Throughout your life God is going to interrupt your life. You will either embrace God’s interruptions or rebel against them. You will either obey or disobey. You will either walk with God or walk away from Him. In Jonah we see someone who God interrupted and gave him a message and a mission, but walked away from it and ran from God. He chose to ignore God’s calling upon his life.
From Jonah we see some valuable lessons about the life that gets interrupted by God. Let’s dive into it.
The Interrupted Life is a privileged life
Number one, the interrupted life is a privileged life. It is a privileged life because we get to hear from God, respond to God, and then partner with God in something that He is doing in our lifetime. Jonah 1:1 says, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying” (NASB). From that we see two miracles: God spoke and Jonah heard Him. It is a miracle when God speaks to us and we hear Him. To hear from God through His Word, through His Spirit, through His people or through circumstances it is a privilege. When God interrupts your life, He will do it by getting ahold of your attention and speaking something to your heart. It is a privilege to hear from God and to be able to respond to Him in obedience. Being interrupted by God is a privilege. We looked at that in detail last week.
The Interrupted life is a significant life
Number two, the interrupted life is a significant life. We only hear about Jonah one other time in the entire Old Testament. It’s in 2 Kings 14:25. In that verse it tells us five simple things.
- His name: his name was Jonah
- His religion: he was a servant of God
- His family: tells us who his father was
- His job: that he was a prophet
- His hometown: he came from Gath-hepher
These are the only five things we know about him before he is interrupted by a holy and awesome God who tells him to arise and go to Nineveh. All the incredible things he did, preaching to Nineveh, being swallowed by a great fish, and seeing the greatest revival in human history, all happened after God divinely interrupted his life. Before that, we know only these 5 simple things about him. But what we know about Jonah that will make a difference for eternity only comes after the interruption.
Listen carefully, there is some stuff that is significantly eternal about your life that cannot come about until your life is divinely interrupted by God. When you get interrupted by God, He is setting you up to bless with your story for generations to come. God wants your story to include more than just your name, where you went to church, who your family was, what job you had, and where you were born. But when God spoke to Jonah and gave him an assignment and when he finally responded in obedience, we got a story that is still impacted us today. The significant parts of your life happen after God interrupts you. You will discover your purpose and significance after God interrupts you. The interrupted life is a significant life.
What is it that God would want to do in your life after the interruption? You looking for significance? The interrupted life is the cure for the search for significance. When you go where God is leading you must believe that he is setting you up for a story that when it unfolds will blow you away.
The Interrupted life is a challenging life
The interrupted life is a privileged life and it is the significant life. Number three, the interrupted life is a challenging life. God is going to call you, encourage you, and spur you on that will push you to your limits. Usually, when God calls you to do something it will feel like you are not equipped to do it. It’s going to feel bigger than you are and maybe a little overwhelming. Your enemy, the devil, is not going to encourage you to do anything that would cause you to have to tap into God’s supernatural power to accomplish it. Your enemy does not want you praying more. He doesn’t want you seeking God more fully or seeking out godly advice or wisdom. He doesn’t want you to have to lean on God and depend on God more radically.
When you are facing something challenging, that’s bigger than you, you need to know that God is going to equip you to face that challenge of which He is calling you into. When God interrupts your life by calling you into a direction or ministry or situation that He wants you to address, He is going to empower you and equip you to do exactly what He would have you to do.
Look closely with me at Jonah 1:2, “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me” (NASB). Circle the first two words, “Arise, go….” When God interrupts you, it is going to be a challenge. It’s going to be difficult. It’s not going to be easy.
God says, “Arise, go.” In some form, God is going to say to you, “Get up from where you are and go to the destination I’m sending you.” Get up from the comfortable position and familiar place you have placed yourself in and get up from there and move on.
When you are settled in, when you are comfortable and cozied up in a particular place in your life “arise and go” is the last thing you want to hear. God telling you to break company with people, places, environments, and attitudes you have begun to harbor and snuggled up with and grown attached to. It means exerting energy you don’t want to exert. And it will be easier sometimes to just stay right where you are than to take on the challenge that God is placing before you.
Equipped to “arise and go” with the Holy Spirit
The divinely interrupted life is the challenging life. But here is the good news. God will give the strength to handle the challenge. What is the challenge before you? Did you know that you have been equipped with the Holy Spirit of God within you. The Holy Spirit is not a dove, wind, or fire. He is often symbolized by those things, but that’s not who He is. The Holy Spirit of God is the third person of the Trinity, not third because He is least in value of the three, but because He is third because he is the last to be revealed to us in Scripture. But the Holy Spirit of God is all of the power, all of the fullness, all of the greatness and all of the authority of God the Father is in the person of the Holy Spirit. The reason I’m saying all of this is because if you are a believer in Jesus Christ all of the greatness, power, and authority and fullness of God Himself is in you because the Holy Spirit is on the inside of you. This means you have all you need to take on the challenge that God has presented to you and to see the supernatural power of God operating in your life. So the Lord will often call you to “arise and go.” Even as I’m speaking right now, I’m sure that for some of you the Holy Spirit is calling you and prompting you to do something that you are afraid to do.
“Arise and go” to something new
Sometimes when God is telling you to “arise and go” it’s not that he is taking you from something bad. He wants to take you to something new or to something different than where you currently are comfortable. Where you have been, has been fine up till now. Now there is something new He is wanting you to experience.
Now listen carefully, oftentimes the greatest hindrance of a new move of God in your life is the last move of God in your life. The greatest hindrance of God doing something brand new in your life is that you have cuddled up to the last thing God did in your life and you have gotten comfortable. You are not willing to move on to the next thing God wants you to do. When you sense the Holy Spirit working in your life and calling you into something new, I want to encourage you to go with it.
I’m wondering if there is something you are doing right now that is a good thing, but you are using it to hide yourself from what God is really calling you to do. So, you have settled into a good thing, but the enemy is using that as a tool to keep you from God’s thing from your life. We can be so busy to so many good things that we waste our energy and time to where we have nothing left for the God thing He wanted us to really do.
So, when God interrupts your life and says, “Arise and go” it’s going to be a challenge for you and it’s going to be difficult, because you will need to leave the comfortable and the familiar.
I don’t want to “arise and go”
What made God’s call on Jonah challenging?
- It was a call to leave comfort and familiar
- It was a call to go to people he did not like
- It was a call to do something that he was not asking anyone else to do
- It was a call to do something he did not want to do
Nowhere in this story do we read where Jonah’s heart melted and had compassion for the people of Nineveh. Nowhere do we find Jonah actually having a desire to do what God wanted him to do. By the time we get to the end of Jonah, he still has a heart problem. He still doesn’t want what God wants.
I wonder if there is anyone else in this room that has had a messed up “want to.” Your “want to” is messed up. You just don’t want to do what God wants you to do. But listen to Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart” (NASB). God is saying, “If you will delight in Me, I can change your desires.” This means that as you plant your mind on Him, in live in the presence of God, you soak in the word of God, and you allow Him to speak into your life and you start enjoying Him something happens on the inside of you to where you start wanting what He wants.
God says “Arise and go” but your desire is not to arise and go. You don’t want what God wants. If you start delighting yourself in God, He can change that. He can actually change your heart. You start actually wanting what God wants for your life.
When God places an abnormal calling on your life, it is because He has abnormal results He wants to produce through you.
The interrupted life is the challenging life.
- God called Moses to lead a group of people and equipped him with a rod to perform miracles.
- He called Nehemiah to erect a wall and he gave him the resources to complete the task.
- He called Noah to build a boat and gave him the confidence to carry it through
- He called Esther to stand before the king and gave her supernatural courage to make it happen.
- He called Paul to preach the gospel to the lost and God gave him boldness to share Christ to the masses.
Is there a people that you don’t particularly care for that He has called you to minister to? Is there a person that He has called you to love and serve even though they don’t love you? If it’s far above your ability or far below your pay grade He will give you the courage to not only accept, but flourish in the assignment.
Conclusion
Throughout out our life, you will be interrupted. When God interrupts your life and calls you to do something go ahead and embrace it. How your life been interrupted by God lately? What is He saying to you through this interruption? Embrace it. Make the choice to follow God’s lead on this. Trust Him. Do what He is telling you.
