Death To Self-Reliance

They say there are no atheists in foxholes.

Another place without atheists is in the belly of a great fish. Jonah found himself in a really tight place, and here he prayed like he'd never prayed before. From Chicago, this is The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching with Pastor Erwin Lutzer. Today we continue a series on brokenness, how God gets us to say yes, a study in the life of Jonah the prophet.

Later in our broadcast, Dr. Lutzer takes us to Jonah chapter 2 for a message on death to self-reliance. The Moody Choir comes now to open our time of worship. Praise be forever, God of the holy process, God of earth and sin we depend. Christ be to Allah, glory, and be to praise Him forever.

Christ be to Allah, glory. And today we do gather together to adore Christ. Thank you so much choir for opening our hearts to God and to His word.

Our scripture reading today is by Pastor Burchie, Reverend Pastor Burchie, our pastor here at The Moody Church of Missions and Middle Adults. He'll be reading God's word and will continue to stand once we have stood as we sing also the two choruses that are listed there in the bulletin. We're grateful today for the opportunity of thinking about prayer. The emphasis will be on what happens when we're in tight places and God leads us to those places so that we might seek Him. Someone has said that prayer is identifying oneself with the divine will by the studied renunciation of one's own. And so you can see here that prayer is not merely saying words, it is yieldedness to God and that's going to be the emphasis of today's message.

Yesterday I was in this auditorium when it was completely dark and I stood here for a few moments and prayed and said, Oh God, tomorrow may Jesus Christ be honored here. Let's bow together in prayer and invite the blessed Holy Spirit of God to do just that among us. Father, we come to you today giving ourselves without reservation. We want to give you, Father, a studied renunciation of self to embrace the divine will. Teach us today what that means wherever we are on a spiritual continuum. Teach us, O God, to be gracious to us, but also bring us to that point of submission and brokenness. Thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen. Oh, he gave thy heart for heaven. Hail, heaven, hail, heaven. He gave it to thy heart for more. He gave it to thy heart for more.

Open now the crystal fountain, Let the healing strength of love Let the fire and clouding river Make me all my journey through. Strong in heaven, strong in heaven Lead us to thy strength and shield. Lead us to thy strength and shield. Good night, heaven, the words of our joy Let me sail on the inside Songs of praises, songs of praises, Thy will ever be to me.

Thy will ever be to me. We continue our worship of the Lord through the reading of God's Word. Our Scripture passage is printed in your bulletin. It is 1 John 2 verses 3 through 6, and it provides an answer to the question, How do I know that I am the Lord's?

Please join with me on the bold print. We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him.

Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. All I want is health, dear, build my life upon, all its worldly years and wants to own. All I want's not faith, I have counted lost and worthless found, compared to this. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you is no greater thing. You're my hope, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness, and I love you more. Now my heart's desire is to know you more, to be found in you and known as yours.

To what sense I crave, but I could not earn what's so vastly given from righteousness. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you is no greater thing. You're my hope, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness, and I love you more. To know the love of your risen light, and to know you in your suffering.

To be found like you in your death, my heart, showing you to live and never die. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you is no greater thing. You're my hope, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness and I love you more.

Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you is no greater thing. You're my hope, you're the best, you're my joy, my righteousness and I love you more. I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you. O my soul, rejoice, take joy, my King, in what you hear. Make me a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you. O my soul, rejoice, take joy, my King, in what you hear.

Make me a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. Father, as a church we want to come and pray, and we pray, Father, for ourselves as a congregation. Help us to be a strong witness for Jesus. And we pray, Father, that you will help us to build bridges to the world that is so empty and so in need and so blind, O Lord. O Father, help us to love you enough to be able to come out of our comfort zone and touch the lives of many.

We think of those who are here today bearing heavy burdens and needs. Some have come to this church today skeptically, wondering whether or not you're available and whether you would do anything and whether the people of God would do anything. O Father, surprise them by your mercy and grace. Surprise them, Father, by an answer to prayer. And we pray, Lord, for those who are here who have never savingly believed on Jesus. May they come to trust him, and may they come to believe him as Savior, as Redeemer. And then we pray for those, Father, who are going through times of sorrow and grief and loneliness and just dozens of unanswered questions.

Help us to believe that you are bigger than our own questions. And we pray that when we cannot indeed trust your hand, because we don't know what it is you're doing, may we indeed trust your heart and believe that all of your thoughts and intents toward us are good thoughts. We pray for those who are being abused, perhaps that we don't even know about, those who are going through times of deep struggle, fears that are overwhelming. O Lord Jesus, today help us to cast everything at your feet and not hold anything back. We pray for this country.

Lord, may there be a turning to you. We pray that once again there may be a desire to seek the face of God. We pray for the President. We pray for the Congress. And we pray, Father, for the war, Lord Jesus. We pray that there may be an end to the hostilities, to the carnage, and to the death. O Lord, please intervene and bring your mercy and grace to that situation.

Father, we are so needy. And we pray that wherever the gospel goes today, in the churches of Chicago and the churches of the world, or in individual witness, may it be explosive in the hearts of hungry people who know that they need a redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen. Praise to you, O God, for the grace and glory of Jesus' name we hold. Praise to you, O God, for the grace and glory of Jesus. Praise to you, O God, for the grace and glory of Jesus. Amen.

Was it not C.S. Lewis who said that he came kicking and screaming into the kingdom of heaven? And I know for sure it was Jesus who said, No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me, drag him.

That's what the Greek word means, drag him. You and I are pretty stubborn, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. And in this series of messages on brokenness, I need to point out that brokenness doesn't mean that we don't have a will of our own.

It doesn't mean that we become colorless nonentities. What it means, though, is that we are committed to living our lives for the glory of God, even at great personal cost. And we are willing to accept the circumstances that he brings into our lives. And we accept those circumstances as the will of God, not always chafing against them and fighting them and constantly in conflict.

Yeah, we can improve our lot, but at the end of the day, we believe that what has happened in our lives can be used for good, and we accept it as from his hand. Jonah is the man that we are talking about, and this is Jonah chapter 2. I hope you will be able to turn there in your own Bibles. It's a difficult book to find because it's in those minor prophets, minor meaning shorter prophets. So you have Jonah, Micah, Nahum. One way to find the book of Jonah is to go to the break between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and then just go backwards for a number of pages, and you should find it there. Last time, we left Jonah in the belly of the fish, and it is there in this creative learning center that God prepared for him, that God got his attention.

Now, just think about the belly of the fish. What can we say about it? Well, first of all, all of the regret in the world can't change the past. Jonah could have been there, and all that he could have done is to think about how terrible it was that he did this and say, oh, if only I had done differently.

No, there's room for regret, but regret never changes the past. There's no use praying like the teenager did. Oh, God, I pray that this accident might not have happened.

It's a wonderful prayer, but the accident has happened, and you were driving too fast. Furthermore, in the belly of the fish, Jonah had no future. His future was out of his hands. He couldn't say, well, now, what I'd really like to do is to talk about my five-year plan. In the belly of the sea monster, you don't talk about that because your future is out of your hands.

Catch this. He was not able to call an attorney and say, I'm going to sue God for doing this on me. There was no possibility. As a matter of fact, he couldn't even enlarge his living space, his Lebensraum.

He wasn't able to expand his living quarters. He was pretty confined there for 72 hours. And while he was there in 72 hours, he composed a poem. In fact, some people think it was made up later because it's got snatches from the Book of Psalms in it.

Well, maybe it's because Jonah knew the Book of Psalms as a prophet. He should have known it. And so he took some of the ideas and pieced them together. But he did make these ideas his own.

And remember, he had lots of time. He probably prayed other things, too. But this is a summary of his prayer.

And he probably went over it a number of times just to get it right. So we have, in effect, a psalm birthed in the belly of a sea monster. Notice the text says, verse one, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.

I love that. He was God's servant. And now suddenly the man who was running from God, who is saying, I want to get away from the presence of the Lord. This man suddenly is now again confronted by God. So he prays to the Lord. It says, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. He prays to the Lord. God's saying, I called out to the Lord out of my distress. And he answered me out of the belly of Sheol.

I cried and you heard my voice. Some people think that this means that Jonah actually died. Sheol in the Old Testament generally is the region of the Netherlands. It is the, what shall we say, that area, that shadowy area where the spirits of the departed went in Old Testament times. And some people say that this would be a much better example of Jesus, who later on uses this as an example of his own time in the tomb and his resurrection. But it's possible that Jonah didn't actually die. He's just saying, I was in the deepest pit that you could possibly imagine. I was in the depths and I most assuredly thought I was going to die.

And yet you preserved me. What did Jonah learn about God in the belly of the fish? By the way, most of us don't like the smell of the outside of a fish.

I have no idea what the inside of a fish smells like. But here, Jonah was confronted with God. What did he learn? First of all, God was listening. I already read it there for you in verse two. He answered me out of the belly of Sheol when I cried and you heard my voice. God is not deaf. In fact, frequently in the Psalms, it says that, Lord, when I cried unto you, you inclined your ear. Now, God doesn't have ears like you and I do. What the Psalmist means is that when I cried to you, what happened was you were listening and you were so fine-tuned that you could even hear the whispers of Sheol. But you most assuredly, therefore, are able to hear me even though I'm confined, even though I have no future, even in the midst of this dilemma.

Oh, God, in desperation, I cried to you and you heard my prayer. God understands all the different languages of the world. He understands your words. He also understands your heart.

He knows what it is that you are thinking. And even in the depths of Sheol, remember Psalm 139. If I ascend into heaven, thou art there.

And if I make my bed in Sheol, there's the same word again. Behold, thou art there. Of necessity. God has to be in Sheol. God even has to be in hell. He's not communicating with those who are going to be there, but he needs to be there because he is everywhere. And so you can't get away from God. And listen to you today. Listen to you in your apartment or in your condo or in your home, in the midst of your grief, in the midst of your puzzled life. You cry to God. God is listening. As a matter of fact, you can contact him and you can call him.

Collect. He has free phone service. Some time ago, I told you about a man who came to the church here and said, you know, I've been trying to reach God, but he's not answering his calls.

You know why? He wasn't using the right area code. You know, you get the wrong area code. And of course he doesn't. He was not using J-E-S-U-S. That's the right area code.

When you use that area code, you can call, collect. God listens. Secondly, God was controlling, or we might say directing. God was directing.

Notice what the text says. I'm in verse three now. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me, and your waves and your billows passed over me. You'll notice the number of things in the book of Jonah that God controls. God controls the wind.

It says in chapter one, verse four, and the Lord hurled a great wind onto the sea. God spoke, and believe me, it blew and the waves were high. And then you have God controlling the dice. Some of you say, well, does God control the rotation of the dice? Does he control who wins the lottery? Well, all that I can do is point to the text.

Always keep your finger on the text. Chapter one, verse seven says, and they said to one another, come, let us cast lots that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So God controlled the dice that the sailors were using. God also controlled the fish. We learned last time that he appointed a fish to swallow Jonah. God controlled the sailors as they made up their mind as to what to do to throw the cargo into the sea and what have you. And so God doesn't have trouble with that. Later on, we're going to find out that God doesn't have trouble with a worm and a plant that grows up. But God is having some trouble with a man who will defy him in a way that the wind doesn't, the dice don't, and the fish doesn't. But this man is going to say no to the will of God. And even when he's there, as God is trying to break him down, you'll still find out, as we'll learn next time, he was a very reluctant learner. Could I be talking today to somebody who is just plain stubborn? It's possible, but let's hurry on.

We don't want to get too... So God was controlling. Today I'm speaking to some of you who, because of your own bad decisions, sinful, disobedient decisions, just like Jonah's decisions, you are today in a difficult spot.

But it's because of the trail you chose. This is just the natural results of you taking the wrong path and insisting that you're going to take the wrong path and making one detour in your life after another. I'm speaking to you today and you say, well, can God help me? Well, did God help Jonah in his distress?

And the answer is yes. Wherever you are today, cry to the Lord and he will listen and he will control and direct. And the reason that you can pray with confidence is because he is in charge and he can control and he can direct. That's one of the things that Job had to learn, didn't he? Where did Job's trial come from, God or the devil? It's a trick question.

The answer is both. Immediate cause is Satan, ultimate cause, God. That's why Job prays and says, the Lord gave, the Lord takes away. How do people die?

Immediate cause, cancer, heart attack, all kinds of other creative ways that people die today, ultimate cause, God. Blessed are those who can accept that and therefore receive God's comfort and know that he does all things well. So Jonah's theology here is getting very biblical. He understands that it's God who hurled the great wind upon the sea. It's God who cast him there. The water belongs to God. It's your waves, your billows passed over me.

It's your seaweed that is wrapped around my head, he'll say later. God is controlling. God was answering. Here I pick it up at verse four. Then I said, I am driven away from your sight.

I need to pause there for a moment. Isn't that exactly what Jonah wanted? Chapter one, he flees from the presence of the Lord. And we learned last time what that meant. He was fleeing from God.

He was saying, I'm resigning. I don't want you in my life. I'm not going to pray. He didn't pray in chapter one because what I want to do is to put God on the shelf and then put a tag on the shelf that reads to be dealt with later.

I'm doing my own thing. Like one woman said, she got into a car and she squealed the tires and shouted out loud, God, I'll see you around town. As she did her own thing until finally God got her. God can get people. Now notice that he says, I am cast away from your presence. Well, Jonah, you should be very happy about that. That's exactly what you wanted is to be driven away from your sight. That's what my translation says.

Remember, English standard version. It says, I am driven away from your sight. Well, Jonah, aren't you happy? There is no person in this world more miserable than someone who experiences the loss of God, the loss of God.

No, it's not, it's not a cause for happiness. You may say, well, I'm going to do my own thing and I'm not going to relate to God. I'm not going to seek his direction. I'm not going to seek the counsel of godly people who can help me make decisions. I'm not going to seek the word of God.

I know what I want to do and I will do it. Some of you are on the verge of making a decision that could ultimately end up destroying literally the rest of your life because you may trip a series of dominoes and not know where those dominoes are going to end up. So here he's saying, I, he says, was driven away from your sight.

And now I'm discovering that that is a life of misery. When he says I shall look again upon your temple. In verse four, it's probably the temple in Jerusalem. He goes on to describe what he's going through. The water is closed in over me to take my life. After all, there was a period of time when he was thrown into the water before the fish caught him. The deep surrounded me.

Weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. That's when the fish swallowed him. It's as if now suddenly, now suddenly he was in this confinement that he couldn't get out of. And in his dilemma, he was crying to God. But I mentioned to you that God was answering.

There it is in verse four. Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. God answers. And God was showing him that, that even in a dilemma over which we have no control, when we are finally brought to the end of manipulation, of self-will, of self-reliance, of dependence upon ourselves, of determination that we are going to change the situation. And God kicks all those props out from under us so that suddenly everything that we have been able to control no longer is under our thumb or under our feet. It is then that God meets us and answers us. And it is then that God comes through. So Jonah says that God was answering. What else was God doing there? He was purifying.

Two aspects to this purification. First of all, you'll notice he says in verse seven and following. Well, let's look at verse eight. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.

Why does he throw that in there? Because his own will and his own desires he recognized to be an idol. You know, there are things that we set up. It says in the book of Ezekiel that this people have set up idols in their own arts. Our idol can be another person. It can be a vocation.

It can be whatever we desire to do. That can be our idol that says, I want this even above the will and the purposes of God. I want this more than I want the glory of Jesus. And that's an idol. So he says those, you know, who follow vain idols, they forsake their hope of steadfast love. They're not going to get through to God. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, he says, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay.

Isn't that interesting? He's saying, Lord, I made a commitment to you long ago and now I realize that I'm going to I'm going to fulfill that commitment. And in the next chapter, we can see that part of the commitment was that he does eventually go to Nineveh where he was determined he would not go.

And so he says, Lord, I'm going to pay my vows. I was looking that, reading that in the text, and I discovered that the pagans in chapter one, as a result of Jonah's limp witness, actually ended up believing in God and paying their vows. And you realize that sometimes, sometimes a child of God can have a harder heart, a more stubborn will, a more determined personality to blow God off than even pagans who apparently came to know the true God. It's amazing what Christians have done. Have you ever been surprised at Christians?

We shouldn't be surprised at those who aren't Christians, but our surprise is people who have been redeemed by God, trying to thwart God's will, trying to do others in, to the very best of their ability with all of their might, trying to thwart what would be the acceptable will of God. So God says, Jonah, have you learned something here? And he says, yeah, one thing I've learned is no more idols. In fact, I'm going to give thanks to you, he says, and then there's something else that God purified. And that was Jonah's theology. He comes out with this marvelous statement, salvation belongs to the Lord.

A well-known preacher in England by the name of Charles Haddon Spurgeon said that Jonah, in the belly of the fish, went in an Arminian. That is to say he believed in free will and you know that we direct things basically. And he came out a Calvinist. Now that word Calvinism some people don't like, I'm only quoting Spurgeon, you understand.

Just quoting Spurgeon, no quote of mine would fit here. But there's a stress on the sovereignty of God and he's saying salvation is of the Lord. He's talking about his own salvation, his own deliverance, there's no question about that. But there's a larger statement in Scripture that salvation is of the Lord, that is to say that it is God who redeems us, it is God who initiates us by having Jesus Christ die on the cross. God initiates salvation and then God applies it to the human heart. Salvation has to be of God.

I began this message by quoting the words of Jesus that no man comes to me except the Father drags him. And unless we were dragged into the kingdom, we would go our own way. We would reject Christ. We would see no reason why we should believe. We would believe. And so God grants us that ability to believe.

Isn't he gracious? Because from beginning to end, salvation is of the Lord. By the way, this is another argument as to why Jesus Christ is fully God. There are many people who believe that he's a lesser God of some sorts. All kinds of problems with that biblically and theologically.

But just hang on to this for a moment. If Jesus were not fully God, God would have delegated the dirty work of redemption to a created creature and salvation would not be of the Lord. But from beginning to end, salvation is of God. Some of you have never trusted Christ as Savior. What you need to do is to open your hearts to him and realize this, that if God is talking to you, if you see that, if you sense within you this, this emptiness that you'd like to have filled, this sense of alienation and sin, don't turn away from that. That is God getting your attention to realize salvation is in him alone. So God was purifying his theology even. What's the bottom line?

At the end of the day, we always want the bottom line. I think that the bottom line is simply this, that only desperate people pray. Only desperate people pray.

I omitted it a moment ago, but let's look at verse 7. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord. It took that.

It took that. If you're not desperate, you're not going to pray. Isn't it interesting? We see this nationally. We have, for example, a 9-11 experience where thousands of people are killed and the very next Sunday, you know, the churches are filled. People come to prayer meeting. They say, you know, we're just coming to prayer meeting because we think we need God.

Like the young people say, duh. So it took that. I remember saying, I'm hearing somebody say, you know, things are so bad, we're going to have to begin to pray. Only desperate people pray.

But listen to me carefully. If you and I actually saw who we were before God, we'd know that we're always desperate. It's just that we don't know it. We'd be at prayer meeting all the time if we understood our true condition before God because we'd understand that we are in desperate straits as a nation most assuredly, but also as individuals. We are desperate. And what God is trying to do is to say, don't you see your need? And the reason that God motivates us to pray, he does it through giving us circumstances that lead us to utter desperation.

And then we finally cry out to God and say, God, it's over. I laid down the weapons of a rebel. I am desperate. Help me. And the Bible says that if you call unto me in the day of trouble, I will answer thee. I have a little booklet in my study. I think it's entitled Crying Out to God. And it makes this interesting point that in the Old Testament, at least, there is a distinction between just praying and crying out.

For example, in the Psalms, David will say something like this. I prayed to the Lord and I cried out to him. Now we know that we don't have to cry out because God knows our thoughts. So we can pray silently. But there's something in scripture about lifting up our voice in desperation that attracts the attention of God. And over and over again in the scripture, it says, I cried out to you and you inclined your ear. You inclined your ear to me and you answered me. And there are times when we should cry out.

You might not want to do it in your apartment if you have thin walls. Maybe you can go somewhere at times and just cry out to God. He loves to hear the voice of his children. And desperate people pray. I'm interested as I look at the text that Jonah doesn't even bargain with God. People who are really, really desperate don't bargain. He doesn't say, God, get me out of here and I'll be going to Nineveh in a heartbeat.

Just get me out of here. I don't see that in the text. What he's doing is he's thanking God for the deliverance that was wrought through the fish. And he's recognizing that. And he's giving God praise. And his future is entirely in God's hands. Isn't it interesting that Jesus in the New Testament used this? One day some people came to Jesus and they said, why don't you give us a sign that we might believe you? Jesus had given them many signs, many miracles.

But he said, no longer shall a sign be given unto you. But as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And just as God had Jonah expelled from his confinement, in the very same way on resurrection morning, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, giving an evidence that he was indeed the Son of God, which is an incidental proof also that Jesus believed this story. He believed this story. I don't know about you, but I'm going to believe anything that Jesus believes.

If he believes it, I'm going to believe it too. So what does God have to do in your life before you chafe and fight and manipulate and plan for your will to be accomplished? I've seen people dragged from one thorn patch to another to another to another to another to another, and they will not bow and say, God, help me.

Do with me as seems good in your sight. Because we as humans are so stubborn. Look at what God did to Jonah, and next time we'll find out that he still had not totally come around. He was a reluctant, angry preacher. He went, but just barely.

I love to tell the story. Oh, by the way, before I do, I want to quote the words of Martin Luther. There was wisdom when he said we must descend into hell before we can ascend into heaven. What he meant was if you don't see your need, you know, you're not going to call up to God for help. Some people have to descend into the depths of shield, the pit. Then they say, now God, where are you? You've got my attention. Don't let it go that far.

Don't let it go that far. I tell the story that you've heard me tell before, perhaps several years ago, about a man who called a pastor on the phone, a friend of mine, and asked him to come over to his office. And the man was just wailing and weeping and just crying out, but in the midst of tears so that he could not be understood. And the pastor went over there thinking that the man's wife had died or maybe a child had been in an accident and was killed. And all that he could do there is kind of look at the man, try to figure out what in the world was happening, because the guy was just wailing, just wailing and crying out to God. So when he got him settled down, he said, you know, what is the problem? The man said, God just showed me my heart.

And when I saw my heart, it was as if I was looking into hell. What happened was this. He was a businessman, and he had been cheating on expense forms. You know, you go into a hotel and you write down certain expenses that are not valid.

And then somehow, I don't know how, but then you get the kickback or the money. Actually, I think in the business world, it's very, very common practice. I mean, virtually everybody does it. Is that really that big a deal? I mean, what's with it? I mean, a little bit of cheating here, a little bit of cheating there. You know, your fellow has to make it.

The company's got lots of money. Furthermore, they owe me a lot more than they're paying me anyway. It's no big deal until you see God. And suddenly when God points it out to you, it is then that you become desperate.

It is then that you call out. It is then that you say, Oh God, whatever it takes, no matter what it's going to cost me, there's only one thing that matters now and that is to be fully right with you, fully in harmony with you and with a clear conscience. And so we cry up to God and we say, Oh God, forgive me, deliver me. And we cry up and God finally says, I'm so thankful that at last, after years of this and this and this, I have your attention. Samuel Johnson says that nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge that one is to be hanged. Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge that one has nowhere to go, no future, no hope, nothing except you and God. That's what Jonah learned in the belly of a sea monster. Where does God have to take you and me before we learn the same thing?

Let's pray. As we pray together today, there are two categories of people, two major categories of people who have been listening to this message. One is those of you who have never trusted Christ as your savior. I mentioned earlier that you have to dial the 800 number, J-E-S-U-S. Jesus died for sinners and he rose again, as I explained a few moments ago. And if you do not know Christ as savior, even where you are, you can cry up to him in your heart.

Be better for you to use your voice. But in this general congregation, you can cry up to him in your heart and say, Jesus, save me. We often have people who come up later and say, you know, I received Christ a week ago or two weeks ago. During the closing prayer, I accepted him. Then there's another category and that is you are a believer and you know that your name is written in heaven, but you also know that you are just struggling with God.

It's not against circumstances. You think it's circumstances, but it's God trying to bring you to the end so that your will would be yielded to him. And so what about you? Are you willing to finally say, OK, God, I am willing to be broken, willing to say, Lord Jesus, glorify yourself in me through circumstances, through heartaches, through events that you cannot control. I live only for your glory and lay it all down at his feet. Father, would you make this a transforming moment for people? If we could see hearts, we'd see people struggling with anxieties and sinful relationships and dishonesty. And we'd just see, we'd see a picture, Father, that you see clearly.

And it's a picture that you want to change. And so grant the spirit of yieldedness and repentance and faith to come to your people. And now you talk to God. Father, even as we want to thank you for what you did to get Jonah's attention, we also want to thank you for what you've done to get our attention. We pray, Father, that you might not have to do too much, that we will say, yes, Lord, your servant hears. Grant that, oh God, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Let's sing a few stanzas of 368. 368, all for Jesus, all for Jesus. I love the stanza that says, all my being's ransom power, all for Jesus, all for Jesus. Tim will come to lead us.

Let's stand to sing 368. On today's Moody Church Hour, Pastor Lutzer brought a message on death to self-reliance, the second in a four-part series on brokenness, how God gets us to say yes. On our broadcast next week, join us for a look into Jonah Church Hour, the second in a four-part series on brokenness, how God gets us to say yes.

Join us for a look into Jonah 3 and death to self-interest. We are so grateful to all who support The Moody Church Hour, and during this month, we have a special opportunity. Every gift you send will be doubled thanks to a matching gift fund.

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