Good Friday morning to you today! This has been a long week for me and I’m so grateful for a God of second chances. I’m ever so humbled that the God I serve desires a relationship with me.

The small group I’m in is currently doing a Bible study, Jonah, by Priscilla Shirer. As we have been exploring Jonah, I told my group the other day that I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I just wasn’t connecting to the study, didn’t feel I was deliberately running from God, and I was having a hard time relating. I continued to think to myself that I wasn’t really struggling with anyone or anything to the magnitude of Jonah.

Jonah’s people, the Israelites, were not exactly friends with the Ninevites. So, the idea that he would even “Go to Nineveh”, as God had called him to do probably seemed like one of the worst ideas ever. Why him? Why there? He then got on a boat going as far away from Nineveh as possible: he was running.

Picture this: not only do you have a prophet of God, whose livelihood is telling others about God, running in the complete opposite way from Nineveh, but the prophet is actually sleeping on the boat during the storm. The interesting part to me is that those on the boat, the ones who didn’t believe in the one true God were the ones praying to their gods. They knew they were going to die and were trying everything they knew to do to get the storm to stop. And, get this, they were the ones who had to come wake Jonah up and ask him why he wasn’t praying to his God during the storm!

I’ve come to appreciate a bit of Jonah’s struggle this past week. My heart is breaking over our country right now. There is violence, slander, and hatred from many sides. Yet, people are crying out for change. Our world and country are both in a storm right now and it might appear we are all going to be doomed. And, where is the church? I’m having a hard time hearing us over the noise and uproar of a country stating we need to change, of a country crying out to any “god” they can think of to make things better. Am I running, I wonder?

It’s time for the church to stop being “sleeping Jonah”. We can no longer run from our calling to minister to all people, to share the gospel, and to be the light of God in a darkened world. God is giving us a second chance to do what we’re called to do. In the midst of lies, lack of respect, slander, and killings, the country is crying out and saying we must do right. The world is crying out to their gods and it’s time we, as a church, grew a backbone and prayed to our God. We must come out of our shell and act like the people of God.

An election won’t win the world.

Stop your arguing, stop your worrying. Pray to God and love others. This is how you win the world.

Stop your arguing, stop your worrying. Pray to God and love others. This is how you win the world. #BeingTransparent Share on X

© 2016 Susan M. Sims

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Looking for a small group Bible study? Look no further: Being Transparent: With Yourself, God, and Others and now the Leader’s Discussion Guide is available!