Lucia you're thinking of. I remember going to the beach early in the morning. I'd frolic in the sun, build sandcastles, snorkel, the whole thing. One day in particular I was out there all day, having a good time, thinking this was the best thing in the world. Then we drove home, and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I was as red as a lobster.

You need to know this: my lineage is Scandinavian. Danish. I don't tan, I burn. I was so burnt. Have you ever been so burned that you're trying to calculate how little surface area you can sit on the couch with, because if anything touches you it's going to be painful? It was so painful. You could say that was the day I discovered this magical invention called sunscreen. And the second I discovered it, everything in my life began to change.

So often the Word of God is just like sunscreen. When we discover it, it can actually protect us. But so often we're not discovering the things God has for us. We're living in the world, but because we're not doing what it says, we get burned. Because we're not discovering what God actually wants us to do, we get to a place where we get burned.

His Word is protection. The same way sunscreen protects me from the environment, God's Word protects us. It protects us from the enemy. Proverbs 30:5: "Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him." It protects us from sin. Psalm 119:9: "How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word." It protects us from wrong decisions. Psalm 119:105: "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path." But whenever we don't follow it, and whenever we don't discover it, we get burned.

I wish someone would have told Jonah, because he didn't know. God has told him to do something, and he runs and gets on this boat. Verse 4 says, "Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up." Everything is crazy. They're throwing cargo overboard. They're asking, "Why is this happening?" And Jonah is just chilling. So they cast lots, and the lot falls on Jonah. They come to him and say, "Who are you? Why are you on this boat?" And Jonah says, "Oh, I serve the living God, and I'm running away from Him." And they're like, "I'm sorry, boo boo. It's you. You need to get off the boat."

And he says, "If you throw me off the boat, you will live. Just throw me off the boat." He would rather die than actually follow the word of God. They try everything they can, but they can't make it work. So eventually they pick him up and throw him off the boat. He's in the water because he would rather die than live.

But I love God, because of verse 17. I think the Bible's hilarious. If you don't think the Bible is hilarious, you need a sense of humor. He's in the water, he's ready to die, and it says, "Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." Don't you love when God provides? He's trying to run away. He's trying to die. And the Lord provided a massive fish.

What if you've already run from God?

If there was ever a definition of rock bottom, I think this would be it. He's in this fish asking, "What am I supposed to do?" And I think there are some people here who are in that place right now. Rock bottom in your marriage. Rock bottom in your business. Rock bottom in your life. Rock bottom with an addiction.

And there's a tension in me saying, "If you just discover the will of God, it's going to protect you," because some of you just became Christians and you're like, "But I'm living in the consequences of bad decisions I've made. Brad, it's cute that you tell me I just need to discover the will of God. I wish you would have told me that 20 years ago, before I messed up my life. You don't know where I am."

Here's what I love about this story: God provided a fish to get him back on the journey he was supposed to be on all along. Sometimes you can make such a mistake, but God in His sovereignty can take the things the enemy meant for evil and turn them around for good. That's what the Bible says. That's the sovereign will of God. He can turn it around.

"Brad, are you saying I can go north on the 101, take a wrong turn, and God somehow has the ability to redirect me, get me back on the 101 and get me where I need to go?" Yes. Amen. Because He is that good.

Jonah is at absolute rock bottom, and it says, "From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God." I bet you did, buddy. What happens in this moment is he repents. Sometimes we can be at rock bottom, and if that's you, here's what you have to do: repent. "Father, forgive me. Forgive me for the times I've run away from You. Forgive me for the times You told me to live at peace with everyone and I haven't, because I really liked carrying that bitterness." We have to repent.

His Word is protection. You just have to discover it. How do you do that? Get in His Word. Actually read the Bible. "Brad, I don't know where to start." Great. We have something on our website called the One Year Bible. If you haven't read it, start there. You get some Old Testament, some New Testament, a psalm and a proverb. It's a balanced diet. There's a little devotional and a prayer you can say. When you complete it, you get a badge, and if you keep going, you get a streak. How many of you like streaks? "Brad, why would you do streaks when it comes to reading the Word of God?" Because we're trying to do whatever we can to get you to read the Word of God. If you like streaks, we've got a streak for you. If you like badges, we'll give you a badge. Just get into the Word of God.

How will you obey what you don't discover? We have to discover. That's the first step.

Why do we know God's Word but not obey it?

2. Do God's will

Once you've discovered it, the next thing you have to do is actually do the will of God. It's one thing to discover it. It's a whole other thing to actually do it. And I'm afraid that sometimes we get stuck in discovery.

We're at the store like, "Do I want the Sport SPF 50 four-in-one, or do I want the 30 because it's oxybenzone free? This one's broad spectrum. I have no idea what that means, but it's Banana Boat and I like that name." Here's one that's 30, but here's what's crazy: it's gluten-free. I don't know why that matters. I'm not going to eat it, but it's nice to know. It's vegan, too. It's dermatologist tested. "Ooh, I just love discovering." Here's Hawaiian Tropic, weightless hydration. It's cruelty-free, and that matters to me. It's UVA and UVB. I don't know what that means, but it sounds incredibly important. So often we can get stuck researching and discovering.

"Brad, be deep. Give me the Greek. Give me the Hebrew." Gladly. "I'm doing a Bible study, and I'm doing another Bible study, and I just really love going super deep." I love that you go deep. I like to go deep, too. It's one of my favorite things. But the power of sunscreen is not in its research. It's in its application. Sometimes we study the Greek and the Hebrew, but we won't do. "No, be so deep that you confuse me so I don't have to do anything." No. Read your Bible. "No, go deeper than that." Gladly: read your Bible and actually do it.

I love deep theology. I've studied it, and I love it. But what I've learned is that an ounce of application is better than a gallon of theoretical knowledge we never act on.

We have a whole closet filled with sunscreen. I'm milking the sunscreen analogy. I'm going for it. We have a whole closet filled with sunscreen, and we have closets filled with Bibles. We'll come to a relationship series and say, "That's awesome, but my relationship is still the exact same way." Yeah, because you didn't work it. The Bible works. You just have to work it.

We're like, "I'm so alone. I'm so lonely." Get in a group. "No." Be around community. "No, I'm so alone, though." J.R. hasn't even said amen at the end of the service and you're like, "Bye." It does work, but you do have to work it.

We're like, "Man, I love reading about Christ's forgiveness. It's my favorite thing. I love doing a Bible reading plan on Christ's forgiveness. It's amazing how You forgave me." And then God says, "You should forgive your coworker." And you're like, "No, I'm too busy reading about Christ's forgiveness. It's very important to me." Or we're reading about purity, and the Holy Spirit says, "Hey, I think you should delete that browser, and you should probably talk to someone." "No. Get behind me, Satan. I am reading about purity."

I know it sounds ridiculous, but we do it. God says, "Hey, forgive. Have mercy. Live a generous life. Trust Me with your finances. Tell your coworker about Me. Go have that conversation." And we're like, "No, no, no. I just love reading the Word." I love that you love it. But we have to love obeying the Word.

It says in James 1:22, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." It's saying that revelation without application is deception. Revelation without application is deception. "Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do."

There is a life that Jesus has for you, but that life is only found in following the ways He has commanded you. And I'm afraid that so often we are educated far beyond our level of obedience. We are educated far beyond our level of obedience.

So Jonah eventually repents, and the fish spits him out onto land again. And I love this. You see the change in Jonah, and I pray this will be a change for so many of us who have run away. It says, "Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.' Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh." He actually decided to do it.

Nineveh was a very large city, and it took multiple days to go through it. He's going through the city saying, "You need to repent. Turn back to God." And here's the crazy thing: it works. It almost never worked in the Bible when God said, "Go proclaim judgment." They just kept doing what they were doing. But this actually works. Can you imagine if God gave you a message for the city of Phoenix, you told the city of Phoenix, and three days later the entire city turned to God? The king literally declared a fast. He said, "Don't even let the animals eat." I don't know what Jonah said, but he was a phenomenal preacher. God did something so amazing.

How do you start wanting to obey God?

You would think Jonah would be incredibly stoked about this whole thing, because here's what happened. Verse 10 says, "When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened." God decided, "I'm not going to judge them." And you would think Jonah would be really excited. But here's what it says in chapter 4, verse 1: "But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord, 'Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish.'"

You're starting to see his motives come out. "I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." He's like, "How dare You show them grace?"

3. Desire to do God's will

You see, there are three levels of obedience. There's discovering it, and then there's doing it. But God doesn't just want you to do it. He wants you to desire to do it. Doing it is external. But God wants to do something internal, so that you don't feel like you have to obey God. You actually want to obey Him.

It's really easy to obey God until He tells us to do something we don't want to do. What happens when it's harder than you expect? God says, "I need you to forgive that person. I need you to go say sorry." And you're like, "They need to say sorry first. It's not my fault." Then you're like, "Fine, I'm going to do it anyway." So you go and apologize, and you're waiting for them to say sorry back, and they say, "Thanks." And you're like, "I knew it. Why do I do this? Why do I listen?" God tells you to be generous to that person, and then they take advantage of you, and you're like, "God, do I still need to do that?"

Here's the challenge: so often we can do what God wants us to do, but God is after far more than compliance. He actually wants you to want to do what He wants you to do. He's after motive. That's why David was a man after God's own heart. He had the right motive.

In Psalm 40:8, David says this: "I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart." And there you see the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the law was written on tablets. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit comes into us and writes the law on our hearts. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was with us. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is in us. And He changes our desires to such a point that we actually want to follow God. It doesn't mean it's always easy, but we want to do it.

People ask, "Brad, how do I know if I'm following Christ? How do I know if I've been sealed with the Holy Spirit?" Here's how you know: you actually want to do what God tells you to do. Your heart has changed. That's called regeneration, and it's the mark of a Christian that we don't only do it, we actually want to do it.

Jesus says the greatest commandment is that you love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and that you love your neighbor as yourself, because every other commandment hangs on those two. So people ask, "How do I know if I'm loving God?" John answers that. 1 John 5:3 says, "In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome." This is how we know we love God: we keep His commands. And His commands are not burdensome.

From duty to delight

God doesn't want us to do things out of duty. He wants us to do things out of delight. And the more you love Him, the less duty it becomes and the more delight it becomes.

I love Paige a whole lot, but it is not my duty to be faithful to Paige. Imagine Paige comes home and says, "How was your day?" And I'm like, "Fine. I was faithful again. Day 3,624. Just suffering for the kingdom, but it's my duty." No, babe. It's not a duty for me to be faithful to Paige. It's a delight. Why? Because I love her.

The more you love God, the less duty it becomes. "I delight in giving forgiveness." But what if they don't forgive back? "It's fine. He's forgiven me. I'll forgive them." "I delight in showing generosity. He's been so generous to me, so I'll be generous back." And sometimes it's hard.

Something about me, for those of you who know me: I love coffee. Coffee is the greatest thing on planet Earth. It is liquid gold. In terms of my priorities, it's God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, then my wife and my family and the church, and right below that, coffee. I love lattes. I love Americanos. I love pour-overs. I love coffee so much that I like diner coffee. In fact, I love gas station coffee. People say, "Brad, you need to drink water." And I'm like, "Gladly. There's water in coffee. I am getting my water consumption through my coffee."

I remember a friend of mine when I was growing up said, "Okay, we're going to drink a pour-over. We're going to drink black coffee." And I did not like black coffee. I was like, "No, give me a splash of half-and-half." And he said, "No, in my house we drink it black." So I drank it, and I did not like it. Then he made it for me again, and I did not like it. He made it for me again, and I did not like it. But the more I visited him, the more I drank it, and the more I drank it, the more I began to love it, to the point where I now believe the best way to drink coffee is a pour-over, and the best way to drink it is black.

What am I saying? It went from duty to delight the more I did it. Coffee is an acquired taste, and sometimes following God's will is an acquired taste. The first time you do it, it may be hard, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The first time I was generous, it was hard, and eventually it became easy. The first time I forgave, it was hard, but the more I did it, the easier it became. The more you follow God, the more you want to.

Why did Jonah run from God?

If you're at a place where your desire is off, where you're like, "I just don't desire to do it," it might be because your perspective is off. That's why I love the book of Jonah. There's so much wisdom in it.

The whole reason Jonah ran was not because he believed God wouldn't forgive Nineveh. It was because he believed God would. He knew God was merciful, and he wanted God to judge them. He was so angry and unforgiving toward the people of Nineveh that he ran away so God would judge them. But the irony is that when he so desperately needed mercy in the belly of a fish, he was so glad to receive it. And in the very next season, when Nineveh needed that same mercy, he became angry.

And I realize that so often I'm very much like Jonah. I celebrate mercy when I receive it, but I resent mercy when my enemies receive it. I'm happy to receive forgiveness. I'm just not happy to give it. I'm happy to receive mercy. I just don't want to give it. I'm happy to receive Christ's generosity, as long as He doesn't make me give it. And if we're ever in that place, what has happened is we have forgotten just how sinful we truly were.

Jonah wasn't running because he didn't know God's will. He had perfect clarity. His problem wasn't an issue of clarity. It was a problem of surrender. And I would argue that most of the time we want to know God's will, and most of the time we do know it. Our problem is not a problem of clarity. Our true issue is a problem of surrender. He didn't run because God's will was unclear. He ran because God's will was uncomfortable. And most of the time, our resistance to God's will is not because we can't hear Him. It's because we can, and we don't like what He's saying.

Jesus is the greater Jonah

That's why I love that our vision as a church is not a world following Jonah. Praise the Lord. Our vision is a world following Jesus, because Jesus is the greater Jonah.

When Jesus was facing one of the most excruciating deaths, in the Garden of Gethsemane He prayed a prayer. How's this for God's will? He said, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." And He went to the most torturous death.

That's why it says of Him in Matthew 12, "The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here." Why would they be the judges? Because they actually repented at the preaching of Jonah. But now something greater than Jonah is here, and that is Jesus.

Jonah ran from his enemies, but Jesus ran toward His. Jonah wanted mercy for himself and judgment for Nineveh, but Jesus took judgment so Nineveh could have mercy.

If you are struggling to actually desire to do God's will, you have forgotten. I have forgotten that I was Nineveh. We were Nineveh, and Jesus showed us the most servant-hearted nature. He showed us forgiveness. He showed us love. He showed us generosity. And my question is this: are we like Jonah, so happy to receive it but not happy to give it?

What has God been telling you to do?

The entire book of Jonah ends with a question, and in the spirit of that, I want to end today with a question. Here it is: what has Jesus been telling you to do that you've been running away from?

What has Jesus been telling you to do? What has the Holy Spirit put His finger on? That conversation you need to have, that call you need to make. Maybe it's that you'd start reading His Word again. Maybe it's that you'd start giving again. Maybe it's that you'd actually tell that coworker about Jesus again. I don't know what it is, but what is God putting His finger on and saying, "Hey, I need you to go"? Got it in your mind?

Whatever that thing is, here's what I want us to do. I want us to do what Jonah did in the belly of the fish. I want us to repent and say, "God, I'm sorry." You can close your eyes and bow your heads. I want to lead you through a prayer, and I'm up here with you. I've realized so many times that God has put His finger on things. "Brad, I need you to trust Me." And I'm like, "No, God, I've got this." But He's been putting His finger on it.

So God, we come before You right now, and Lord, we repent. For the conversation I didn't have. For the forgiveness I didn't give. For the time You told me to be generous and I wasn't. For the time I was supposed to have that conversation with my wife and I didn't. For the things I've hidden, for the secrets no one knows, for the times You've told me to bring things into the light. Lord God, whatever it is, we repent, and we say we're sorry. And we don't only say we're sorry, we obey. We're making a decision today that we're going to follow You. We're going to fully follow You.

Will you keep praying? There are some people here, and maybe the decision you haven't made is that you're not actually fully following Jesus. I'm not asking if you prayed a prayer one time and said, "Jesus, I give my life to You," but didn't mean it. I'm asking you today: are you fully following Jesus? Have you given Him access to every part of your life? Is He actually your Lord?

The Bible says, "Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction," but "narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." Are you actually following Jesus? "Every part of my life, Lord, is Yours." That's what it means to make Him Lord. It doesn't mean you just said it. It means you're doing it. It's not theoretical. It is action. Works don't save you, but works do show that we're saved.

If you're here and you know you are not fully following Jesus, if you've given Him certain areas but not all of them, and you're saying, "Okay, God, I'm ready. I'm going to fully follow You," I want to lead you in a prayer. Just say this in your heart: "Jesus, I believe that You're the Son of God and the Savior of the world. I believe You came to this earth, You died on a cross, and You were raised so that I can have life. And today I make You Lord. Every part of my life is Yours. Every aspect of my life is Yours. I bring it under Your authority and Your Word, and I will follow You all the days of my life."

Jesus, we love You. We praise You. In Jesus' name.