Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
June 6, 2004 - W0423

Have you ever had God speak to you? What does His voice sound like? The Bible shows us that not only did God speak; He used many different ways to get a person’s attention. Whether through a burning bush, a whirlwind, a rooster, a donkey, or even a storm God gets our attention one way or another. So today I want to talk about a person in the Bible named Jonah. He has an important lesson for us to learn because God named a whole book in the Bible after him.

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah…saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh the great city…’ But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD”. (Jon. 1:1-3)

God told Jonah to go to a place called Nineveh with about a hundred thousand fierce warriors. He was to tell them that God loved them, but they needed to repent. However, Jonah did not want to do what God asked. Instead, Jonah hopped on a boat headed for Tarshish which was on the other end of the Mediterranean Sea, the opposite direction from Nineveh, and far from God. Or so he thought!

Have you ever done that? Has God ever told you one thing and then you did another? I have. I remember when I was kicked out of Catholic boarding school. At about the same time, my mom passed away and I was an angry, broken person. I later dropped out of high school and just like Jonah went as far away from God as I could.

The thing is God probably spoke to Jonah many times just as He speaks to you and me.  The question is are we listening? You see God may speak to us through a friend, through pain, or through circumstance. However, if we don’t pay attention, we become numb to His voice.

It’s like an automobile alarm. It’s a novel when we first have it. In fact, we are attentive to hearing the alarm making sure everything is alright whenever it goes off. Then after a few false alarms, we stop listening and ignore it altogether. And the same can happen with us. If we are not in tune to His voice, we will miss out on God’s plan for our lives. So how can we be more aware when God speaks into our lives? Well, here are three ways that reveals…

HOW GOD GETS OUR ATTENTION:

1.      THROUGH GREAT STORMS.

“…the LORD hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up”. (Jon. 1:4)

When Jonah was fleeing to Tarshish, the boat hit an unusual storm. So the men on the boat began to question Jonah. “... [Jonah] said to them, ‘I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.’ Then the mean became extremely frightened and they said to him, ‘How could you do this?’ For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD…” (Jon. 1:9-10) Isn’t that funny! The men on the ship didn’t even know the Lord, yet they knew Jonah was fleeing from God’s presence.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me”. (Rev. 3:20) When I look back on my life now, I see that God was knocking and trying to get my attention too. However, I had a great storm going on inside of me. Sometimes God allows circumstances to happen in order that He may get our attention. Perhaps you’ve experienced a setback or a bankruptcy. Maybe you’ve been through a broken relationship, a betrayal, or even loneliness. Keep in mind that God is not limited, so He will use any method that we will listen to.

Anyway I remember my life on the run from God. I had gone to Portland Oregon. Yet even though I was busy and playing rock and roll music with my band, I was going nowhere. I was like a car spinning its wheels in the mud. Something was missing. I just didn’t realize that having a relationship with Jesus Christ was the only way to fill that void. Then one day I was feeling so alone. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t processed my mom’s death. Then to make matters worse, my sister was killed in a car accident. I felt totally isolated.

The fact is God not only uses great storms in order for us to connect with Him, He will sometimes have to cut us off from everyone and everything in our life. Thus, the second way God attracts our attention is…

2.      THROUGH ISOLATION.

That’s exactly what happened to Jonah. He was so desperate to get away from God that he told the men on the ship to just throw him overboard. “…The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights”. (Jon. 1:17) Little did he know what would happen next! Can you imagine being swallowed by a great fish and spending three days and nights in bile in the belly of a fish? Talk about being isolated!

Sometimes we can find ourselves in that situation too. We might find ourselves in a marriage where the only thing we have in common with our spouse is that we live at the same address. We may have a life that is hollow or empty of promise. Maybe it’s a loss job or a dream not materializing that makes us feel abandoned and unloved not rejected, but just not complete.

Well why does God allow these things to happen? Sometimes it’s because He has to wean us off the things we think give us identity and value. We tend to depend on others more than we depend on God. Therefore, He attempts to reconnect us back to Him by taking away everyone and everything from us for a season.

It happened to Hezekiah. In the Old Testament, Hezekiah became proud and drifted away from God. So God allowed him to become very sick. After getting well, instead of following the Lord Hezekiah forgot all about God and drifted once again. By this time, God had to get tough and isolated him for a season. “…God left him alone only to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart”. (2 Chr. 32:31) You see, Hezekiah’s heart was going bad and God had to leave him alone. And when he cried out for friends and for help no one answered.

Remember that people will leave us a lot of times, but Jesus will never leave. Sure He may isolate us for a while, but that is so we will come to realize that Jesus is all we need. Then He has our full attention without distractions. And it is when we cry out to God that we realize “…He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him”. (Prov. 30:5)  In other words, God cannot be a shield for us until we take refuge in Him. It’s a decision we have to make. And sometimes the only way God helps us see how futile it is to trust in man is to sever those ties and leave us alone for a time. “Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but to trust the LORD means safety”. (Prov. 29:25)

Man can sometimes make mistakes and cause us to fall if we lean on them too much. Jesus on the other hand will always lead us towards God’s best. We need to depend on Him because He wants to be the one to show us direction. Still why does God want our attention so much? Ultimately it’s…

3.      IN ORDER TO SHOW US HIS SON.

 “Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. But now in these final days, He has spoken to us through His Son”. (Heb. 1:1-2 NLT)

Jesus is speaking to us today. That’s why it’s so important that we have a relationship with Him. No not just a religious experience, but rather a daily relationship with Jesus.  . You see sin is sort of like the insulation that dulls our ears and makes it difficult for us to hear what God is saying to us. Eventually He can’t reach us because we have chosen to reject Him. Thus we develop a barrier between Him and us. However, Jesus came to break that dividing wall between God and man so that our relationship would be restored and repaired. It was His sacrifice that gave us access back to the Father. “Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the stomach of the fish, and said, ‘I called out in my distress to the LORD, and He answered me”. (Jon. 2:1, 2) That’s a place God wants us to be sometimes because often it is the only place we will cry out to Him and begin to hear His voice.   

It happened to me. I was in a trailer in Portland and everything in my life had been going wrong. My relationship and my band broke up. I was struggling in my heart and was still running from God. Then a guy at college gave me a New Testament Bible and said to just read it. So I began reading portions of it, but didn’t understand much. This person continued to talk to me about having a personal relationship with Jesus and assured me that my life would change and soon I’d be able to hear God. Remember, even though I knew about God I never had this kind of relationship talk with Him. Nevertheless, I recall one night getting on my knees and praying: “Lord if You are real, I give you my life in exchange for Your forgiveness. And would you guide me everyday because you know my future. I sure don’t and when I’m running from you, essentially I’m running from my future that You have planned. So intercept and catch my attention and guide me. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. So Lord I just lay my life in Your hands and I ask for forgiveness and I receive You as my Lord and my Savior”. It was a simple prayer like that which radically changed my life from that moment. Each day I began to understand more and more about the Lord. He began to speak to me and I was being transformed. Today I look back to that time in my mobile home where I made that decision and cried out to the Lord. Like Jonah, God heard my cries. “…whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved”. (Acts 2:21)

When I made that decision, I never realized that it would be the most eternal decision I’d ever make. I still had nothing. I was still a college kid at that time and it wasn’t like God suddenly blessed me with abundance. I still had to grow up, mature, and go through some trials. I had nothing, yet had everything when I opened my heart to Jesus Christ. So I want to open that same opportunity to you that transformed my life. God got my attention and He wants your attention as well in order to show you His Son. Whether you are struggling through a storm or isolated from people or things that you think give you value, God uses any method He can to capture your attention. He’s knocking at the door of your heart. All you have to do is open it.

Discussion Questions

·        In what ways does God speak to you? Are you aware that He’s speaking?

·        Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a storm? How long did it take before you to heard God?

·        Have you ever distanced yourself from God? What was the result? Have you since come to Him to seek refuge?

·        Have you ever felt so alone and empty not knowing how to fill that void? What did it take to bring you to your knees and cry out to God? What did you learn from that experience?

·        Sometimes we can be like Hezekiah. We forget the Lord until we are struggling with something in our lives. Have you ever been there and what has God done to draw you back to Him?

·        How has having a relationship with the Lord changed your life and how are you sharing what Jesus has done for you with others?

·        What most impacted you about today’s lesson and how will you apply what you learned to your life this week?

If you are interested in impacting others worldwide, consider joining us as summary writer. Please contact Dawn O’Brien at dawn@enewhope.org or Rhonda Pang at rcpang@hotmail.com  for more information.