WHICH IS A HIGHER PRIORITY FOR ME: My comfort or God’s compassion?
- Jonah 4:5-9.
- Verse 6 tells us that Jonah is “very happy” about the vine.
- Verses 8 and 9 tells us that the destruction of the vine puts Jonah is such a bad state of mind that he wishes he was dead. I’m sure this was partly because of the vine and partly because of the mercy that he is figuring that God is going to show to this city.
- For many of us, our heart is focused on the comfortable lifestyles that we lead as well as the good health of our loved ones. In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy life or to have our loved ones healthy. Those are good things. The problem comes when those things have more of our heart than the eternal salvation of those around us. The problem comes when our comfort is more important to us than seeing God’s mission fulfilled.
- We often get attached to the things we have.
- We shouldn’t be because they’re only things, but they find ways to hook themselves into our hearts.
- I remember being in a car wreck years ago. It was on the I-64 bridge coming across the Kanawha into South Charleston. Someone slammed on their breaks and we ended up with five cars piled up. I was the fourth car in the accident, hitting the car in front of me and then getting slammed hard by the fifth car and spun into the median wall. One of the things I remember about that accident is that the driver of the fifth car was weeping when she got out. I thought maybe she was really hurt, but she was weeping because she had just picked up the car the day before in Lexington. Weeping over a car.
- Which bothers us more?
a. Tight finances requiring us to downgrade the car we drive or someone unsaved dying.
b. The loss of some income or an unsaved friend not coming to church.
c. Ruining that comfortable old shirt we love to wear or our church not growing.
- The plant is a lesson in misdirected love.
- There are two levels to it:
a. Level one is loving shallow things.
b. Level two is not loving meaningful things.
- Put people above possessions.
- It’s hard for us to grasp the idea that is expressed here because we weren’t witness to the antagonism between the Israelites and the Ninevehites. Here’s an analogy that might help.
- An angel appears to you and makes this offer: “I will bring a revival to Afghanistan. It will see a powerful move of the Spirit and many will be turned to Jesus. But it requires a 50% standard of living reduction in America. The choice is your’s.”
- What would you do? How would you respond?
- Someone might say, “But they tried to kill us on 9/11!”
- Someone else might say, “I don’t know anyone in Afghanistan.”
- Most of us would acknowledge in the abstract that seeing people saved should be our highest priority, but when it’s people we don’t know, have only negative feelings for, and it’s going to cost us a significant discomfort personally, it’s hard to love them more than our comfort.
- A second, similar example.
- An angel comes to twenty people in our church and says that if we give up all the money the church has in the bank that we’ll see revival in the midst of the drug problems in our county. What kind of fight would ensue in that business meeting?
FOUR EXAMPLES WHERE WE CHOOSE COMFORT OVER CONCERN:
1. SPENDING ON OUR LIFESTYLE RATHER THAN EXPANDING THE KINGDOM.
- There are some people who are barely making it and, beyond their regular giving, aren’t really in a position to give more.
- There are many of us, though, who make enough that we have the opportunity to make what I will call “lifestyle choices.” We don’t have to buy the junker – we can choose between a new car or a solid used car. We don’t have to live in a dilapidated trailer – we can choose what type of house we want.
- In those decisions, most of us ask, “What can I afford?” In other words, what’s the best lifestyle that I can pull off? It’s a testament to wanting all of material prosperity that we can have.
- Less often in those decisions do we ask, “What do I need?” That is to say, purchasing the things that are necessary to live life, but leaving room for Kingdom generosity.
- Is my greater passion to see more people know about Jesus or to have a nicer lifestyle?
- This is not a hypothetical issue - this is a dollars-and-cents issue. When we give the minimum to the Kingdom and maximize how much we spend on ourselves and our lifestyle, we’re making a statement. The statement is that my comfort matters more to me.
- Now, within this, I’m not saying that there should be no fun in our lives. I’m not saying we should never go to a concert or enjoy a vacation or things like that. There is joy and thankfulness in being a part of those things.
- But when there is no money to give to the Kingdom because we’ve maximized our spending on our lifestyle, something is wrong.
- This doesn’t even get into the twin facts that:
a. Many Christians aren’t even giving a tithe, let alone moving beyond that.
- The average Christian’s giving is, I think, somewhere around 2%.
b. Many Christians are so focused on achieving a lifestyle that they aren’t just spending all they make to achieve it – they’re running up credit card debt to achieve it.
- That’s an extra level of “commitment” to the materialistic lifestyle.
2. HOW MUCH OF MY PRAYER LIFE IS FOCUSED ON THE UNSAVED VERSUS MY COMFORT?
- Think about the prayers that you pray for a moment.
- Hopefully you’re including praise, thanksgiving, listening, and confession in your prayers, but let’s just focus for a moment on what you ask for.
- How much of what you ask for has to do with your life going well? How much is focused on your comfort?
- Conversely, how much of your prayer life has to do with people you want to see saved? How much as to do with the expansion of the Kingdom?
- Now, it’s not that it’s wrong to pray for God to move in your life. It’s not that it’s wrong for God to take care of your needs.
- But there is something wrong when all of our prayers are focused on us. We need to be carrying the burden for those who are unsaved.
3. IS MY PRAYER THAT MY LIFE WOULD BE EASY OR FRUITFUL?
- A related question to point 2 has to do with what we want God to do through our lives.
- Do my prayers focus on God making my life easy? Giving me blessings and abundance?
- Or do my prayers focus on God allowing me to be productive for the Kingdom? To bear fruit for the glory of God?
- It is clear from passage after passage in the New Testament that it is God’s intention that our lives bear fruit. And not just a little – an abundance of fruit.
- He has given us all that we need to be able to live that out: the Bible to instruct us, a new heart to empower us, the Spirit to guide us.
- But is that my heart’s desire? Is that what I’m begging God for?
- Many Christians don’t bother to figure out what their spiritual gift is so that they can be more productive for God.
- Many Christians don’t believe that God can do great things through them.
- Many Christians don’t have a passion for seeing the Kingdom expand.
- God loves it when we come to Him and pray that we want to be fruitful. That’s a prayer He’s eager to answer.
- But many of us are too busy praying for our comfort to ask for fruitfulness.
4. DO I SEE BEING AROUND THE UNSAVED AS A BURDEN OR A JOY?
- The longer that we’re a Christian, the more we are likely to be surrounded only by other Christians. Our circle of friends becomes just our church friends.
- We can get to the place where being around non-Christians becomes a nuisance to us. They cuss and we don’t like it. They aren’t “nice people” the way we are and we don’t like it. They are doing things in their lives that we don’t approve of and we don’t like it.
- Of course, reaching the unsaved is supposed to be one of our primary missions as Christians. Yet judging by the circle of friends that many of us have, you might think that avoiding the unsaved was our mission.
- Now when I say that it’s a joy, I don’t mean that we condone what they’re doing or believe that dropping F-bombs is ok.
- What I mean is that we have a deep burden for their salvation and we rejoice at the open doors when we get to improve our friendship with them or we get a chance to listen to their problems and then say that we’re praying for them.
- We believe that it’s a joy to be a partner with God in drawing them closer to Jesus.
- When we see them take steps (even small ones) toward openness to Christ, it thrills us. When they say thanks to us for praying for them, it moves us. When they agree to come to worship with us for the first time, we’re so excited that we have to tell a friend. When they get saved, we can’t help but cry.
A WORD OF WARNING: God brought about the blessing. . . and its destruction.
- Jonah 4:6-8.
- Verses 7 and 8 are worth a little consideration for all of us who are too tied to our comfort.
- God sent the blessing (the vine) in v. 6 that made Jonah “very happy.”
- But God was also the one who provided the “worm” that destroyed the vine (v. 7). Further, God was the one who caused the “scorching east wind” that makes things even more miserable (v. 8).
- God brought the blessing, but He was also the one who caused the destruction of the blessing.
- This is worthy of some pondering.
- We read in Hebrews about the discipline of the Lord. When we are not where He wants us to be, He will discipline us to get us in line. One of the things that’s on the table with that discipline is our possessions.
- We read the in the Old Testament where God warned Israel that once they got in the Promised Land and had all the blessings that they would be likely to drift away from Him. He warned them that if they did that He would bring judgment on them in order to bring them back to Him.
- God will not wink at our disobedience. He is committed to our maturity. When our priorities are not aligned with His, He will work to move us to where we need to be. That includes removing some of the things that have more of our love than they should.
