Focus

Prepare yourself to discern what is and what is not of God today. Still yourself so you can hear how God is calling you.

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Read

Jonah 3 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

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Reflect

“We Serve a God of Many Chances”

Focusing Idea: We have all sinned and even denied the call of God on our lives, but the Lord refuses to give up on us.

Fortunately, for both Jonah’s sake and ours, we serve a God of many chances. So often we fail to obey God’s call on our lives, but divine grace will not allow the Lord to give up on us. David got another chance after his sin with Bathsheba. Peter got another chance after he denied Christ. Jonah got another chance to preach to Nineveh after he first fled from God’s calling. I ran from my calling to ordained ministry for seventeen years, but through all that time, God kept calling me giving me yet another chance. My guess is that you have been given more than one chance to faithfully follow God’s call. Every additional chance we get is not what we deserve. God never owes us another chance, and we have no right to presume upon the Lord’s grace; nevertheless, God does on many occasions, following our failures, give us further opportunities to follow the divine call upon our lives. Our text for today gives us the key to unlocking these opportunities. The key is repentance; that is, both confessing our sin and turning back to God. When the Lord sees our repentance, even if we are in the belly of a great fish, another chance is ours.

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Pray

Gracious God, we praise You that You never give up on us, that You offer us many chances to faithfully follow You. Amen.

Go with God!