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.
We all have a place we don't want to go. and people we don't want to talk to. Am I right? Today, Pastor Greg Laurie points out Jonah's reluctance to preach to Nineveh. Because he didn't care for the people who lived there.
We all have our Nineveh, and we all have places we don't want to go, and we have people that we don't want to talk to. And if you're really honest, you might even admit: I don't want to bring them to Jesus Christ because then I'll have to see him in church. I hope that's not your attitude. Day when the lost are found. This is the day for a new beginning.
Amazing graves now sweetness town. But can you hear all the angels are singing? This is the day, the day when life begins.
Some people are so easy to get along with, you can't not like them. You know what I mean? Then there are others.
Well, let's just say there are others. How eager are you to share Christ with those who are less likable? How about someone who makes you uneasy? Or someone who intimidates you? Or someone whose lifestyle is so unlike yours?
Today on a new beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie helps us see how God's love can help us go where our comfort zone leaves off.
Okay. All right, let's grab our Bibles and turn to the book of Jonah chapter 3. Jonah chapter 3. The title of my message is The Message That Brought a Spiritual Awakening. Jonah chapter 3.
Starting in verse 3. Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim the message that I give you. Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.
Now Nineveh was a very large city. It took three days to go through it. And Jonah began by going a day's journey into the city, crying out, 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown. The people of Nineveh believe God's message. And from the greatest to the least, they declared a fast and put on burlap to show their sorrow.
And when the king of Nineveh heard what Jonah was saying, he stepped down from his throne, took off his royal robes, and dressed himself in burlap, and sat on a heap of ashes. And then the king sent nobles with a decree to the city, saying not one person, not even the animals from your herds and flocks, may eat or drink anything at all. People and animals alike must wear garments of mourning, and everyone must pray earnestly to God. They must turn from their evil ways and stop all the violence. Who can tell?
Perhaps even yet God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us.
Now look at this. When God saw what they had done, How they put a stop to their evil ways, he changed his mind and did not carry out the destruction he had threatened. What do they do? They repented. What does it mean to repent?
It means to change your direction. You know, we can say, I'm sorry for my sin and go do that sin again. It'd be like walking up to someone, slugging them in the face. I'm really sorry. I don't know why I did that.
Maybe I need coffee or something. And then 10 minutes later, after you're cappuccino, you punch him again. And now they're saying, What's wrong with you? I don't know. I'm so sorry.
Forgive me. I'm sorry. I'll never do it again. You punch them again and you punch him again. After a while, they're not going to believe anything you say.
So we say, oh, I'm sorry for my sin and I go and do it again. I'm sorry for my sin and I do it again. I sit in church and I'm already planning on the sin I'm going to do after church. I'm already thinking about it. No, no, that's not repentance.
Repentance means I'm sorry enough to stop because the Bible says godly sorrow produces repentance. And these people literally repented of their sin, and this is a stunning spiritual awakening, an entire city turning to God. And it's worth noting that they specifically turn. from their sin of violence which they were known for. Remember, I told you in an earlier message how The Ninevites were They were out of control.
They were known for their atrocities. They would Pile up skulls as monuments to their massacres. They they would Take people and Tear the skin off of their bodies and hang it on walls, and they were crazy people. And The first thing they did is they turned from the violence that they were engaged in at that point. Incredible.
And what did he say? 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown. It just goes to show that no one is beyond the reach of God. If wicked people like this could be reached, certainly someone you know could be reached, or someone like you could be reached. Because you say, you know, I could never become a Christian.
I'm just so wicked. No, God can save anybody. Or, I have someone I know, I can never imagine them coming to faith. No, God could reach them as well. No one is beyond the reach of God, and we should never give up giving this message.
Here's something that. I find it really amazing. We are the first generation that could literally fulfill the great commission in our lifetime. Did you know that? We're the first generation that's ever lived on planet Earth.
That could literally fulfill the great commission in our lifetime. What's a great commission? It's to go into all the world and preach the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. How is it that we're the first generation that could do it? Because there are more mobile devices in the world today than there are people.
There are people in Africa that have greater access to data than they do to clean drinking water. Everywhere, people have these mobile devices, phones and tablets, et cetera. And now, with the technology that we have, we can get the gospel out like we never could before.
So it's time for us to seize the moment. I just spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters event. These are folks that are engaged in Christian radio, television, podcasting, movies, and all kinds of exciting things. And I encourage all of them: use your platforms for the gospel. Get the gospel in what you do, and invite people to Jesus Christ so we say, Well, that's good for them.
But what about me?
Well, you have your sphere of influence too. I know the world's a big place. But guess what? We all live in Nineveh. We all live in Nineveh.
What does that mean? We all have a place we don't want to go. And people we don't want to talk to. Am I right? Some of you think about sharing the gospel with them, it's like, I don't even want to talk to them.
And if you're really honest, you might even admit. I don't want to bring them to Jesus Christ because then I'll have to see him in church. I hope that's not your attitude. You know, I've told you before my mother was married and divorced seven times.
So after I became a Christian, I had a full-time ministry evangelizing my mother's ex-husbands. And it wasn't always a lot of fun. The easiest one was Oscar Laurie. He adopted me. He lived in New Jersey.
And I had the privilege of Going back and seeing him after I became a believer with my wife Kathy and our oldest son Christopher. and we had the great joy of leading him to Christ. But there was another guy my mom married. I'll call him Eddie. He lived in Hawaii.
This is the guy my mom ran off to after she left Oscar one day. I came out of my classroom, and the car was loaded up with suitcases, and I was just a little kid. I said, Where are we going? She said, We're going to Hawaii. I was very excited.
I'd never been to Hawaii at that point and I was in New Jersey in the winter.
So it's very appealing. I said, where's dad? She said, he's not coming. I got up the plane. In this gorgeous sunshine, here standing a man I've never seen before, and my mother says, This is your new dad.
I didn't even know this guy.
Well, this guy was a crazy alcoholic. And he'd drink and get violent. He'd hit my mother. They'd break big giant plate glass windows, break everything in the house. The police would be called horrible environment.
And one night they were in a fight, and he took a wooden statue and he hit my mom across the head, knocked her unconscious. I came out of my bedroom. There lays my mother in a pool of blood on the floor. And he's holding this statue, and he said to me, and I remember this: it's just ketchup, go back to bed. Even a dumb kid knew better than that.
So I went and climbed out the window and ran to a neighbor, and the police were called, and we moved back to California.
So now I'm a Christian, and I've led Oscar to the Lord, and I thought I'm going to go reach Eddie. I happened to be speaking in Hawaii at the Waikiki Shell, and I found out he was living across the street from the Waikiki Shell.
So I went to visit him and I looked at this guy, and kind of that animosity welled up inside of me again, even though it had been years and years. I thought, this is the guy that almost killed my mother. And he was just kind of the same old guy, just older. and more hardened. And I told him all about what Jesus had done for me.
He listened. I said, so. I'm speaking across the street. Would you like to come? He said, no.
Well, would you like to ask Jesus into your life? No. Same old guy.
So I beat him up so bad. I did, and he deserved it. No, I didn't.
So that wasn't a lot of fun. That's it. There were other guys my mom was married to. Tried to lead to the Lord, that didn't work out so well. And then the last guy she married.
I never had a real close relationship with him. And I found out this is after my mama's died, and she recommitted her life to the Lord. I'm telling you my whole life story here. I'll get off this in a moment, but I'm making a point, believe it or not. But um So I was able to help my mom come back to the Lord.
And then this guy that I didn't have much of a relationship with after that, I heard that he was very sick.
Someone said, You should go see him. He's going to die. And honestly, I said, Well, I'm on my way to go speak somewhere. I can't do it. Maybe I'll go tomorrow.
And I was going to go talk to people. about Jesus in I was asked to go talk to him about Jesus, and I didn't really want to talk to him about Jesus. Because that wasn't comfortable for me, you see. And so I was on my way to the airport. And the Lord spoke to my heart and I said, you go talk to him right now.
Okay, I'm like Jonah, I'm going in the opposite direction. I do a U-turn, I go over, I walk into the house. He's lying in a hospital bed. and hospice care, and I could see right there he's not long for this world.
So I sat down with them. I said, I know we didn't have the closest relationship. But I've told you about Jesus before, and I went over the gospel with him again. I said, Would you like to accept Jesus into your life right now? And he nodded, yes.
He could barely speak. I led him in a prayer. He prayed that prayer with me.
So then I left, and I was really thankful I'd done that. I get on the plane, I land. The moment I land, I turn my phone on, I get a text. He just died. I'm glad I did it.
We all have our nine of us. And we all have places we don't want to go, and we have people that we don't want to talk to, but we still need to do it because the message that Jonah gave is similar to the message we give. It's a message of hope, and promise, and forgiveness, but it is also a message of warning if we reject the hope, the promise, and the forgiveness. It's even in John 3:16. For God so loved the world.
that he gave his only begotten son. That whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Okay, so. There it is, a lot of hope. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. But listen, whosoever believes in him should not perish. See The flip side of that is if I don't believe in him, I will perish.
So there's hope and promise and forgiveness and a warning as well. Another example is Romans. 6.23, it says, The wages of sin is death. But then it says, But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. There's two sides of the coin.
Here's the promise. The gift of God is eternal life. Here's a warning: the wages of sin are death. That's Romans 3:23.
So the point of it all is: yes, I offer promise, but there's also a warning. We have a message to deliver. Listen to this. If God could bring a mighty revival in Nineveh with no better representative than Jonah and no more gospel than he preached in their streets, surely God can do the same thing for America. I mean, if God could use a knucklehead like this.
With a message like that. to have such an impact. Surely he can use you. And surely he can use me. with a life-changing message of the gospel.
Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. Hey everyone, I want you to know about our app called Harvest Plus. Think of it as a harvest version of Netflix. We have all of our resources in one place. We have our movies like Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon, Johnny Casher, Redemption of an American Icon, A Rush of Hope, and much more.
Then we have our television program, daily devotions, and much more.
So go and download the Harvest Plus app.
Well, you've tuned in for one of Pastor Greg's most requested messages. And as we continue, Pastor Greg is joined by several friends and family members from his home church.
Okay, the story of Jonah, you guys. Can you think of any illustration, anybody up here, of your own? personal Nineveh, maybe a place that was hard for you to go to or someone that maybe was hard to talk to. But yet you did it, and you're glad you did it, but it's not always the easiest thing to do. Anything comes to mind for anybody?
Gabe is gesturing. He wants a microphone. Yeah, for me it was it was My dad, you know, we grew up in a in a tough um He left us at a young age, and I remember walking in and seeing violence in my home, you know, and to me it was like. When I saw that, I wanted to I wanted to physically harm. I was little at the time, but I remember telling him: I'm like, You ever touch my mom again, I'll kill you.
And From that point on, he left us, and I just remember I did everything I could to learn how to fight, to learn how to do everything. And for many years, I just had this animosity towards him, that one day that moment's going to happen and we're going to meet, and it's just whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And the Lord just started working in my mom and my family. And we started going to this small Lutheran church in Fontana. And just my whole world started changing.
And so years and years later, I mean, he would show up to our games, but he wouldn't come up. Like, he'd watch us play football or baseball or whatever. And I'd see him from afar. And I just had that aggression in my heart. And just as I continued to go to church and learn music and learn the word, and the Lord just kept saying, you need to talk to him.
You need to talk to him. I'm like, no, I just, I can't. And I'd battled this for a long time. And there was a moment where, you know, we're at day seven, we're doing worship on a Sunday night at a harvest. For some reason, I'm like, you know what, you wanna come out and see us?
My family's gonna be here. And I know he was hanging out with a biker gang and whatnot.
So we get there and we're doing some sound check and I heard all these motorcycles, you know, and I'm like, oh no. And so we're doing worship and whatnot. And it's a night, it's a night where you were preaching, and we did worship. And I just remember being up there, and afterwards he came forward, and he didn't come forward during the invitation. But we talked and he said, I want to get right with the Lord.
And it completely changed my world. I had a chance to pray with him. And just God, it was a moment that I had for me. That was my Nineveh. I was battling and battling and battling.
I was going the other way, but it happened that night. He heard the word, and you threw the seed out, and God watered it. And that night, it just happened. And we had a chance to pray. And I've been.
more of a friendship ever since then, but um God did some pretty amazing things that night. That's a powerful story. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie is speaking with Pastor Gabe Velasquez about the way the gospel changes lives and how we need to reach more people with that message, even those outside our comfort zone.
Well, Pastor Greg, as we've talked about the gospel message today, maybe somebody's realizing they've never responded to that message. They want to have a real relationship with the Lord, but they just need a little help getting started. But they can enter into that kind of relationship today, can't they? They can, and it's so simple. And I think because it's so simple, people think, oh, it can't be that easy.
Well, look, Jesus did all the heavy lifting. He carried the cross for you. He died on that cross that he carried. This isn't about what you do, it's about what he's done. But here's what the Bible says: whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
So let's just say that you're caught in a riptide out in the ocean and you need help and there's a lifeguard at the stand and they see you. You've got to call out to them and let them know you need saving. And the same is true when it comes to eternal life. Jesus is ready to save you. Will you call out to Him?
You say, Well, okay, how do I do that? You do it through prayer. And prayer is just talking to God.
So, listen, I'd like to lead you in a simple prayer. And if you pray this prayer after me. I believe God will hear it and answer it, and Christ will come to live inside of you. Thousands of people have prayed a prayer like this over the years that we've been doing this radio broadcast and have seen their life change. There's no power or magic in a prayer, it's all about your commitment to Christ.
But this is a way to call on the name of the Lord in this prayer.
So, if you want Jesus to come into your life and forgive you of your sin, if you want to know that you'll go to heaven when you die, if you want to fill that big hole in your heart, Just pray this prayer. After me, you could pray it out loud if you like. Pray it in the quietness of your heart, but pray these words if you would. Lord Jesus. I know that I'm a sinner.
But I know that you're the Saviour. who died on the cross for my sin, I am sorry for my sin, and I turn from it now. and I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Be my Saviour and my Lord. Be my God and my friend.
Thanks for hearing this prayer. in answering this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Listen, if you just prayed that prayer.
I want you to know that God has heard you and has answered it. The Bible says, These things we write to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, that you may know. It's yours now. God has given it to you because it's the gift. of eternal life.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, congratulations And welcome to the family of God. Yeah, that's right. And listen, we want to help you begin your new relationship with the Lord on the right foot. Would you let us send you a free gift? It's Pastor Greg's New Believer's Bible.
Scores of people have read this edition of God's Word. New Believers love the study helps written just for them, and they appreciate that it's in an easy-to-understand translation. We'll send it to you today. Just ask for the New Believer's Bible when you call 1-800-821-3300. You can call any time, 1-800-821-3300.
or write a new beginning box 4000. Riverside, California, 92514. or go online to harvest.org. Yeah. And then thank you for partnering with us to help these daily studies continue.
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That's harvest.org. Or write us at a new beginning box 4000, Riverside, California, 92514. 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, more solid insight on sharing the message God has given us. And we'll see how Jonah finally shared the message God had given to him. Join us here on A New Beginning. Pastor and Bible teacher Greg Laurie. This is the day the day when life begins.
