Advent: He Stretches Us

Last week, we talked about how God calls us. Sometimes, we don't like what God calls us to do. In times like that, God stretches us. Stay with us for this one. It's long, but it is so good to hear what God says about us not wanting to do what He wants us to.

Let's first read in Jonah 2:
(we highly encourage you to read all of Jonah to get an idea of the whole story)

¹ From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. ² He said:

“In my distress I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,
    and you listened to my cry.
³ You hurled me into the depths,
    into the very heart of the seas,
    and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
    swept over me.
⁴ I said, ‘I have been banished
    from your sight;
yet I will look again
    toward your holy temple.’
⁵ The engulfing waters threatened me,
    the deep surrounded me;
    seaweed was wrapped around my head.
⁶ To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
    the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you, Lord my God,
    brought my life up from the pit.

⁷ “When my life was ebbing away,
    I remembered you, Lord,
and my prayer rose to you,
    to your holy temple.

⁸ “Those who cling to worthless idols
    turn away from God’s love for them.
⁹ But I, with shouts of grateful praise,
    will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

¹⁰ And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

One thing we see is that God gave Jonah a call he didn’t want.  He had his own plans on where he wanted to preach and to whom he wanted to preach; and for that matter he had his own ideas of whom he wanted in the kingdom of God, and also who he believed didn’t belong there. And preaching in Nineveh was certainly not a part of that plan. He was stuck in this narrow kind of thinking that says "I want my kind of people in the kingdom of God"; that says "I want only my kind of folks in my church". And he had some pretty firm ideas of whom he did not want in his church. The church and the kingdom were for Jews…only. Oh, we might let a few others in, but certainly not those from Nineveh.  He had his list of those who didn’t deserve to be there, and Nineveh was on that list.

The bottom line in this story is that Jonah simply could not love whom God loved.  That was his problem at heart. It was a heart problem! God loved those Ninevites, outsiders though they were; and Jonah didn’t. God had compassion; Jonah didn’t. To God, they were his creatures who needed to know of his grace; to Jonah they were outsiders who ought to be kept outside.  Jonah was busy erecting fences to keep people out; God was busy changing hearts to bring people in. And then this story ends…well, it doesn’t really end…it just stops…right there. It becomes the unfinished story. There seems to be no closure, no resolution. And I wonder if there is a message in that…that many times when God does try to stretch us, disturb us, it doesn’t go so well…it just sort of hangs there unresolved?

Sometimes we get stuck in our own ruts; we become too narrow in our thinking; too centered on ourselves; we take control of things away from God; and we think we can chart out our own course. And we become so comfortable in that way of thinking that we are not willing to examine it. We’re just locked into it. That’s our way, and we’re going to keep it our way! But it isn’t God’s way and so he has to push us out of our comfort zone; he has to disturb us. That’s when he becomes God the Disturber.

It is very important that God asks you to stretch because that will make your stretch a stretch of faith. We do not want to make up our own stretching exercises because we are liable to pull something. We only want to stretch as God asks us to stretch. What is the biblical definition of faith? Faith is simply trust, and it is trust in the Word of God. When God asks us to do something, we stretch our faith to respond.

What happens to a muscle when it is regularly stretched? It becomes flexible, versatile, efficient, strong, and growing? Think about those five adjectives—flexible, versatile, efficient, strong, and growing. Would you like those applied to your spiritual life? I would; especially, when I consider the antonyms—weak, brittle, and inflexible. One other antonym can be applied. What happens to a muscle when it is not regularly stretched? Does it stay the same? No, it atrophies, which means to shrink from disuse.

When I say that God is going to stretch you, I do not mean that you are human taffy. I mean that He is going to ask you to do something, and you will have to decide whether to stretch in faith. God has given you your very own personal trainer who is the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will be giving you your set of stretches on a daily basis. God’s calls stretch us, so we have to be ready for God to stretch us so that his work can go on.

Are you willing to have your love be as big as God’s love? Is your circle as big as God’s circle? Or are you drawing lines that you’ll love just some — these folks, but not those folks?  If so, be careful. When Jonah did that he found God to be a Disturber. He found God determined to stretch him.

Much of our information came from here and here.
 
Advent Series:
He Reveals Himself
He Calls Us for Life
He Stretches Us
He Accomplishes Great Things