This message is one of the Times Square
Church Pulpit Series.
It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times
Square Church in Manhattan, New York City.
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Hallelujah.
Can't forget.
Won't forget.
Hallelujah.
Praise God.
If you would turn with me in your
Bibles to Jonah, the book of Jonah, chapter
4.
Praise God.
While you're turning there, I have an announcement
that the women's prayer ministry on this Wednesday
has been cancelled.
This Wednesday, women's prayer meeting has been cancelled.
Jonah, chapter 4.
Praise God.
If you'll pray with me.
Father, I thank you that this message is
not written on paper, but God, this message
is in your heart.
Now, Lord, I declare it is the Holy
Spirit that needs to bring it forth, make
it real to our hearts.
So, Lord, I lean heavily on you and
I praise you, O God, that by the
Spirit, Lord, you are going to bring something
forth for your glory and your praise.
Lord, a living word that, Lord, you may
be magnified and, Lord, we may hear what
it is that you're going to say to
us.
Lord, take your glory and for that we'll
give you all the praise and the glory
in Jesus' precious name.
Amen and amen.
The message this afternoon is called, God has
prepared a place for you.
God has prepared a place for you.
A few weeks ago, on a Tuesday night,
a very powerful message was preached on Jonah
and those dealt with Jonah in chapter 1
and 2 and 3.
This afternoon, the Lord has a word out
of Jonah 4.
The name Jonah means dove.
And as many of you know, dove is
a symbol for the Holy Spirit.
And I believe that what is being said
through his name is, Jonah is a man
that the Holy Ghost has placed his hand
upon, a man whom the Holy Spirit is
uniquely dealing with.
And in chapter 3, the scripture tells us
that the word of the Lord came a
second time unto Jonah.
Because chapter 1 and chapter 2 talks about
how a man, when God called him to
go to one place, he went another.
How a man ran from God.
But the story tells us how God captured
him and how God dealt with him, deposited
him in the belly of a whale.
And when he had done a work in
him, in getting his heart and speaking to
him, the scripture tells us that the whale
deposited Jonah on the shores of Nineveh.
And the plan of God went forward.
And a man who tried to run from
God was captured by God.
And the scripture says that he went into
that city and he preached.
Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh.
Jonah, the reputation of that place was a
wild, a wicked and a violent city.
He didn't want to go there.
But I believe there are many reasons why
Jonah didn't want to go there.
Deeper than he knew himself.
Hence, the struggle.
Hence, being a prophet of God and a
man of God, he would bold-facedly run
in another direction.
Because Nineveh meant something far deeper to him
than he knew, but God knew.
And God had sovereignly called that man to
this place, Nineveh, for more than he knew
when he first arrived on those shores.
And the scripture says in chapter 3, verse
9, that after Jonah preached with an incredible
anointing, I believe when you've been in the
belly of a fish for three days, there
is a new perspective.
Something's burned in you.
There are things you know that others don't
know.
And he came out.
And he was now in the place of
God.
God was going to make sure Jonah went
to Nineveh.
And God made sure that the Ninevites got
the message.
And under an incredible anointing from a disobedient
man, God turns a whole city to himself.
And the scripture says in Jonah 3, 9,
that the Ninevites said, who can tell if
God will turn and repent and turn away
from his fierce anger that we perish not?
In other words, these people, through God's messenger
and God's message, heard what he was saying
about how God was his wrath was upon
them unless they repented.
And yet they could hear something that if
God's bothering to send someone with a message,
maybe it is so that we will turn
and in our turning, he will grant us
mercy.
Is that why he was sent?
Beloved, they could hear the whole message.
And scripture tells us in Jonah 4, where
we start this message, it says, but it
displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
And when these people repented and Jonah saw
that the tide has turned, there's something in
him that rose up.
I wonder if it surprised him.
I wonder if he had an idea of
himself or he thought that he had no
idea to the depth of what happened in
Nineveh stirred in him.
But the scripture uses very strong words that
Jonah was displeased exceedingly.
He was very angry at this turn of
events.
And it says in verse two, it says,
and he prayed unto the Lord and said,
I pray thee, O Lord, was not this
my saying when I was yet in my
country?
Therefore, I fled before undictatious, for I knew
that thou art a gracious God and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness and
repentance of the evil.
Therefore, now, O Lord, take I beseech thee
my life from me, for it is better
for me to die than to live.
Beloved.
What kind of heart is that?
Well, what kind of heart is speaking?
This is God.
I'll tell you why.
Now, he's not telling God the whole reason
why God knows the heart.
But what he understood was I'm going to
tell you now I ran in the other
direction because God, you are merciful.
You are gracious.
You are slow to anger.
You are great kindness and you're willing to
give people a new beginning causes me to
want to die.
Now, that's a strange one of the strangest
prayers I've ever read in the Bible.
And yet, beloved, there is something about Nineveh.
There is something about this place that God
has brought him to that is driving up
something in this precious man of God.
That God alone knew was there from the
beginning and that God now has to deal
with him, his heart.
Beloved, you see, his heart resembles many who
find themselves in Nineveh.
Because Nineveh is a God appointed place.
Nineveh is a place you and I don't
go to in our flesh.
Nineveh is a place we have to be
brought there by the spirit of God.
Nineveh is a place where those that have
a heart for God and have been used
by God are brought to.
You see, Nineveh is a place where you
don't want to be, where I don't want
to be.
A place where we find ourselves deeply resistant
to the circumstances we find ourselves in.
It's a place where God puts us and
we are never pleased.
In fact, it's a place we are brought
to where there is a deep-seated anger
that may even surprise us to the depth
of it, to the violence of it, to
the boiling of it.
God in his great mercy knew it was
there all along.
And yet God has brought this prophet not
just to preach deliverance to the Ninevites, but
to bring deliverance to himself if he can
hear it.
Nineveh is a time of great inner turmoil.
Because beloved, for every sincere, honest heart, desire
to be used of God, for every man
and woman that the Holy Spirit has his
hand upon, like Jonah, will be brought to
their Nineveh.
What?
When the Lord wants to work powerfully through
you and I, he must work powerfully in
us.
And beloved, we see that on one hand
Jonah was powerfully used.
I believe that the astounding results that happened
because of his preaching, the astounding results that
who could have predicted that the entire city
of three days journey, that there would be
such a hearing of him.
There would be such a gracious working of
the Holy Spirit in and through him that
it would absolutely bring the city from the
king down right to the animal kingdom.
A sense that God was real, that God
would punish.
And yet God in his mercy spoke to
them and it turned their hearts and it
was like one cry came from a wicked
and a violent time and place.
People who one day thought, scoffed at the
idea of God, ridiculed God, formed and worshipped
gods of their own making in one day.
Under the preaching, this kind of preaching could
turn to such a degree.
It was astounding results.
Beloved, proof that the Holy Spirit hand was
on this man.
And yet this man is tormented.
Beloved, as we read chapter four, we're going
to see that he was at a worse
time mentally, I believe, than perhaps he had
ever been in.
The whole situation in Nineveh is God prepared.
And in Jonah 4.4, after Jonah prays,
it's better for me to die than to
live.
God says to him in verse four, then
said the Lord, doest thou well to be
angry?
Another way of saying is, are you greatly
angry?
Are you absolutely disturbed to the core, Jonah?
And the interesting thing is that Jonah doesn't
give him an answer.
In verse five, it says, so Jonah went
out the city and sat on the east
side of the city and made a booth
and sat under the shadow till he might
see what would become of the city.
And maybe he's thinking, who knows this God
that repents, maybe he will bring judgment.
Maybe I will have some satisfaction.
Maybe what I preached will come to pass.
But then in verse six, it says, and
the Lord God prepared a gourd and made
it to come up over Jonah that it
might be a shadow over his head to
deliver him from his grief.
So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd,
but God prepared a worm when the next
morning rose the next, when the morning rose
the next day and it smote the gourd
that it withered.
And it came to pass when the sun
did rise that God prepared a demon east
wind and the sun beat upon the head
of Jonah that he fainted and he wished
in himself to die.
And he said, it is better for me
to die than to live.
If there is one consistent word in this
chapter, it's the word prepared.
And we can see from reading this, that
Jonah now in the worst time, mentally, I
believe that he is, he has found himself
in.
God has sovereignly chosen him to be in
this place to face what he must face.
And God has prepared a fish and a
gourd, that's a plant and a worm and
an east wind.
God has prepared everything that is now in
this tormented state and in his life, it's
all been prepared by God.
There is a Nineveh for every man and
woman that will be used of God.
There is a Nineveh.
It's a God-appointed Holy Ghost place.
When I was praying and I was saying,
Lord, what, what, what is Nineveh?
What is Nineveh to us?
Nineveh is a place where God on the
surface looks like he's dealing with the gourds
or the plants in our life.
Where Jonah, it says in verse nine, God
said to Jonah, doest thou well to be
angry for the gourd?
And he said, I do well to be
angry even to death.
He's willing to admit his anger over the
plant.
Verse 10, then God says, thou has pity
on the gourd for which thou has not
labored, neither madest it to grow, which came
up in a night and perished in a
night.
Beloved Nineveh on the surface, it seems like
here is this man mourning a loss of
a fast growing plant that brought him comfort.
He's put his energy and he's put his
time and his passion into something so temporary.
Something that came up in the night and
perished in the night.
Beloved, something that springs up in the dark,
that seems to have a great hold over
us in our dark time, in our times
of confusion of soul, in a time of
those that love the Lord, but find themselves
in mental torment.
Beloved, things can spring up and these are
diversions.
And we can wrap our whole being around
them.
Because Nineveh is a God appointed place and
Geneva is God going after something.
It is the Holy Ghost evidence, the evidence
that God has something incredible for us.
But he has brought us to a place.
Where everything in our being is rebelling, where
everything is saying, I don't want to be
here, I don't want to go there, I
don't want this anymore.
Yet I love you, Lord.
And how can these two things be?
And so a diversion can spring up and
we wrap all our energy, our time, our
talent, all around something that sprung up in
the night, in the turmoil and confusion of
our soul.
And we wrap and we give it our
strength.
We give it our passion.
We give it our energy.
We give it our time.
Because these diversions have the power for a
season to make us exceedingly glad.
But beloved, there is no release in Nineveh.
If we are in a God appointed place
like Jonah, there is no release in our
Nineveh.
Because God is going after something so precious.
He says, I do well to be angry
even about that gourd.
Beloved, I'll tell you, these diversions that can
come up where we're looking for comfort in
a Nineveh dealing time has a power to
keep us rebellious in our sin.
But saying, God, you know, that was the
only comfort I had in this place.
What kind of God are you?
You know how rough it is.
You know what I'm facing.
Why would you touch the plant?
Why would you prepare something of comfort and
then prepare an east wind to bring it
down?
It became a big thing in his life,
beloved, that didn't deserve his energy or attachment.
God does not delight in our torment.
He is delighting in our deliverance.
And God is liberating.
His heart is to liberate Jonah just like
Luke.
Jonah was used to liberate Nineveh.
But God is going after such deeply embedded
things in our lives for a reason.
And so Jonah is miserable now and his
anger is real.
Jonah still feels it was not wrong to
disobey God in a certain.
In that certain hour when he asked him
to go to Tarsus.
He tells us in chapter four, he says,
God, was it not my saying when I
fled that country, did I not tell you
the reason I don't want to go is
because if I preach those, I don't want
to see blessed, though those things I don't
want to do.
Oh, God, you're going to force me to
do and I'm going to be faced with
something in my heart.
When you work the way you work in
my life.
Beloved, I think that Nineveh represented something that
Jonah only had an inkling of.
Sometimes when God is asking us to obey
us in a certain area, we find ourselves
very resistant.
We find ourselves finding any excuse and every
excuse not to obey and not to go
there because somehow we sense it is tied
to something so much deeper.
Now, beloved, God could have rejected Jonah.
He could have said, you know, you have
such a totally, totally wrong response.
To the gourd.
You have such a a totally wrong response
to my making a demand on your life.
You have such a totally you will say
that I am the God of heaven and
earth.
And yet you will have such a revulsion.
And a fighting for what you know in
the center of your heart, I am calling
you to.
But, beloved, God is chaining him to his
circumstance.
He's chaining him to his circumstance.
God brought him to Nineveh.
God, he didn't go there of his own
volition.
God knows that Jonah has a history of
running from Nineveh.
Beloved, we do too.
But there are times we are brought there.
God asked him in verse in chapter four,
verse 11, he said, should I not spare
Nineveh, that great city?
I found that a heart wrenching question to
him because I hear the cry of God
in it.
And should I not spare you, Jonah?
What is going to be your answer to
me as I begin to peel away layers
of what you really are and who you
really are?
When I brought you to a place, does
it surprise you, Jonah, what you what what's
coming out of your heart or will you
defend it to the death?
You know, out of Jonah's own mouth.
In chapter two, I was thinking about what
did Jonah say he learned from the lessons
in a prepared fish.
In Jonah chapter two, in chapter two, Jonah
realizes that God himself has brought him to
the in the belly of the whale, a
place of hell itself.
And he says in verse four, I am
forsaken more or less, but he says, yet
I will still look to you.
Somehow, when he got beyond all hope, what
was what was in him?
God in him, when there was no hope,
yet God was stirring him to cause him
to hope.
When there was no mercy, when there was
no hope, yet God in him was being
faithful.
When he was at the very bottom, at
the very end, God himself began stirring and
saying, your only hope is me.
It says in verse six, I went to
the bottom, but out of Jonah's own mouth,
his testimony would be, but I found you
there, my God.
When I couldn't get any lower, when I
went to the bottom, my God, you were
there.
You were there, I found in the famous
words of one woman, when no pit is
so deep that you are not deeper still,
my God.
I found at the very bottom, my Jesus,
you are there.
And then he says in verse six, I
also found the lifting power of your presence.
And it says in verse six, that thou
has brought up my life from corruption, that
there was a corruption in me.
And yet your life in me was greater
than the corruption in me.
And the lifting power of your spirit was
able to lift me up.
And the scripture says in verse nine, I
will be thankful and I will pay my
vows.
And beloved, when he was ejected from the
belly of the whale, this burning message was
in him.
And he knew who he was.
And he knew who his God was.
And I believe in that place, there was
a total surrender.
There was God, anything you want, anything you
need to do in my life.
But beloved, what has changed?
And I believe that Jonah is getting to
the place where you and I are.
That that cry is not a one time
thing, but it's a lifetime response.
Now, I want to get to the heart
of this message.
I believe the most loving thing in the
world that has ever taken place was a
crucifixion.
The most loving thing that has ever taken
place in the history of man on this
earth was a crucifixion.
When Christ broke the power of and penalty
of sin over your life, over my life.
But beloved, the most loving thing that God
ever does in our lives is that a
prepared time is to bring us to a
place where something in us, we come to
the realization, God, I've got to offer you
something.
Something has to die.
Only the Holy Spirit can take us to
this understanding.
Only the Holy Spirit can make us willing.
Only the Holy Spirit can search us out
and show us what it is.
You know, for Jonah, when his cry was,
take my life, it's better for me to
die than to live.
He gave that response when God was giving
him the most incredible revelation.
But Jonah couldn't hear him.
And yet, I believe by the end of
the story, Jonah is going to hear something.
I pray we will.
What had to die in Jonah's life?
You know, yes, he was, we could say,
you know, that desire for comfort that represents
the gourd.
But beloved, the selfishness that represent that root
there and that consumed with self-preoccupation, where
he had no heart for the perishing, where
God wanted his life to have such an
influence that God wanted to have to proclaim
his mercy to so many people.
And yet now, after doing that and seeing
a heart response or something in him that
is so frightening.
Beloved, God tells him, he knows that God
is gracious, that he is merciful, that he
is slow to anger, that he is of
great kindness, that he wants to give a
new beginning.
And he wants to die over that revelation.
Beloved, he has a heart that the Holy
Spirit is going after something so deep, I
don't think he could explain it.
I don't think I have the words to
explain it.
I think that when the Holy Spirit is
upon us and there is a call in
our lives, that the Holy Spirit to bring
us to a place where we can say,
God, whatever you have to do in my
life, do it.
Lord, let there be a crucifixion in my
Christianity.
Lord God, there's got to be a time
and a place where you can speak to
me about things I don't want to hear
and places I don't want to go.
And yet in the end, I will bend
my knee to it because, oh God, there
is something so sown in me that you
are a God, that you will be merciful
to me.
You will be kind to me.
You will be slow to anger to me
when I fail.
Lord, when the fear wants me to back
up, when I in my flesh want to
say no to you with everything I've got,
I'm going to remember, God, how merciful, slow
to anger, how kind, what a new beginning
you give to me every time I need
it.
That God, you're going to give me a
heart that's going to want to say, lead
on, not my will, but thine.
But will there, will we allow God finally
to bring us a place where something in
us has to die, that we offer by
the spirit for crucifixion, that we may say
yes, or we won't say it any other
way.
And we won't do it any other way.
Jonah had this boiling anger and an inability
to admit to God the truth.
When God says, are you very angry?
He couldn't bring himself to say that because
you're not supposed to be really angry over
what he's angry about.
He couldn't admit to what was really going
on in his heart.
He couldn't admit that perhaps the vengeance and
the unforgiveness raging in his heart towards those
he's supposed to speak to, those he's supposed
to bless, that through his light he could
see a turnaround in their lives.
That was hard for him.
It was hard for him to bend his
knee because there's a side that wants to
so stubbornly cling and say, yes, I have
every right to be angry.
Like Jonah said to God, we all have
an in of the blood.
But beloved, you see, the Holy Ghost is
upon us to reveal sin and the strongholds.
And when he does that, he is going
to be faithful to remind us of the
kind of God we are dealing with.
God says, I'm going to be for everyone
that will be open for everyone that will
open their heart and agree with me.
God says, I'm going to be nothing but
merciful and kind and gracious and slow to
anger.
Every time you will admit what is really
going on in your heart, in your Nineveh,
in your mental torment, when there's a place
that you don't want to be found in
dealing with people you don't want to be
dealing with, where Christianity has moved beyond the
bless me club, where the Christ in us
by faith who went to a cross that
was buried, that the resurrection life forever may
stand.
That's the life he offers us.
Beloved, there's got to be a crucifixion.
We do it by faith.
We come to him by faith and say,
Jesus, you're the crucified Lord in my life.
And you alone can give me the power.
If I keep coming to you and I
will admit freely what is in my heart,
you will be merciful.
You will be slow to anger.
You will be of great kindness.
And you will give me a new beginning
if I will, but say it.
And then God, what you're asking me to
do, what is immense and impossible for the
flesh to do yet by the spirit, Jesus,
you will bring me there and I will
know the power to do it because you
are merciful.
When I fail, when I'm not praying, when
I lose the prayer battle this week, God,
you will be merciful to me.
You will be slow to anger.
You will be a gracious God to me
and you will pick me back up on
my feet.
Mind me that I'm being distracted.
I'm giving my strength to a gourd, something
that wants to spring up in the nighttime
of my soul, that my strength may be
given to it and not to you, my
God.
Because, oh God, you are so merciful and
gracious to me that you can speak to
any part in any corner of my heart.
And I will know you to be nothing
but forgiving.
And kind and a new beginning, if I
need it a hundred times a day.
Beloved, this is how the fear gets taken
out of our serving God, because beloved, when
we hear a message about giving our all
and God has planted our desire enough to
give our all, there is also another fear
that I'll never be able to do it.
I will never be able.
I know who I am.
And almost in unwillingness, there's a side to
our flesh that does not want to be
in Nineveh and will run.
But beloved, if we're going to be called
by the name of Christ, there is going
to be a crucifixion in our life so
there can be a resurrection.
So that what flows through us is the
spirit, not flesh.
We, in this church, we have a junior
high group.
We have many groups that are in need
of spirit-filled people.
People who will be willing to say, God,
use me to confront the creeping death that
wants to overtake our young people.
And there'll be a flesh that'll say, no,
that's too hard.
Let me serve in another place.
There'll be a flesh that'll say, I don't
want that burden.
I don't want their kids.
I don't want their lip.
I don't want that attitude.
I've got enough to deal with.
But beloved, if the spirit of God is
in us and he's calling us to follow
him, some are going to be led into
that group in that classroom.
We're going to be led into situations at
work.
We don't want to speak.
We don't want to live the life.
We don't want to know that crucifixion in
our life.
No, we don't.
We're flesh.
But as we begin to say, God, my
faith is grounded in a merciful God who
is gracious, who is slow to anger with
me, who offers me a new beginning.
God, I'm going to open my arms wide.
And I'm going to let you take me
to that place of my Nineveh.
And I'm going to let you deal with
it.
Because beloved, the mental torment and the anguish
is rooted in the fact that we are
resisting him, is rooted in the fact that
we say, I do well to be angry
in this place.
The Apostle Paul once cried, he said, who
shall deliver me from this body of death?
The Apostle Paul, a man greatly used, a
man who led a transformed life that his
generation felt his impact and every generation that
followed felt the impact of this one surrendered
life.
It was a life that stretched forth its
hand and said, lead Holy Spirit.
And who will deliver me from this body
of death that will say no to you,
a flesh that will stand up.
And yet he knew that an indwelling Holy
Spirit would always triumph over an indwelling flesh
and sin.
And so he could stretch out his hand.
And he knew that a God who was
gracious and merciful and slow to anger of
great kindness, full of new beginnings for everyone
that would stretch out their hand.
And beloved, that's where our testimony begins to
come.
There is life in this.
There is none that trust in the Lord
that shall be left desolate, not one.
Psalm the enemy has painted a picture.
If you fully surrender, this is what your
life is going to look like.
No, I say that if when we fully
surrender, that our freedom and our power and
a release to a God who is gracious,
who is full of mercy, of great kindness
and new beginnings will give us a life
we could never even begin to hope for.
Hallelujah.
It is in the revelation.
You know, Jonah despised that revelation when God
says, this is who I am, that I'm
a gracious God, merciful, slow to anger and
great kindness.
He said, let me die.
I don't want to live.
What kind of response is that?
That's a flesh response.
That's the mind of man that's being animated
by the devil.
That's all that's against Jesus Christ speaking, because
that kind of revelation, when it grips us,
when we live under that revelation and we
move and have our being that a gracious
God who is so merciful and kind that
will at every step of the way reveal
himself in ever increasing depth of his glory,
his mercy, his kindness of slow to anger.
He is beloved.
We are transformed and those lives we touch
will be transformed because we have a true
message.
That's the revelation that God gave to Jonah.
In our flesh, we take up the gourd,
bang him over the head with it.
No, that's the revelation God gave to Jonah.
He says, this is who I am.
And you initially despised it.
You are afraid of that kind of revelation.
You didn't understand it.
Beloved, because we think ministry or what we're
doing for God, we understand success.
Jonah preaches, you know, and people minister and
they don't get the kind of response they
want.
It doesn't happen the way they think.
And there becomes a deep resistance.
God, I don't want to do this anymore
because it's the flesh intertwining with the spirit
or it's God testing.
It's God saying we have to be led
by the spirit.
But beloved, the scripture says they that are
Christ have crucified the flesh.
We have been given that power because a
crucified Christ and a resurrected Christ lives in
us.
And we have the power to say flesh
and this what I don't want to do,
where I don't want to go, who I
don't want to speak to.
I have the power to offer it up
to you through the spirit.
I have the power to offer it up
to you and Jesus, you will take it
and you will become in that time so
sweet, so deep, so real to me.
And beloved things change so deep.
At a level so deep.
We couldn't describe it.
Jonah needed Nineveh because he had no idea
what was resident in the bottom of the
depth of the resistance, the depth of his
know, the depth of his mental torment, the
depth of his ability to despise the goodness
of God.
And yet God still was using this name.
That's the mercy of God.
And until we know the incredible depth of
the mercy of God for me and for
you, beloved, we can't be turned out on
a world because we'll become like Jonah.
We'll be everything but merciful.
We'll be quick to anger.
We will be everything the opposite of God
says he will be to us and transform
us to be.
We can get in ministry and be quick
to anger.
So uncompassionate, cold, hard, another spirit upon us.
We will get to a place, beloved, where
God absolutely cannot send us to certain people
in certain times at certain places.
And we have a never decreasing and diminishing
capacity to minister.
God says, no, in Nineveh I go to
the core.
In Nineveh I go to that place only
I see.
And in that place, you will find me
so slow to anger and merciful and kind
and gracious to you.
And ever shall it be when every deep
resistance to us is offered and we, the
words of Christ, come back to us and
that's who he will be to us at
these times when we do offer up where
the flesh does not and will not go.
Beloved, it's an open-ended book in the
sense that we never know Jonah's response.
We never know what decision he took.
And I believe that because in this valley
of decisions, so many get stuck here.
So many are not understanding, Lord, to fully
walk with you, I have to face this.
There's going to be a death of something
in me that your life in me may
flow.
And that, Lord, I'm not going to be
condemned when my flesh rises up.
But I'm going to experience you like I
have never experienced you before.
That you're going to reveal and I'm not
going to let the devil shut down like
Jonah was shut down at that time in
his life.
That revelation wasn't good enough for him.
He didn't realize that everything he ever wanted
to be in God was found in that
response of God to him.
That when you know how merciful and slow
to anger I am in your life, you
can open up every part of your life.
When you step forward and you fall down,
you will get up when you remember that.
When you step forward and fear plagues every
step of the way, we'll throw up our
heads and say, God, who is gracious to
me, slow to anger, merciful, kind, and bold
new beginnings for me.
I walk your way by the spirit.
Your spirit is bringing me this place and
I'm not walking it in the flesh.
And every time the flesh wants to get
behind the driver's wheel and take me in
another direction, God, by your spirit, you will
judge it in me.
You will reveal it to me and you
will keep me on that path.
Oh God, that allows me to make a
difference.
You know, God could use Jonah and Nineveh
that one time for that.
He could be not, I believe, to show
how much he wanted to use him and
what he could do in his life.
God saw Jonah and what was at the
depths of his heart, but it did not
prevent God from stretching out his hands saying,
I can use you.
I can still use you if you'll walk
my way, but it's an open-ended book
and we never know his response.
Because there was a, it's a place he
does not want to be.
But beloved in that place, we don't want
to be, we don't want to go with
people we don't want to be ministering to
and loving in the name of Jesus.
He is going to remind us of who
he is and that revelation is going to
humble us.
It's going to break us.
It's going to fill us.
It's going to empower us.
It's going to change us and we're going
to move in the spirit and it is
the spirit that makes all the difference.
Nineveh was a deposit.
When the Holy Ghost came upon Jonah, Jonah
saw what the Holy Ghost ministry does.
Astounding.
And he was saying, let me do that
work in you.
Let me do that work in you.
Because when you invite the Holy Spirit into
our lives in the sense that he is
there, but take over and let me offer
to you every place of resistance and the
know that I am saying, God is going
to be astounding what you're going to do
in my life.
Beloved, you know, for many years, I was
deeply resistant to the things of God.
I was so afraid because the little I
knew of me, it discouraged me.
The little I knew of me, it caused
me to doubt.
And so I was limiting God.
But when I saw that he says to
reason, throw your arms wide open to me
and receive me as a merciful, gracious God,
full of kindness, slow to anger and full
of new beginnings for you and let it
attack your fear.
Let it attack your doubt.
Let it lift your eyes higher than yourself.
Don't be afraid where I'll take you because
I'm merciful.
Don't be afraid where I'll take you.
I'm kind.
And we'll begin to make that difference because
there'll be a cross in our Christianity.
There won't be places X out because we're
not trying to go there in the flesh.
We can't.
But we'll be taken there as surely as
Jonah was taken there.
We'll be taken there.
But by the grace of God, we leave
that place of unsurrender, surrendered by the spirit
with a new revelation.
That shatters the power and the stronghold of
fear and doubt and no and rebellion and
sin.
It alone has the power, that revelation to
root out the sin.
That's why the Holy Spirit can all work
in full measure with us, because there's deep
pockets of sin that God must reveal so
he can heal and replace by his spirit.
And we move forward.
That's the kingdom of God.
One of my favorite lines is the gospel
is the story about dead men living.
And that's got to be our testimony.
That every area of death that is sin,
a stronghold of sin, might know my deepest
knows God by faith only by your spirit.
And hearing who you are, I'm trusting you
to give me the power to lift it
up.
And I'm believing, O God, that you are
going to so transform me in this my
Nineveh for your glory.
Will you stand with me?
Please.
Hallelujah.
As the musicians come, God
is creating a desire in this body.
I know it's creating a desire to walk
all the way to be found that people
of prayer and fasting in your place, that
your God appointed place.
Those who are saying, God, I'm going to
have to trust you now for this biggest
battle of my life, for the mental torment
in my life, the resistance stops.
I'm going to take your merciful hand.
If God is speaking to you about that,
would you come for those in your heart
that have made that step forward into the
grave and time of great rejoicing?
This is a joy and you're going to
experience it.
When we make that step forward, he comes
rushing like the father and he throws his
arms around us and he gives us all
that we need.
And beloved, it's a great day because the
power of the enemy to oppress us with
fear and the power to oppress us with
a sense of failure is broken because we're
coming to a God who is merciful and
kind that when we surrender, he says, I'm
going to be so merciful and kind to
you.
Your testimony is going to change forever.
When we live under that canopy of his
gracious favor to us and his mercy, beloved,
we are changing.
The fear is broken.
The fear of failure.
We are going to fail at times because
we are flesh.
That's why he says I'm merciful.
That's why I'm so kind.
That's why I'm so slow to anger.
And beloved, when we receive that deeply in
our hearts, we're going to rejoice and go
forward and say, throw what you will at
me.
How there is a God that is resurrected
that lives in me and he's taking me
through.
Hallelujah.
There's many are saying I'm tired of my
fear, robbing me of my faith, but I
know who I'm coming to now.
And God, you're bringing me to a place
that I never thought I could come to
a place where my flesh always ruled me,
always told me what was going to happen
and why that would never happen.
Why God couldn't do this and God couldn't
do that and God couldn't use me.
But beloved, the flesh.
The flesh is going to know that crucifixion
where it's going to be rendered useless, where
it's going to be rendered voiceless, because every
time we call on the spirit is voice
renders the voice of our flesh and the
enemy useless.
It loses its voice and it loses its
strength.
And this is a great day.
And now we can go forward, God, knowing
that when I fall, you pick me up
when I need to confess something.
You hear me when I can tell you
the worst, the darkest part of what's going
on in my mind.
I'm finally just admitting it to myself.
And God, you will not condemn me that
you forgive me and you give me a
new mind.
Beloved, the enemy oppresses us because there's places
we we have not let God's light and
love and mercy and forgiveness enter.
But today it changes.
Today, it changes.
And every power of hell is broken as
we give him what we in our flesh
could never do, but we do it by
the spirit.
And we say, God, we thank you.
You've made us a willing people.
Lord, it is only by your spirit we
are made willing to walk this path.
But Lord, your glorious resurrection life will flow
through us.
God, you're going to make us a people
of prayer.
You're going to make us a people able
to fast.
You're going to make us a people able
to step outside our self-consuming thoughts.
God, you care for us.
God, you understand the depths of our struggle.
God, you know what it is we face
in our hearts alone at night.
But God, you will be merciful and kind
and slow to anger.
And you will speak new beginnings into our
lives every time we need it.
And God, you're going to break the power
of the enemy over our mind, the tormented
thoughts, the torments, the anger, the uncontrolled anger.
God, everything where we have found ourselves saying
we belong to you, but no peace, only
anger, only despair.
God, by faith, we lift it up to
you now.
And we thank you, O God, that you
who sought all along has never rejected us.
But you have sent this word of how
merciful and gracious and kind you are so
that we may have the power of the
enemy broken over us.
Now, Lord, we leave this place under the
power of the spirit, able to offer up
every resistance of the flesh because Jesus died
and Jesus gives us the power to walk
in the spirit, not in the flesh.
Lord, this victory is all yours.
And we declare you to be our victorious
God, a resurrected Christ who lives in us
by the power of the spirit.
And we thank you, God, that you're going
to take us places we could never go
to in the flesh.
But God, you're going to be faithful to
bring us there.
And we're going to know a joy, a
power and a liberty that's going to affect
our generation.
God, we believe this.
You are merciful.
You will be with us every step of
the way.
And it is in you we stand.
We stand by faith and by grace and
your mercy alone.
Lord, now we give you the praise.
We give you the praise for hearing you
today.
Hallelujah.
We praise you.
Hallelujah.
Beloved, don't back down.
Don't back down.
There's no reason to back up or back
down because we're not doing it in the
flesh now.
We're calling on the Holy Spirit of God
and he will do this work in us.
And that's why we praise him and give
him all the glory for it's of him.
Hallelujah.
Amen.
Praise God.
Thank you for that wonderful word.
I will sing unto the Lord.
He has triumphed gloriously.
The horse and the rider are thrown into
the sea.
God bless you.
If you'll make an effort to come back
this evening, I'm sure it's going to be
worth your while.
If you can, find a friend and bring
somebody to the house of God with you
tonight.
If you have to go, God bless you.
Take a moment, fellowship, as we go singing
today, as we go rejoicing.
God bless you.
This is the conclusion of the message.