Greg Laurie and Harvest Ministries recommend a great new children's book by Sally Lloyd-Jones called Jesus Our True Friend. You have kids and they need to hear the story of Jesus. And I bet you struggle at times trying to read Bible stories to your children. This is a great tool, so order your copy of Jesus Our True Friend Stories to Fill Your Heart with Joy, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones. Yours for a gift of any amount at harvest.org.
Jonah was the prophet who ran from God. Never a wise move. Pastor Greg Laurie wonders why we'd even consider it in the first place. Why would you run from your father who loves you? I don't want what you're selling, Lord.
I don't want your rules. I don't want your regulations. I don't want any of it. And we run from God. We think God's out to ruin our life when all He wants to do is bless our life.
We should not be running from God. We should be running to God. This is the day. When the lost are found. This is the day for a new beginning.
Amazing graves now sweetest to sound. But can you hear all the angels are singing? This is the day, the day when I begin. It's a strange day indeed when a man of the cloth runs from a lord. Jonah was a prophet of God.
But when God gave him an assignment, he literally left town in the opposite direction.
Well that solved everything, right? Not at all. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie points out when we run from God, He still knows where we are. and he has some amazing ways to get our attention. and he may stop at nothing to get us back on track.
Let's learn more. I've told you before, I became a Christian when I was 17 years old and I was in high school, and I was attending church and I was hearing Bible studies, and I was growing in my faith. I went out and actually started talking to people about Jesus Christ on the streets, which was not easy for me to do. And I always had this fear that God was going to call me to preach a sermon in front of a group of people, and that terrified me. How many of you have a fear of public speaking?
Raise up your hand.
Okay, because I'm going to start calling on you to come up here and speak right now. I'm starting with you, young lady. No, I'm kidding. But I had that fear, I was terrified that. I just knew God was going to make me do it like in a supermarket or some horrible time, like to start preaching, and I was afraid of it.
Well, one day I did preach and I had not planned on doing it. I've told you the story before. I was a little late for one of those big baptisms at Pirates Cove Beach. And so I missed the whole thing. And I was disappointed.
I got my time wrong. But I saw a group of Christians sitting there just out on the sand singing. And so I sat down and joined them. And they're continuing to sing. And there was no real leader.
And so when they were done singing, I just shared a little something from the scripture that I'd read that morning. And then while I was talking, a couple of girls joined our little group. And then someone sitting next to me leaned in and said, these two girls want to know if you'll baptize them, Pastor. I said, not a pastor. 17 years old, been a Christian like eight minutes.
I mean... I can't do it. No, they want to know if you'll baptize. There's no way I could never. No, no, I can't tell them no.
And no, could you baptize us? I don't even know how to baptize somebody, I've never actually studied the technique of it. But then the Lord just spoke to my heart and said, do it. No, I said.
Okay.
So I said, Yeah, come on, I'll go baptize you. Let's go.
So we're walking along now. We're making our way over to Pirates Cove. You know, it's that natural rocky amphitheater.
So we're leaving Big Corona Beach. We're climbing over the rocks. The same area where that. Preacher used to be dressed head to toe in black, but now I'm a young adult or at least an old teenager. And we're making our way over and we go down.
And I'd never actually watched how you baptize someone. Do you just push them in the water? I mean, what do you do?
So I kind of bumbled through it. And then I baptized both of them. And I was so thankful. I said, Lord, thank you for this opportunity. I'll do whatever you want me to do.
I'm just ready to go wherever you want me to go. And then as I had been baptizing these girls, I noticed a little crowd gathered up on the rocks there, watching. Looked up and I thought, well, a little crowd gathered up there on the rocks.
Okay, let's go. And the Lord spoke to me clear as day and said, preach the gospel.
Now this is the thing I've been fearing. but he gave me the boldness to do it. And all of a sudden, I find myself talking to these people. Hey, maybe you're wondering what we're doing down here. And I want to tell you that we believe in Jesus Christ.
And I'm almost like jumping out of myself and looking at myself saying, What in the heck are you doing? Do you think you're Billy Graham or something? This is insane. And next thing I knew, I'm saying, and if you would like to accept Jesus Christ, get up from the rocks and come down here. I'm thinking, I can't believe I'm saying this stuff.
And sure enough, some people walk down. I lead them to the Lord and I baptize them too.
So that was the first time I preached. Don't let that freak you out. Let me just say this. God will give you the strength to do what he calls you to do when he calls you to do it. Not before, never after.
He'll give you what you need when you need it. It's like I had sort of a dose of Holy Spirit boldness that kicked in, but I want to bring that up because this is a story of a guy who was running from God's will for his life. The Lord called this man, whose name is Jonah. To go preach to the city of Nineveh that we'll talk about in a few moments. And he did not want to go, so he tried to go in the opposite direction.
Now, when we think of Jonah, we immediately think of Jonah and the Did you know the Bible never says there is a whale? It says a great fish.
So it may have been a whale. May have been some kind of a sea monster, that's actually a literal translation of the creature. Then I have to say that Yeah, I'm always amazed that uh How animals emerge in the Bible in interesting narratives, and how they can even be a part of God's plan and purpose. You know, when I was a young person, I had two goals in life: I wanted to be a professional cartoonist, and my backup plan was to own a pet shop. And I had every kind of animal you can think of.
I was really into animals as a kid, I had every kind of reptile. You can imagine, I had so many snakes. I had gopher snakes and I had king snakes and I had boas and I had pythons and then I went into a lizard phase and I had iguanas and chameleons and all these other little lizards and I had turtles and then I got into the rodent phase where I had rats and mice and hamsters and guinea pigs and rabbits and then I fed the rabbits to the snakes. It worked out very nicely. No, I didn't do that, but you do have to feed snakes like mice though.
And so I've had all these creatures. Then I went into my fish phase and I had fish tanks and I would have, you know, Oscars and angelfish and silver dollars and the placostamus that sort of is like the vacuum cleaner of the fish world, cleaning up all the junk on the bottom of the tank. And then I got into my bird phase and I had parrots and cockatiels and every kind of bird you can think of. And then I went to my dog phase and I had poodles. I don't know why I had two poodles.
Collies, one collie actually, a Springer spaniel, two German shepherds and a couple of mutts. I never had a cat. Never saw the reason to have a cat. Um so But animals are amazing. And one of the things I'm looking forward to in the millennium, you know what the millennium is?
It's a thousand-year reign of Christ. When the Lord's ruling over our planet, we're living at peace. And that is the time that the Bible speaks of, when the wolf will romp with the lamb, and the leopard will sleep with the little calf and the lion, and will eat from the same dish. And so, you know, sometimes people ask: will our pets make it to heaven? I don't know.
But I'm telling you in the millennium, you may have a pet lion, so you're not going to care anymore. Because the whole animal kingdom will be tame under the control of God Himself. And I am happy about this because. I've been bitten by many animals as well. I've been bitten by many snakes, bitten by lizards, bitten by turtles, bitten by rabbits.
The most terrifying thing was when I was bit by a monkey. Allie, you want to tell the story of when I was bit by a monk? She always has me tell the story. You want to tell it? Remember what happened?
What was I doing? I was petting the monkey on the head and what happened? He bet you. Yeah. He bit me, that's right, but what did I do?
You went to the sink and you were washing your hands and um blood was like gushing out. That's actually very true. Did I scream when the monkey bit me? Yeah. That's right.
It's true. I was petting a monkey on the head. It belonged to a friend of mine, and he bit me. And I pulled my hand back, and he's hanging off of my finger. And I'm trying to get him free.
It was a spider monkey.
So I finally shook him free, and I was washing my hand. And as Ali said, blood was gushing out. It was a horrible moment.
So I'm looking forward to the time when all of the animal kingdom is pacified and tame. And you know, you read about animals in the Bible. A preselected donkey carried Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. There's another story where. The Lord opened the mouth of a donkey and he spoke to the disobedient prophet who was riding him.
And then, of course, the Bible tells us that God knows about every sparrow that falls to the ground.
So animals matter to God. And there's also a story in the Old Testament. This is a very important one: of some young men who were mocking the prophet Elisha, mocking his baldness. And two bears came out of the forest and beat them up.
So never mock a bald preacher. This is all in the Bible, folks. There might be some bears on the wings ready to do the Lord's bidding there. But then I've read interesting stories about animals saving people's lives. I read about a dog, a beagle, and I don't know how this dog did it, but the owner fell ill and the beagle dialed 911.
The owner had taught the dog how to do it.
Somehow, the dog was able to pull it off and it saved the owner's life. I read about another man whose SUV plunged 40 feet. As he was backing out of his driveway, he told his dog, Honey, to go get help. She ran half a mile to a friend's house and brought them back and saved his life. A cat would never do that.
You'd say to your cat, go get help. The cat would be. Then it would cough up a fur ball. and then walk off and that'd be the last you'd see of him. I read another article, these are all true stories, about a school of porpoises that saved a man's life.
He fell off a boat. He was floating around. It was an area that was infested with sharks. A group of porpoises started circling around him and guided him over to a boy. He might even say that these porpoises were helping him to find it, even drove him to the buoy.
So he wrote a book about it later called. The porpoise-driven life. I don't know if you've read it, but um.
So this is a story. That was a joke, because the rest of it was true, actually. Corpuses really did save a person. But this is a story of how God used a whale or a great fish to swallow a prophet. It's sort of like sushi eating in reverse.
Instead of man eating fish, fish eats man. Uh Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. Hey everybody, you can watch our Sunday services on a special broadcast that we call Harvest at Home. It's streaming on the Harvest Plus platform.
So download that app right away, Harvest Plus, and you can enjoy being a part of our extended church family every Sunday. And now Pastor Gregg continues his message from the book of Jonah. One of her most requested studies called Here I Am, Send Him. Let's listen.
Now, when we think of the story of Jonah, we think of that whale, but as Bible commentator G. Campbell Morgan pointed out, men have been looking so long at the great fish, they have failed to see the great God. Here's the big message of the book of Jonah: it's not about the fish, it's about the largest revival in biblical history. And it was brought about by a man who didn't even want to go to this place called Nineveh to start with.
So now we come to the verses we're going to read together, Jonah 1. Verses one to three.
Now the word of the Lord. Kingdom Jonah. The son of Amittai. saying, arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshus from the presence of the Lord.
So the Lord called Jonah to go preach to Nineveh. That doesn't mean a lot to us. But a little historical background will be helpful to understand how big Nineveh was and how wicked Nineveh was. Its streets were 20 miles long. Its walls were 100 feet high.
The walls around Nineveh were so wide, three chariots could be driven abreast across them. It was great in size and it was also great in wickedness. Historians believe the population of Nineveh was approximately 1 million people. But here's what God saw in verse 2: Their wickedness has come up before me. And this phrase that has come up before me means it's come to the highest pitch.
It was like an overflowing septic tank to God. It stunk to high heaven, if you will. Listen to this. God is acutely aware of the wickedness of people, He knows what's going on. What kind of people lived in Nineveh the most?
Ungodly people imaginable. They actually were known for their cruelty and hard-heartedness and the way they treated their enemies. They were known for savagery in plundering cities and burning boys and girls alive and torturing adults and doing the most unimaginable things. Over in Nahum chapter 3, it says of Nineveh, the dead were lying in the streets, dead bodies, heaps of bodies everywhere because people gave into the deadly charms of her beauty. The Ninevites made the Nazis look like lightweights in comparison.
The Ninevites Did evil on the scale of people like ISIS and others, a very wicked place.
So God says. Go preach to Nineveh and Jonah says, no way. And here's why. The Ninevites were the avowed enemies of Israel. And Jonah, while he was a patriotic, Jewish man.
And he did not want to go to his enemies and bring a message of hope to them.
So he tried to go in the opposite direction. Look at verse 3. Jonah found a ship.
So he paid the fare. and he went down into it. Every step away from God is a step down. down. First Jonah went down to Joppa.
Then he went down to the ship. Then he went down into the sea. Then he went down into the fish's belly. Then he went down into the deep. Sins a downer.
And it's always going to take you down.
So be very careful. But God will always have the last word. Look at Jonah 1:4. But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, and the ship was about to be broken up, and the Mariners or the sailors were afraid and they cried out to their God. We'll dig into this next time.
Find out about what happened in the storm. And we'll be introduced to that great. Yes. But here's the bottom line: you can't run from God. And you should not try to run from God.
Why would you run? From Your Father who loves you. Heard the story of uh an attorney who wanted to deliver an important Peeper to a man. The man knew this attorney wanted to give him this. paper which he was sure was a subpoena.
So he avoided this attorney. for months and then it was years. He always managed to not be in the place Where the attorney was to give him this important paper.
Well, something like 12 years later, This man finds himself in a hospital dying of cancer. And through some crazy coincidence, the attorney who had been trying to serve in the subpoena. Was sharing the hospital room with him.
So they rolled the attorney's bed right next to this man. And he turned over to the attorney, he says, fine, give me your subpoena, I don't even care anymore. The attorney said subpoena. This was a document telling you you had inherited $45 million. It was just trying to give it to you.
Now That's us running from God. I don't want what you're selling, Lord. I don't want your rules. I don't want your regulations. I don't want any of it.
And we run from God. We think God's out to ruin our life when all He wants to do is bless our life. He's the one that you should be running to. We should not be running from God. We should be running to God.
And I'll tell you what, God gives second chances. We learn that in the book of Jonah 2. And I want to close with this. Maybe some of you need a second chance. Maybe some of you have been running from God.
You're saying, I don't want the Lord in my life. I don't want to live the way He wants me to live. And you know what? The Lord won't push Himself into your life. He'll say, All right.
It's like the Bible tells us that Pharaoh hardened his heart against God. He hardened his heart, he hardened his heart, he hardened his heart, and he hardened his heart. Then, all of a sudden, there in the book of Exodus, we have this interesting little change in the text. It says, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. Oh, contradiction.
One verse said that Pharaoh hardened his heart, then we read the Lord hardened his heart. A better translation of that statement, the Lord hardened his heart, would be, the Lord strengthened his heart.
So, in other words, God said, I want you to obey me. I want you to do what. I'm telling you to do. We say no, no, no, no, no, no. There comes a point where the Lord says, all right.
You made your bet. I'll strengthen you in that decision even. You see, you decide.
So, maybe some of you are hardening your heart and running from God, and the Lord is patient and long-suffering towards you, but literally, you could get to a point of no return. Not where God wouldn't forgive you, but where literally you will not want to be forgiven anymore because you won't know which way is up anymore. Because you have let your heart Turn into stone. Don't let that happen. The Bible says, Harden not your heart if you can hear his voice.
And Jesus Christ is speaking to you right now. And he's saying, I stand at the door and I knock, and if you'll hear my voice and open the door, I will come in. There's some of you. Need Christ in your life? Again, remember Jesus said.
As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Basically, he was saying, you know what? Just as Jonah was in the belly of that beast. I'm going to die on a cross and rise again from the dead three days later. And he did, and he's alive and with us right now.
and He's ready to forgive you of all of your sin. I don't care what sin you've committed. I don't care what wrongs you've done. Christ paid for that at the cross. But you must be willing to turn from it.
and believe in him and if you've not done that yet you can do it right now And there might be some of you that have. Fallen away from the Lord. In fact, you've been running away from the Lord. though you are raised to believe. You know it's right.
Maybe some of you need to come back to him again tonight. I'm going to give you an opportunity to do that. As we all pray together, let's all bow our heads and pray. Father, thank you for your word to us, thank you for your love for us. And I pray for any person that is here that does not know you yet.
Help them to see their need for Jesus and help them to believe in you, Lord. We would pray right now. Amen. Pastor Greg Laurie with an important prayer. And if you'd like to make a change in your relationship with the Lord today, A pastor Greg will help you do that in just a moment before today's edition of A New Beginning wraps up.
Okay.
Ever start your day off wrong? You know, things started badly and just kept going downhill. A lot of it has to do with your focus, where your mind is centered as the day starts. Why not plug into Pastor Greg's daily devotions? They're free of charge.
It's good encouragement to keep your eyes fixed on Christ. You can read each day's devotion or listen to the audio version, your choice. Sign up today, free of charge, at harvest.org.
Well, Pastor Greg, if somebody listening right now knows that they need to ask the Lord to forgive them of their sins. Could you help them with that right now? You know what, Dave? I'd love to do that. It's an amazing thing to me that over the years, I've heard so many stories of people who have come to know Christ listening to this broadcast.
And they'll say things like, I prayed the prayer with you at the end of the program. One guy wrote me and said, I pulled my car over to the side of the road and prayed that prayer, and Christ came into my life. Just incredible. And I'd like to lead you in that same prayer. Look, I don't have some super special prayer.
It's just a basic prayer based on scriptural principles of what it means to believe in Jesus Christ. I mean, if we want to get real technical, the only sinner's prayer, if you will, and we often call this prayer a sinner's prayer, the only real sinner's prayer in the Bible is a guy who just prayed, God be merciful to me, a sinner.
So, I'm going to lead you in a prayer similar to that, but this is a prayer where you will be acknowledging your need for Jesus and putting your faith in Him.
So, listen. If you want to go to heaven when you die, If you want to know that you are a child of God, If you want the Lord to forgive you of your sins, Just pray this prayer with me. You might even pray it out loud. You can repeat it after me if you like. Just pray these words if you would.
Lord Jesus I know that I am a sinner. And I'm sorry for my sin, and I turn from that sin. But I know that you died on the cross of Calvary. for my sin, and rose again from the dead, so forgive me, Lord. I choose to follow you from this moment forward.
I want you to be my Saviour. I want you to be my friend. I want you to be my God. Thank you for hearing my prayer. in answering my prayer.
In Jesus' name, I ask this. Amen. I know.
Some of you are saying, oh, that's so simple. It is simple. It's not simplistic, it's simple. Yet it's profound, isn't it? to think that God Almighty just heard that prayer And has answered that prayer, and that Christ has come to live inside of you.
You might say, Well, Greg, I didn't have an emotional experience. This is not about an emotional experience. This is about the fact of what happens when a person believes. Jesus said it this way: For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, and whosoever believes in Him should not perish. But have everlasting life.
When you prayed that prayer, you were, in effect, putting your faith in Christ, you were choosing to believe in Jesus.
Now, I want to help you start growing spiritually.
So, I have something to send you at no charge. It's my gift to you. It's called the New Believer's Packet. And in it is a copy of the New Testament in a very friendly, understandable translation called the New Living Translation. It also has some notes that I wrote, hundreds of notes actually, that will encourage you in this commitment you've made.
These notes will answer a lot of the questions you probably have right now. And there's some other materials on this packet as well.
So order your copy of the New Believers packet immediately. And thanks for giving me the opportunity to lead you in that prayer. And I wanted to be the first to say to you, welcome to the family of God. Yeah, you can get that new Believer's Bible when you call 1-800-821-3300. We are here twenty four seven to take your call.
That's one eight hundred eight two one three three zero zero. or go online to harvest.org and click No God. Yeah. And then thank you for partnering with us to help these daily studies continue. Your investments have eternal benefits.
Why not make this a part of your personal ministry to partner in an effort that's making a real difference with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Thank you for your prayers and for prayerfully considering how God might lead you to help tangibly. Online, you'll find us at harvest.org, and there you'll see the way we'd like to thank you for your donation right now. That's harvest.org. Or call us at 1-800-821-3300.
We're here around the clock to take your call, again at 1-800-821-3300.
Well, next time, as our series of best of messages continues, Pastor Gregg helps us focus our perspective on eternity. Join us here on A New Beginning with Pastor and Bible teacher Craig Laurie. This is a day, the day when life begins.
