Am I Jonah?...Are You? Part 1

Am I Jonah?...Are You?  Part 1

“Am I Jonah?...Are You?”  That is definitely a loaded question and possibly a difficult one to answer.  It might even be more difficult to find the correlation for your life but that is exactly where we are headed.  Buckle up, we’re going to walk a road you have been dreaming of for a very long time!  I’m going to lay a lot of ground work as we move through this so bear with me and yes that is the correct spelling for this and I promise this journey is going to dig deep and make you think about your life so far.  My aim is not to make you question your life choices…unless you need to but that is between you and God, it is to get you thinking and analyzing whether or not you are living the created call, bumping along it occasionally which is most common or simply missing it altogether.  

“Are You Jonah?” is the question that God asked me during church one Sunday morning…one very difficult Sunday morning.  I was utterly exhausted from not sleeping the night before which not much different than most night for me, the air conditioning wasn’t doing its job and I had been doing my weekly complaining to God (I have another piece that I want you to read about how blessed we truly are and how we often miss it…or at least I did)  about why He wasn’t stepping in and touching my business even after all the awesome things that I had my business doing for The Kingdom!  You and I both know that is how it works, we do good things with God in mind and He pours out all the contents of the heaven on our businesses and our lives…duh!  We also know that it doesn’t matter what He has been telling us to do, it only matters that He is on our mind while we do what we want to do because it is more comfortable and fun…Right!?  I really hope that you can see I am laying the sarcasm on thick, it is imperative that you don’t miss that.

Now, I could have been very offended that God referred to me as Jonah but I wasn’t for two reasons.  First of all, I refuse to get offended!  We all know the old saying “do you take offense to that?”  Well, that should give us a clue that it is a choice whether or not to be offended so I choose not to because getting offended is stupid!  Yep, I said it and I don’t care if anyone likes it.  I refuse to let anyone have that power over me.  Secondly, It turns out that I still only had the Sunday school kindergarten level of understanding of Jonah.  He may have been a prophet but he was also definitely proof that God can and will use just about anyone.  He was rebellious, self-centered, insecure, spiteful, and a bit bitter.  I may have just destroyed the story of Jonah for you forever but I’m good with that because it is important.  We don’t know if Jonah ever did have a full heart change or if he lived out the rest of his days the same miserable dude that God used to save an entire city.  God wasn’t calling me a miserable jerk…I hope because I try to keep the jerk part at bay but I do have to say that I have spent more than my fair share of time miserable and unfortunately I have made my family miserable simply by association.  I don’t mean that I did things, I was just grumpy and the exact opposite of pleasant to be around.

Here is the truth, so many of us are just like Jonah and we do exactly what I talked about above, our own thing and we hope and expect God to bless it.  When you really think about it, why on earth would He feel any obligation to bless the thing He didn’t tell us to do?  We have an idea and we run with it, we get the option for an “amazing” job and we take it and pack up the family and move across the country (this could also be what He IS telling so please understand what I’m getting at) or we get comfortable where we are no matter how miserable we are and we just stay with it and fight tooth and nail against all the challenges, bringing them before God for help and wisdom…sometimes. We get all bent out of shape when He doesn’t do what we have asked.  Here is the hard part, we started with the wrong question.  The question we should have started with is “God, is this you?  Is this what You want me to be doing?  Is now the time?  What would You have me do?”  Those are the correct questions we should be asking each time.  I would say to those that seem to “never” get help from our Father that we didn’t even bother to ask Him before we jumped in both feet and inevitably start to sink as soon as we launch.  You’ll notice that I included myself in the “we”. I am notorious throughout my life for getting an idea, crafting a really good plan and launching into the stratosphere only to realize that we are struggling to make it off the launchpad.  God has been faithful to help me keep my head above water but my foolishness has come at a dear cost!  Worldly wisdom would tell us that we need to get more capital by any means necessary or work thirty two hours everyday and that will push us over the edge.  Truth be told, that will push you over the edge but not the right one.  I speak from experience, I chose the road frequently travelled when I chose burnout for my downtime hobby…over and over and over, you get the point.  The problem is, I still only reached a tiny fraction of what I am capable of, all because I didn’t ask God the right questions first, I was too impatient or naive but probably both especially on things this weighty.  Long ago I didn’t know what I didn’t know but now I know a lot more of what I didn’t know and I am learning to ask the right One and the right questions, not to mention I’m learning to listen when He speaks and to take the hint to simply stop when He doesn't say anything no matter how good the deal looks or sounds, He covers this is in James 1:5 and it says nothing about Him holding back His wisdom in certain situations.  His timing is important as well, a NO right now doesn’t necessarily mean Never.  It might mean never but it might also mean that you or the deal or even both need to mature and change to become what HE has for you.  This brings us back to Jonah and the question, “Are You Jonah?”  It took me a while to answer but I had to answer yes, definitely yes…ish.  (Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that smooth or easy for me to answer that, I do have my pride and the inherent insecurities that we all have in different flavors.  It took weeks to be able to admit to myself let alone anyone else that my life was way too close a parallel to Jonah.)  

Let’s talk about Jonah for a minute to give some context, then we’ll get back into what it looks like to be Jonah in our own lives and what we can do to get out of that doggone fish!  You may be wondering who this Jonah character I keep referring to is if you live under a rock or just haven’t ever been to Sunday school, man I miss the felt boards!  If you dig deep into the old testament you will find a scripture or two talking about some dude who basically told God to go pound sand when God asked him to do one simple thing, that’s it, just one.  Ok, it’s an entire book and maybe it wasn’t just a little thing.  God asked him to go and tell a wicked city that God was going to vaporize them in a few days if they didn’t repent.  Sounds like Tuesday to me!  

Anyhow, Jonah was not without attitude and a bit of sass so he decided to take a cruise in the opposite direction from the city God told him to go to instead of taking a few minutes and delivering God’s message to Nineveh.  Well the day of his cruise arrived and he was jonesing for some “me time” and margaritas because let’s be honest, disobedience is hard work and he deserved a break.  He gets on the boat and they pull away from the dock, you know with the usual party music and streamers ready for a trip to anywhere but there!  Calm seas, a cool breeze, a crew that hadn’t showered in days but who cares, he had escaped God and was on his way to paradise…or a terrible storm kicked up, none of the fanfare actually happened but the crew part was actually true.  They were probably a bit crusty and gamey, things were different back then.  These were experienced sailors we’re told so my guess is that this wasn’t the first storm they had ever seen, I’m guessing that it was the likes of the one from that one movie with the “nothing wrong with” it storm, you know what I mean and I don’t want to break any copyright laws so take a moment and think about that.  Anyhow, these dudes are chucking things overboard right and left just to try to stay afloat for another moment in face of fury from the sea they had never seen before.  Let’s not forget, they didn’t sail for fun.  They were carrying cargo and passengers for business and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the cargo was not insured so that should tell you how bad this storm was.  Well, funny enough, the only one that wasn’t surprised by this storm or the fury of it was…you guessed it, Jonah!  Our fearful anti-hero who decided on Cabo rather than God.  It wasn't working out for him so well or at all.  He knew full well that God was not going to let him go one more nautical inch (I don’t think that’s a thing but doesn’t it make sense that if there is a nautical mile there should be nautical feet and inches?  Points to ponder).  God was going to take that ship down with Jonah on it if that is what it took to get Jonah to obey.  I do believe that God knows everything so I believe He knew that He wouldn’t have to take those sailors down to get to Jonah, I feel that God knew Jonah would volunteer and he did…ish.  They sailors came to the point of casting lots to find out whose fault it was and low and behold Jonah was the next contestant on The Price Is Wrong!!!  Please don’t hang the hero placard on Jonah just yet, none of this would have happened if he had just done what God asked.  Also, let’s not forget that the simple little task that God was asking of Jonah was to SAVE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE FROM CERTAIN DOOM AND ETERNITY IN HELL!  This purpose was known by Jonah and he was cool with it, that ain’t cool man, not even a little!  All because he was embarrassed by what the “cool kids” might think and say, he just didn't want to.  To be fair, the Ninevites could have also just decided to kill him for showing up and that could have helped to sway his decision but I’m going to go out on a limb and say God probably didn’t have that in mind, I’m just sayin.  Ok, I ragged on the dude enough…for now so let’s get on with it.  

Jonah finally steps up and tells the sailors what is up and that they need to toss him over and the storm will stop. He knew it was his fault, God made sure that everyone knew with the lots being cast, and he let these dudes dump their livelihood overboard before he “voluntarily” stepped up…sorry, I said I would leave him alone but one last thing, he didn’t just dive overboard, he made them throw him!  Can you say guilty conscience, bro not cool!  Alright back to the story, Jonah gets swallowed whole by a giant fish!  Some say whale and some say fish but I don’t honestly care. I like to picture a giant Mahi Mahi swallowing him…it could be because I absolutely love grilled Mahi Mahi and then the story is less depressing, who knows.  If I’m wrong about the fish just let me have this one, it really doesn’t matter.  Think about your stomach and what it is like when the stuff that was in your stomach doesn’t stay there, that is where Jonah was hanging out for days because he was stubborn, he wouldn’t relent and repent and tell God YES!  I will give it to him, that is some intestinal fortitude (yep, I love dad jokes) to survive in those conditions in a fish for that long just because he cared more about what he wanted and what the cool kids would say than what God wanted and needed from him.  I want you to think for a minute what that would do to your mind and mood, you would be jacked up for months at least after being swallowed by a giant Mahi Mahi!  The smell, the mere thought that you were SWALLOWED BY A FISH (we’ve all thought about what was hanging out down in every lake we have ever swam in) that is seriously huge would totally mess you up in the head.  I can only imagine what he was thinking, it certainly wasn’t repentance for a while but we do know he came around.  This parallels our lives during our “belly of the fish" season which can last for days or decades and anywhere in between. It's really up to us, by getting us so distracted by survival each day that we completely lose sight of the outside world and what God really called us to do!  I’m a firm believer that most of us know what to do and have known for quite some time by the time we fully engage in our “belly of the fish” season.  There is swift and complete redemption from our belly of the fish years as soon as we repent and move to obedience.  Long and short, God will get your head right once you let Him!  

Days later he finally humbles himself and says YES to God.  Now let me point out that he had to truly mean it because God knows the heart of a man and He wouldn’t have removed Jonah from that situation if He knew that Jonah had his fingers crossed.  Well, that giant Mahi Mahi vomited Jonah up on the beach, the bible says onto dry land which shows that God is way nicer than me.  I would have had the fish spit him up like twenty five yards offshore so he had to swim a bit just for the trouble he caused.  It would have also cleaned him off while he swam because I guarantee that Jonah was ripe with a capital RIPE!  Turns out Jonah was serious when he said yes to God about Nineveh.  

Now let me give you a short blurb about Ninevah, this wasn’t some small town in the Bible belt where nothing is open on Sunday because they are in church, this was the capital of the ancient Assyrian kingdom!  These were not lovely people, they decorated their cities with the skins and heads of their enemies that fell in battle.  I’m not cutting Jonah any slack because if God tells you to do something He already has it worked out down to the tiniest detail.  No matter how type A planner you are, God is a billion times better.  He isn’t going to send you to fail just to do it, that would be dumb and He definitely isn’t that.  Moreover, God sends us with a specific mission in mind that He wants and needs with an already known to Him desired outcome.  I would say that it is always to bring His children to Him and for His glory!  We really need to be good with that and not forget, the creator of literally everything chose us directly to carry out His specific mission, you will never receive a greater honor than that.  You may not feel it or feel ready but that is really quite irrelevant, I will tell you that because I feel that a bit right now as I write and produce this.  I have a very general idea of where He wants me to go and what He wants me to do and wouldn’t you know it encompasses just about everything that is out of my comfort zone, yet He has gifted me the ability to do it.  How well I pull it off is yet to be seen but also not my problem.  As long as I am obedient He will make it happen.

Well, Jonah goes to Nineveh and pretty much the whole doggone city gets saved!  No kidding, it worked!  Go figure, how do you like them apples!  So you might say, Jonah could now join in the celebration and party with his new brothers and sisters in Christ but you would be flat wrong.  Jonah was a jerky!  He went outside the city and found a place where he could overlook it and literally got mad at God for saving such awful people. I'm not kididing and this is one of the things that I hadn’t had any idea about.  He went out and pouted!  While he was pouting God asked him multiple times why he was mad at Him and if Jonah’s anger was justified.  We don’t know the eventual final outcome of that interaction because that is where the book of Jonah ends.  This is the very abridged but historical account of Jonah.  I may have added a few creative details but I stayed accurate to the story.  I am guessing that now you are curious how I am going to tie this to you and I, I will not disappoint so here we go.

This has been a very interesting journey for me along this whole Jonah thing.  One giant yet gentle question that was triggered by one name preached from a friend on a sleepy Sunday morning has led to all of this.  At first I thought it was just about whether or not I was fulfilling my purpose and calling which I now know that I wasn’t.  I dabbled and dreamed but I never got serious.  I had the website set up, an instagram, a YouTube channel ready to teach business from my decades of lessons but no go.  I fought exhaustion and would get a burst of inspiration here and there but I could never quite get it to catch until I finally got the full initial picture God was trying to get me to see.  He would have revealed it to me quickly along the way had I just stuck with it but He is gracious and loving so He patiently waited me out.  He didn’t just want me to teach business from the view of a christian businessman, he wanted me to teach His word and business and show how they are inseparable for His children.  The path to true joy and happiness is through obedience to God.  It isn’t always an easy path but don’t think for a moment that He won’t bless your obedience and inevitably you will find joy and happiness because you will be functioning as the part of His body that He literally created you to be.  You don’t have to teach a Ferrari how to go fast, it was designed for that just like you have been designed to do whatever it is that God has for you.  I am betting that many of you are feeling like you are not even close to qualified for what God has put in you to do so let me give you a real world example.  Did you know that the SR-71 Blackbird, formerly the fastest aircraft on earth that they tell us about (I love a great conspiracy fact), leaked like a sieve while on the ground.  It didn’t turn into the perfection of engineering that it is until it hit super high speed at super high altitude where the heat and pressure made all the parts expand to fit tight creating the truly exquisite aircraft that it is.  On the ground at the beginning of its mission it's hard to fly, makes a mess, and smells a bit bad unless you like the smell of jet fuel and hydraulic oil like me.  Once she is on mission, the one she was created for the story changes completely into a beautiful symphony of truly inspired engineering smashing gracefully through almost everything we thought was possible in flight.  We are the same, it feels clunky and awkward to get going into something that we aren’t used to and sometimes have no idea about.  That really doesn’t matter to God, He just needs your YES so that he can get you moving in His direction.  You will be shocked at how fast you learn the necessary skills needed to move in your created purpose.  It will begin to feel natural to you after a short while because it is!  Now let me tie the story together with this before we get into how you are supposed to get into your lane.  

I’m going to say it again, Spoiler alert, you know deep down what it is, chances are you may have even tried what it was but because you were uncomfortable and more interested in what you want than what God wants you didn’t stick with it and allow it to blossom in you.

Jonah was a prophet, some of you may be too but that isn’t the point here.  Jonah was created for a specific purpose but that purpose didn’t fit with his idea of who he wanted to be and what he wanted to do.  I am just guessing here but I am going to bet that there were external factors in that day and age just like there are now that made him not want to do what God wanted, like going into the middle of a horrifically violent and pagan city and telling them they were all going to die.  I’m sure he expected them to say “you first!” and that would have been it but he wasn’t trusting God.  I do believe that is the case with many of us and on a regular basis.  We see God talk about it in Isaiah 66:2-4, God tells us that he will literally punish and bring horrors upon those that do what they want!  He’s not joking, he uses the wording of the different types of sacrifices but which in those days were good but they were the way the people wanted NOT the way God wanted.  He said He called and no one answered, He spoke and and no one heard, they did evil in His eyes.  A great thing done in disobedience turns into a very bad thing.  I may be understanding it wrong but what I understand it to be saying is they were doing things that were good but how they wanted and never asked God what He wanted or how He wanted.  God was not happy!  I’m not going to judge them or Jonah on that point,  there are times when I find it extremely difficult to do it God’s way and I try to handle it myself…not a good idea!  Even though I have Him in mind the whole time, if He didn’t tell me what, when, how, and who then to Him I am still doing evil…That’s heavy man!

Now that we have gone through Jonah’s little escapade that brought him fame through the ages, not for being a legend but for being disobedient fish food I want to go into what this all means for us and what exactly I am meaning by saying “I am Jonah, many of us are.”  As God began to develop this in me and I continually mulled it over the example He was trying to get across began to become glaring to me.  I have founded and grown a few companies.  You might want to say how awesome that is or that I’m bragging, you would be incorrect in both things.  I am definitely not bragging, if you knew me personally you would know that I don’t brag, I struggle to see any awesome in any of that even before God helped me to see what I was actually doing.  Especially with what I’m going to tell you next.  I have reached success in these according to the world’s standard, however I have always hit a sticking point in growth and ended up with no fuel left in my tank.  The companies have done well and I exited with a tidy profit but the key factor that has happened each time was that I, the visionary and driving force ran out of gas, I expended so much energy and effort in the start up and growth that I ended up running out of gas.  I became exhausted and burnt out and for the life of me I could never figure out what in the world was going on.  Then it sparked, the one thing that I seem to be able to do and go relentlessly all the while becoming more energized with each task and project is consulting/coaching/teaching, take your pick for what you want to call it, others in their dreams, companies and organizations.  It turns out I am exceptionally good at it, my brain just works that way almost as if there was a divine design.  The ideas flow like a raging torrent and the energy picks up with each passing second as I strategize and create a vision and plan for them.  Side note, I may get a little too excited and start talking way too fast resulting in sometimes melting peoples minds.  To any of you reading this where that has happened, I am truly sorry and please let me know, I have learned the brake pedal and have now developed a flood control system that works pretty doggone well!  Anyhow, once I realized this I began taking it to God and instead of complaining, you know you do it too, I started asking what was going on.  This is when He started pushing me to do this, to share what I have learned and experienced with others on a much larger scale no matter how uncomfortable I am with it.  I am a fairly severe introvert but that does tend to go away when I’m sharing, it’s a bit bizarre.  I still expend a massive amount of energy when I’m working with a larger group but it is super enjoyable to dialogue and brainstorm then build strategies with them.  It is a new concept for me to get energized the more I work when I’m coaching (this is what we’ll call it from here on out because listing all three of those things is weird).  God has been tugging at me for literally years but my comfort levels and insecurities (yes, even I have them, I’m just like you believe it or not) kept getting in the way, holding me back from getting out of the belly of the fish.  Well, here I am on dry land once again and bringing you everything that is in my head after twenty plus years of start ups and sales and everything in between.  I am sharing the struggles, problems, victories, and the strategies that I learned from the school of hard knocks at the beginning then from mentors (Most of them were only through books and podcasts) as my career progressed.  It has taken me at least a decade, if not longer to finally surrender my fear and insecurity to God and pick up and do what He has asked me to do and I what I believe He created me to be for Him.  I believe that He has given me a unique ability to see business, organizations, and leadership in a special way and to analyze and strategize systems to clean up and lean up those things.  In the process of doing that, we get to save the organization or business and even moreso, we get to save the leadership.  I know that sounds weird but when the organization or business is struggling in any way, great leaders feel the full weight and force of that bearing down on their shoulders and if not handled quickly and properly they almost always begin to falter and then fall.  This is not ok and I know this from gut wrenching personal experience.  A little side note that ties directly in, my abilities to analyze and strategize an organization or company caused me to be overly critical and judgemental for a very long time, I wasn’t using the gift He has given me to bring life.  I didn’t realize it but my gifting was working but I was directing it in the wrong direction.  God wants me to use it to bring life and restoration for Him and all who hear.  I think I used it in the wrong direction because I was frustrated and hadn’t sought God on why He would give me these abilities.  Once He asked, then I asked Him things have changed dramatically.  I see things with a desire to help restore and inspire rather than tear down.  I have quit complaining to my family about things being wrong with the places we visit and the communities we are a part of, turns out that was really detrimental to my family but they are awesome and are so forgiving and gracious.  This is a perfect example of a good thing being used the opposite way that God desires.  

I deeply desire to be for you the exact thing that I needed most in my most desperate times.  And, thanks to God’s wisdom He has been showing me how to do that so that it is never out of reach for anyone.  

I’m going to stop here for part 1.  I really want you to read this again and again until you get it.  Please take notes and crack open the bible and read it for yourself.  Even if you don’t have one you can get it for free online.  Then I want you to keep your notebook or tablet out and start talking to God.  I can’t stress this enough, I have a feeling that you already have an idea what your call is but it is time to get serious.  In part 2 I’ll walk you through the process.  Thank you so much for taking your valuable time to read and digest this!  I truly pray that it will touch you and get you on God’s created path for you.  Let’s get it going!