What does it take to get a response? Have you ever ignored a bill? Of course not! But maybe you have heard of someone who did or maybe one got stuck toe the 10,000 credit card offers you get in the mail every day, and it got thrown away. Curious thing is, they will send you another one. Should that one get ignored too, they will send out another one. When it comes to bills, whoever it might be, they are amazingly persistent. As they send out the new bills, the language tends to get less friendly. Things like you have x,y, and z days to respond to this letter or we will ruin your credit score, put you in jail and sell your first born child. (maybe not exactly like that but you get the idea). Thing is it usually does the trick and gets some sort of response.
Sometimes when we don’t really want to do something, it takes some kind of dramatic event to get us to respond. It takes a threat, or a consequence so significant that the pain of responding is now less than the pain of waiting. Our response to grace can sometimes be like that. Sometimes we know what we should do, but we wait. Sometimes we know how we need to get things fixed and restore our relationship with God, but we put it off. Maybe we are embarrassed, or afraid, but often it is just that we are lazy. Do you need to respond to the grace of God?
This week we are finishing the sermon series “Jonah: Grace Unexpected”. It is this week that we talk about what happened after the whole man eating shark incident:the incredible response. The response of a people who were mired in sin and violence, the response of God to repentance, and the response of a prophet faced with Grace Unexpected.
Hope to see you at church!
Pastor Chris
