February 19, 2005
If you read the biographies of great Christian leaders of yesterday and today,
you get the sense that the majority of these guys and girls heard clearly from
God, obeyed readily and started immediately reaping Taco Bell Grande-size
rewards.
The Bible paints a little less rosy picture of its characters.
Yeah … a lot of God’s heroes went through hell and were hammered with snafus and
faux pas. In the Bible, there are huge chunks of copy where the saints’ lives
and walks with God reeked worse than old spilled bong water in the back seat of
a taxi in Miami during the heat of the summer. Some of the saints’ setbacks and
failures were the by-products of satanic interference, and some simply came
about because stuff happens and life is not a movie. Then there is the trouble,
that special hell, which came to the believer because he was being a donkey with
respect to his destiny.
Take Jonah’s story for example.
The book of Jonah shows that the chaos in Jonah’s life resulted directly from
his refusal to do what he was called to do. This man is not in a miasma
regarding his reason for being. He is not on a vision quest trying to figure out
what his destiny is. He knows what he is called to and he is currently hauling
butt in the opposite direction.
So … what happened when Jonah fled from his purpose? Well … things began to go
horribly wrong for him. In this biblical storyline, God attacks the slacker who
is not about his predestined business. When Jonah ran from his call, God ran
after him and used extreme measures, i.e., a violent storm, to get his
attention. So much for everyone wanting to have a purpose driven life.
I know this is not PC, but God will rock our world if we are avoiding our call.
God has His ways of waking us up. Disaster comes to Jonah’s life not because of
happenstance or demonic attack but because God is on the prowl. God is allowing
all hell to break lose on Jonah’s world because Jonah is not taking care of
business. God/life/circumstances will fight us if we’re blowing off what we were
hardwired to do.
Check it out. God is hammering this guy, and he still isn’t going to listen. So
… what does a loving God do? He cranks things up several notches and appoints a
great fish to swallow Jonah’s rebellious backside. Being eaten alive and stewing
in the fish’s stomach acids worked God’s intended purpose of softening up this
runaway prophet. Jonah enters what he calls … the belly of hell.
Have you ever been there?
In this putrid gurgling gastric percolator, the prophet starts to rethink his
former course of action. The horrible circumstances that hit his life served the
purpose of getting him back to center court. After three days in the fish’s gut,
finally Jonah ceases the stubbornness and takes responsibility for his failures,
regrets his stupid selfish desires, and is prayerfully ready to do what he has
been destined to do. Yes, the hell which hit Jonah’s life turned to healing
because he fielded this bad hand in a humble fashion.
When we go through storms and are forced to hang out in a fish’s belly,
sometimes it feels like an eternity, like we will never ever get out of the
seaweed we’re in. When life disciplines us for goofing off, it can often leave
us more depressed than a pimpled-faced 16-year-old boy just dissed by Lindsay
Lohan. Cheer up … as much as God will … um … uh … make things difficult when we
are out of sorts with our calling, He will also cause the bad stuff to cease
when the lesson is learned … and just as it did with Jonah … the
fish/circumstance will vomit you up.
After ten-plus years in radio and speaking all over this nation, I can say that
most people I’ve met also have had a pretty checkered and muddled spiritual life
and are more like Jonah than Joseph. I cannot relate to the perfect flawless
ones who follow faultlessly their purpose in life. I find, thanks to my creepy
heart, that I’m more like the guys who barely made it, who were seemingly always
doing stupid junk, missing their purpose, chasing things they shouldn’t be
chasing and paying retail for life’s lessons. Usually it takes a celestially
swung 2x4 to get me to wake me up and back on track.
That’s why I get great relief from the bad boys of the Bible like Peter, Samson,
David, and, of course, Jonah. These were men who did great things yet were oft
times more off base with their calling than DNC is in choosing Howard Dean to
appeal to middle America. The narratives that surround these men of messy
spirituality show us how to move from disaster back to destiny.
My ClashPoint is this: Purpose and destiny are serious business, and if we will
not acquiesce to the call of a storm, then God will send a fish. Yep … the
creator will appoint creation to bring chaos crashing in on our lives if we are
not about our calling. Never underestimate how hard life will pound us before we
fall into lockstep with our purpose.
However, when the lesson is learned, and one ceases to be the runaway prophet,
he will be released from the woodshed of God’s love and restored to a great
place in life. As with Jonah, when responsibility is taken and when purpose is
embraced, then one has just set in motion the forces for transformative positive
personal change.
Jonah, post-fish vomit, is now following his call, and the resultant effect is
that hundreds of thousands of people are blessed because he ceased running from
his purpose and, instead, embraced it. If you have been stuck in life’s fish
belly, feeling like there will be no tomorrow … relax … handle the discipline
correctly … and the situation will, as with Jonah, vomit you up, out and into
greatness.