Jonah and Prayer

Tom Shrader explores Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish, emphasizing that salvation comes from the Lord alone. He demonstrates how God is the 'Hound of Heaven' who pursues His children not to destroy them but to discipline them in love. The teaching concludes with God giving Jonah a second chance, illustrating His nature as the God of the second chance who offers lifetime mulligans to His people.

“God says this, here's what I'm ready to do. I'm ready to give you a lifetime supply of mulligans.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Jonah

Recorded: May 21, 2015

Duration: 37 min

Themes: second chances, salvation, disobedience, discipline, freedom, redemption, grace, forgiveness, struggling with rebellion, running from god, feeling pursued by god, former prisoners, recovering addicts, prodigal children, backslidden believers, seeking restoration

Scripture: Jonah 1:1, Jonah 1:3, Jonah 1:4, Jonah 1:5, Jonah 1:9, Jonah 1:10, Jonah 1:17, Jonah 2:1, Jonah 2:2, Jonah 2:6, Jonah 2:8, Jonah 2:10, Jonah 3:1, Genesis 22, Isaiah 30, John 3:16, John 5:24, Psalm 30:3

Theological Themes: soteriology, salvation by grace, divine discipline, chastisement, providence, god's sovereignty, repentance, turning to god

Full Transcript

Open your Bibles, if you would, to Jonah. We're in our third week of a study that I love because of some of the misunderstanding of the book of Jonah and some of the things that it intuitively raises up. First are the questions, and second is the practical application.

If you look at Jonah 1:1, the Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Here's what we said: God speaks to him in a clear way. Jonah's problem is not knowledge, it's desire. God says, "Arise, go to Nineveh, cry out against the wicked city." And Jonah says, "No, thank you," and goes in exactly the opposite direction.

For the sake of our study, the key point we want to make and come back to again and again is that there's a little bit of Jonah in all of us. God speaks to us today. He doesn't ever say here how the Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Jonah simply tells us that He did. The Word of the Lord comes to us today in that book that you have in front of you—Scripture. It tells us what to do. My personal experience, learning from my life, is that my challenge is not most of the time knowing what to do; it's that I don't want to do it.

The Hound of Heaven

So I make a mistake perhaps that Jonah makes in verse 3. It's mentioned twice: he tries to run from the presence of the Lord. We realize that's impossible. If you're God's kid, He is—and this is spoken of affectionately—He is the Hound of Heaven. If you're His, He will hunt you down not to destroy you, not because He's out to zap you, but because you're His kid and you discipline those that you love.

I did a men's conference three weeks ago, and sitting right in the front, it was a full room up at Lost Canyon. We filled the entire clubhouse room. We filled that and we had over 100 guys sitting out in the lobby. They said it was the largest group they've ever had for a men's conference up there. Right in front were twelve guys who were not typical men at a men's conference. By that what I mean is they were highly emotionally engaged. When we sang songs, they were there. It wasn't just raising hands or expressive; there was something compelling about watching them.

As I was teaching, and I'd get to certain topics or certain aspects, they'd react. Here's what I discovered: they were twelve guys who had been in prison. One of them, 28 years. When we talked about bondage and freedom, they got it. They talked about it in a whole new way. It wasn't some theoretical "Yeah, I know"; it was "No, I really experienced this." They experienced the reality of the Hound of Heaven in the positive way, who wouldn't let them go.

One guy had spent 28 years. That just seems like a long time. I can't fathom that—28 years. I know this sounds weird, but the air was fresher to them. The mountains were more real. That's the same thing you have. You've been freed from that, and because of the Hound of Heaven.

God's Sovereignty in the Storm

In chapter one, verse four, we're introduced to the idea of the sovereignty of God. "The Lord hurled the great wind." Remember, that's what we saw. Jonah goes down and he's asleep. The sailors, the professionals, are afraid—so afraid that we're told in verse five they begin to throw the cargo overboard. That's their livelihood. They're throwing away their money because they are afraid. They're not sure what's going to happen.

They come to Jonah and Jonah's asleep. They say, "Jonah, how can you sleep? How can you sleep in the midst of that? Why don't you—we're praying to our gods—why don't you pray to your God? Maybe He will explain why we're here." They come to Jonah. They begin to ask him questions. They ask him five questions, but in verse nine, he only answers the last one: "I'm a Hebrew. I fear the Lord God of heaven."

To this point, everybody's been praying to his own god. He said, "I'm a Hebrew." They said, "Wait a minute." They ask him a question in verse 10: "How could you do this?" He had told them that he's running from God.

The World's Higher Standard for Christians

It's often the case—application—that the people around you will hold you to a higher standard when you say you're a Christian than maybe you hold yourself to. If you run into somebody today and they say, "Well, what'd you do this morning?" "I went to that thing." "Well, what's a thing? Yoga?" "No, no, it wasn't yoga." "What was it?" "Well, it was like a study." "Well, what do you mean study? What are you studying?" "Well, right now it's a Bible study." "Really? So you go—I want to make sure this—because it doesn't seem to match up here with the way you're acting. You go to a Bible study on Thursday morning. Is that right?" And they have that standard for you.

Many of you have experienced it, especially those of you who became Christians later in life. There's a misunderstanding that a Christian is this. What makes me a Christian is how I behave. No, it's what I believe. But you've had that experience—that when you say you're a follower of Christ, people begin to say to you, "Okay, that's not then how you live. That's not how a follower of Christ golfs"—not meaning quality, but meaning clubs flying. Although you mention God a lot when you're out there, which I guess is good, but you get the distinction. That's not how a follower of Christ does it.

The biggest—and I say this in maybe crass terms, I apologize—the biggest screwing I ever got in real estate was from a guy who had a credenza that had a Bible on it that you would need a crane to get that thing in and out of there. It was the biggest Bible I've ever seen in my life. It was not for reading; it was a show Bible. He put it to me. I remember because I'm just going, "I did this, right? Yep, I did this, right? You said this, right? Yeah, I said this, right? Oh, you owe me." He said, "Well, I'm not paying you." I was so frustrated that I said one of the dumbest things

of all time. I said to him, "I thought you were a Christian." And he said to me, "I am, but I don't let it affect the way I do business." And I said, "Well, buddy, if anybody doubts that, have them give me a call." This is just—and there's two sides to every story, I'm just telling you—if I brought 10 of you in and we laid out the evidence, let him go first and let him have an hour, and I'll take 30 seconds or a minute, you would say, "Yeah." But we have that judgment on you.

Rather than push it away, I used to tell my kids that if they'd say, "Dad, they're holding us to a little higher standard," I'd always say, "No, they really aren't. They're holding us to the standard we all ought to have for our life. And that's a privilege, not a curse." So they say, "What are we going to do?" And Jonah said, "Throw me overboard." They say, "No." And then finally they say, "Yeah, you're going overboard." And it's where we left off last week. Chapter one, verse 17: "And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah." That sets up the undercurrent of the book—no pun intended. That was too clever right there.

The Most Misunderstood Book

Ray Stedman wrote this: "Probably the best known, yet least understood book in the Bible is the book of Jonah. From the world's point of view, Jonah and the whale have become a part of literature, a part of mythical, legendary history. Though the story has become a byword among people, the book is looked upon with ridicule and disbelief and is laughed out of the Bible as being a fable. It's not taken seriously. It's not taken historically. It's merely a great fish story."

When I walked in in March of 1980 to Phoenix Country Club and Larry Wright was teaching, I'd never heard anything like this. It was a group probably about half this size. And when Larry began to teach, it was like there was just the two of us in this room. I was compelled to the guy. I listened to part of a teaching of his yesterday—still, I just hear his words. It's like certain aromas bring back memories. I hear his words and I just start to smile, and I think of all the stories.

As he's starting, I realized I've come to this same point. As he's starting to teach, I know what he's going to say before he says it, just like you start going, "Gosh, I've heard this story a thousand times." But I remember going back to the office and calling Larry and saying, "Can we get together?" And I said to him when we finally did, "I'm interested in what you taught, but tell me what is it that you believe in?"

He said, "I believe the Bible's the Word of God." And I said, "Really? Adam and Eve? Noah? Jonah? You're buying this fish thing?" And he said, "Yeah." And that began a whole study.

A Life-Changing Realization

There was a guy in our study last week, and he said it was when Larry Wright taught Jonah—this very incident we're looking at today—that God used to save him. He said, "I'd always pushed away the idea of a great fish. And when all of a sudden it became possible, and then through the Bible I saw that it really occurred, it was at that moment that I realized this was a big God who was in control, and I better listen."

So let's go ahead and stipulate that not often does a great fish swallow a man and he lives in the belly of the fish for three days, but it could happen. We think it did. One author writes this: "There's at least two known monsters of the deep who could have easily swallowed Jonah. They are the sulfur bottom whale and the whale shark. Neither of these monsters of the deep have any teeth. They feed in an interesting way by opening their enormous mouths, submerging their lower jaw, rushing through the water at a terrific speed. After straining out the water, they swallow whatever's left."

A sulfur bottom whale a hundred feet long was captured off Cape Cod in 1933. His mouth was 10 or 12 feet wide, so big he could have easily swallowed a horse. These whales have four to six compartments in their stomach, in any one of which a colony of men could find free lodging. They might even have a choice of room, for in the head of the whale is a wonderful air storage chamber—an enlargement of the nasal sinus often measuring seven feet high, seven feet wide, 14 feet long. If he had an unwelcome guest on board who gives him a headache, the whale swims to the nearest land and gets rid of the offender, as he did Jonah.

So I stipulate this is not a frequent occurrence, but it could happen. And I would go one step: it did happen.

Jonah's Prayer of Desperation

That's what we have here in chapter 2, verse 1: "Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the stomach of the fish." Jonah begins to pray. I'm going to guess that it's a prayer like some of you have had in moments of desperation. He prays—he's hurting.

We're going to the Masters in 1989 or '91, one of the two, I don't remember which. And we were flying a McDonnell Douglas, which—they're always a quiet plane, but I don't know, I was always spooky about those MD-10s or whatever they were. And I don't know, they always scared me. It's very quiet. We all of a sudden are in a storm that's just shaking this thing. One of the ceiling tiles flips down. All of the flight attendants are running for cover. This thing is just moving all over.

All of a sudden the pilot banks it, and we make this turn, and I can look back and see this giant cell we were in. I'm not a big flyer—I'm not afraid to fly, I'm afraid to crash. And I don't know, there's something as I get older I get more... Sandy and I are flying to Kansas City here not too far away, and I'm already thinking about not just TSA and hassle, but just you're up there and you feel vulnerable. And it probably just is a metaphor for how life really is and how vulnerable we are.

But I remember praying, and in moments like that it's that prayer—it's that foxhole conversion, desperation prayer. Jonah records his prayer, and I don't know when it was, just the transition from "the Lord appointed a fish," verse 17, and it swallowed Jonah to verse...

Then, I'm going to guess that "then" was immediate. Jonah called out, and here's his recording of the prayer. Sometimes later, "I called out from my distress to the Lord and He answered me. I cried out from the depths of Sheol." That Sheol could be used in a variety of ways. It usually means a place of desperation. It connotes a catastrophic condition. It's used in Psalm 30 verse 3 in that way. It's praise for deliverance. That's the pit that He talks about in verse 6.

Jonah cries out. It's what we do intuitively, even if we haven't. You heard those stories before that always begin with "I'm not a religious man," but in this moment where things are way beyond you, you sense you're out of control. I would argue that's a good place to be.

One of the guys yesterday said, "You know, that lesson today was perfect for the guy I brought with me." I know that it is, but let me tell you, this is a universally good lesson. When things are beyond my control and I sense that and acknowledge that, that's a pivotal place to be, an important place to be.

Finding Perspective in Life's Unexpected Turns

I try on Thursday - I come early, meaning I used to leave the house at 5:50 and I'll leave around 5:30. I go to Circle K and stand in line to get my coffee every week except last week. Then I drive and meander through Scottsdale, South Scottsdale. I drove by Coronado High this morning, and it was incredible. Out on the football field are all these white chairs. Everything's set. Graduation must be tonight or tomorrow.

I spoke at Baccalaureate at Mountain View High School last Sunday, probably three or four hundred kids and their parents. I'm not sure that I gave a Zig Ziglar type of message, but I tried to tell them, "You have all these dreams at this moment, and none of them are going to come true. All you got to do is ask the people on this side. They were not on their high school graduation night dreaming about you. It doesn't work that way." You're going to have all of these wonderful things that happen, but you're going to have these really difficult things that happen. You're going to find the difficult things are going to be more worthwhile.

My point was, and we test drove it last week in here, what you do is not as important as how you do it. Some of you were dreaming about this app that you're going to develop, and probably by the time you get out of college, you'll make a bunch of money and everything's going to go right. The only app you're going to have is filling out one for a minimum wage job somewhere. But that's okay.

When things are beyond my control, it's a great place to be because all of a sudden, rather than feeling dominant and in charge, I get that it's beyond me. Whether I'm a follower of Christ or not, this is a place I don't want to be, but it's a great place to be because it exposes me. I don't want to be exposed.

The Deep Need to Be Known

Listening to a discussion on the way down about loneliness, they just made the comment. Sandy said last night, "I was in a meeting the last couple days, and virtually every guy in there has been talking about how lonely they are." By lonely, because these guys are busy. They got small groups and accountability groups and all this. They don't mean that. What this lady defined as lonely is we don't feel like we're known or understood. I don't feel like anybody gets me, and that's all you want.

I live in a world of fixers. Everybody I'm around wants to fix everything. Every time, so now this boot thing, "Well, have you been to this doctor? You know, what's your vitamin D? Are you getting enough asparagus? I got a guy in Mexico." Everybody wants to fix it. Nobody goes, "Gosh, I'll bet that's aggravating. How are you adjusting?" I don't want to be fixed. I want to be known.

The reality is the only one who knows you perfectly is God. Jonah, when I'm desperate, is when I get that. Jonah says, "I'm desperate. I cried out in my distress. I cried out to the God who I didn't want to know me. I'm running from His presence."

Jonah's Recognition and Faith

"For You have cast me into the deep." He's not wondering how did I get here. "You put me here. Why? Because I was running from You into the heart of the seas, and the current has engulfed me, and all the breakers and bills are passing over me. So I said I've been expelled from Your sight."

Well, that's what you wanted. I thought that's what you were doing. You were happy about that. But I realize, as he says it, he's confirming what we have said: you can't run from the sight of God. "I've been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again toward Your holy temple."

I'm in the belly of the fish. It feels fairly helpless and hopeless here, but I know. You see the faith there? Genesis chapter 22: Abraham has got Isaac with him. He's going up the mountain. He's going to sacrifice Isaac. You know the story, right? Many of you. He's going to sacrifice Isaac. We know he's serious about it because the story ends with Abraham ready to plunge his knife into Isaac when God stops him. But as they're going up, Abraham says to the servants, "You wait here. The boy and I will go," listen to the language now, "and we will return."

He's going to kill him, but he knows God, and he knows His promise. Somehow, he doesn't know specifics, he's believing in the resurrection. He's believing that God's going to intervene. It's the same faith that we see here in the person of Jonah.

God's Call to Trust Him Alone

Let me read to you from Isaiah 30 from the Living Bible: "Woe to my rebellious children," says the Lord. "You ask advice from everyone but Me and decide what to do, and you do what you want. You yoke yourselves to unbelievers, thus piling up your sins. For without consulting Me, you've gone on to Egypt to find aid and have put your trust in Pharaoh for his protection and protection. If you've been trusting Pharaoh, you will be disappointed, humiliated, disgraced." He can't deliver on the promise to save you. "You're stubborn rebels."

tell My prophets, shut up, we don't want to hear it anymore. They say, don't tell us the truth. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies. Forget about the gloom. We've heard more than enough about the Holy One of Israel.

He says, you're seeking these gods. It's the same thing here that we see in Jonah 5. The waters encompass Me to the point of death. The great depth engulfs Me. Weeds are wrapped around My head.

Caught in Life's Entanglements

For something like 15 years, every August, we took the girls to a place called Sea Ranch. Sea Ranch is this wonderful place in northern California. 114 miles north of San Francisco. I took Sandy there last year, and she hated it. I said, coming home, the only way I'm going to go back to Sea Ranch is if they spread my ashes up there because she's not about to go back to Sea Ranch.

But we loved it. I think maybe because we went there as a family and you build memories. There's a series of beaches. Small. Some of them may be the size of this room. Some bigger. And they're not like Coronado. It's just this beautiful sand. Some of them have these weeds that have been pulled in from the ocean. They're these long, slimy... And I remember one year, one of the girls got tangled up in one of these. She said, help me, help me. I said, well, this is more what your mom does. I'm resting right now.

And I thought of Jonah. He's in with all these weeds around him and it's all of life and it's tied him all in. And he said, I descended to the root of the mountains and the earth with its bars was around me forever. But thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O God.

While I was fainting away, I remember the Lord and my prayer came to me. Verse eight, those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness. It's the same thing that we saw in Isaiah 30 is if you're trusting in Pharaoh or the things of this world, you will be disappointed. False idols never fail to fail.

The False Promise of This World's Idols

Maybe I'm in this. I was at last night, I was at a kindergarten graduation and never been to the school before. EduPrize, never been there before. 21 kindergartners, a long program. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm saying lots of singing. They did a song for every month and what they've learned for the year. And this teacher was there and she seemed like the sweetest little thing. And I don't mean that in a patronizing way. Total control of these 21 kids with distractions all around them.

But it's the kindergartner's mother trying to tell me something at 7:30 so she knows I'm in here. But this lady said, this is my last kindergarten graduation. I'm retiring. I've been teaching for 34 years. And I don't know, something in me popped. I was swept away in this lady.

And then I see the graduation this morning and I'm thinking of all this hope and I don't want to be the cynical old guy. I don't think I am. That would have been a good place for you to say amen right there. I don't think I am. But when I saw the Coronado chairs out there this morning, I thought, you've got all these things that are competing, these false idols, and we don't ever grow out of them.

I stood right here four months ago and my hands hurt so much and I said, I can't imagine anything else. My hands hurt. If my hands get better, everything will be right. And my hands feel better and now I can't drive. I got other parts that can start to fall apart but I don't want to say anything anymore. So, all of a sudden, health becomes an idol. Even to a follower of Christ.

The Disappointment of Misplaced Trust

If I think I'm going to find permanent hope in anything, any person, place, or thing other than Jesus, I'll be disappointed. I was looking for a couple of quotes the other day and I found the old Zig Ziglar quote. Money will buy you a bed but not a good night's sleep. A house but not a home. A companion but not a friend.

This is a warning to those of you who don't know Christ. We're going to talk about it in a minute. But to those of us who do, false idols can creep in. If I just had that. If just this would fall into place, I'd be happy. Well, I might find momentary relief.

If I can just get this, I look around and see business guys. I know the thought process. If I can just get this deal going, then anything, if I could ever get this deal done. I did the governor's prayer breakfast years ago and Fife was the governor. And I was sitting next to him and he didn't know me from a post and he was saying, well, tell me what you do. And I said, commercial real estate and stuff. I said, in fact, I was right behind you with the second bid on the esplanade. And he didn't beat, he just looked at me and he said, I wish you'd have gotten it. And I thought the day he made it was like the happiest day of his life. And the most, you don't know.

Faith in the Right Object

The thing I can trust and look at the language. It's strong language in verse eight. Those who regard vain idols forsake their faithfulness. See, faith is our issue. That's so important. Every time I see a plane crash and hear about those that died in the crash, I immediately think of this illustration.

Faith was not their problem. The pilots especially had enormous amounts of faith. Those that got on the plane had faith. The problem was not their faith, their depth of it, but the object of the faith. If you're trusting something to do for you, what it's not capable of doing, you've put your faith in the wrong place.

Salvation Is from the Lord

So he gets to, let's see if I can tie this together. I will make sacrifice to Thee with a voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed, I will repay. Here's the whole message of the Scripture. Salvation is from the Lord. Salvation, deliverance.

John 3:16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. It's the theme of the whole Scripture. John 5:24, truly, truly, I say to you, He who hears my words and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. It's that, have you been saved? I came to Phoenix in 1975, and I'd

Faith: Seeing from God's Perspective

I was driving somewhere and I'd never seen a Circle K. There was a Circle K, and I don't remember where or which one. I pulled up and there was this old Volkswagen bus there. On it was a bumper sticker that said, "I found it." Remember any of those? "I found it." It was a campus crusade kind of drive they had.

So I thought, well this is interesting. The bumper sticker did exactly what it was supposed to do. It created this curiosity in me. Out came this guy from the Circle K and I said, "Hey, I see that bumper sticker, 'I found it,' what is it?" And he said to me, "I don't know man, it's my brother's van." So I missed the whole "I found it" campaign. But I wanted to go, "Found what? Is it a drive they're having out here? Something catchy on the radio? Is it a lost Dutchman's mine? They found a pot of gold, what is it?"

Well what that said is that word "save." "I found it." What this person has said is "I've found life." I'm driving around town and I see a billboard and it says, "Win at life." I don't know what that means. Get more than anybody else? Here's how you win at life: You understand that you're a sinner and your sin separated you from God and Christ died so that you might have everlasting life.

While we talk about that, and we grind that—what we fail to understand is it's not just that I'm prepped for heaven, but I'm prepped for this world now. I can see things differently now. I have faith.

The True Nature of Faith

I was listening to a preacher the other day who ended up, I thought, being really good. He was talking about faith and he said, "Faith is the ability to see things from God's perspective." That's really pretty good. I begin to see everything from God's perspective.

Faith isn't "I hope, I hope, I hope." It's not trying to conjure up enough belief to something to make it come to pass. It's saying, "No, I see things as they really are." It's the assurance of things hoped for. It's the reality that God is who He said He was. And in moments like this, I find that salvation is from the Lord.

The issue of the quality or depth of my faith is not my problem. It's the object of my faith. God will never disappoint. Why? Well, He will do what He said He would do. You don't have to—you may wonder how. I don't know how He's going to do that. It's a cliffhanger. I'm in the middle of this. And I'm like Jonah, I'm in way over my head. I don't know how it's going to happen. But I know that's that promise. That's what faith is. It's only as good as the object that you're trusting to perform a task.

The Importance of Reliable Promises

I love to tell the story about my friend Larry Wright. It's a Thursday like this when he used to teach down at the Women's Center. I was up afterwards putting away his taping equipment and taking care of stuff for him. We're talking and there's a guy leaving. Larry, you had to know Larry. But Larry had that little point he'd do. He said, "Hey, buddy, I'm going to see you Sunday night. I'm going to be there. You're going to be there?" "Yeah, I'm going to be there. Sunday night." That's the way Larry would do it.

I said, "What's that?" He said, "Oh, I'm doing a wedding." Larry hated to go to weddings. He hated being in weddings and he didn't like performing them. But he said, "You know, he's a special guy. He's been around. I'm going to do the wedding. Sunday night, five o'clock."

So Larry is a man of routine. On Sunday, he watches the Cowboys. He was a big Cowboy fan. Those days you only got one game. He watches the Cowboys. Then he has dinner. He's getting ready for the week and he pulls out his book. It's about seven o'clock Sunday night. All of a sudden he sees that he was supposed to do that wedding at five o'clock and totally forgot about it. What's interesting—the guy never called him.

But you got to know Larry. If Larry says "I'm going to be there at five," he's there at 4:45. If Larry says "it'll be in the mail tomorrow," it's in the mail tomorrow. See, a promise is only as good as the capacity that one has to fulfill the promise. Sincerity doesn't matter. But ability does. God has the ability.

God's Unwavering Promises

God says, "I'll never fail you. Salvation is from Me and Me alone." Salvation is utterly, completely a work of God. You've been saved from the consequence of your sin and the bondage of your sin. You don't have to sin anymore. But here's the inspiring message: you will. But when you do, He'll forgive you.

That's not a cause to sin more. That's assurance and confidence that should touch the heart that you have for gratitude and thanksgiving to Him for what He's done.

God of the Second Chance

The fish has had enough and God's not done. Chapter 2, verse 10: "Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah up onto dry land." Chapter 3, verse 1, next week: "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time." God is a God of the second chance.

I've been thinking so much about golf. I was working on my hands to get me ready to play. I'm going to play 10 or 12 holes in July. That's my goal. I was thinking about my favorite shot in golf. You know what it is? A mulligan. It's my favorite shot. It's my absolute favorite. It's like everything before it went away—I get to try it again.

I've had the experience of this. I know I'm going to hit it this way. Isn't that what you—haven't you seen that? That second shot is always better than the first. God says this: "Here's what I'm ready to do. I'm ready to give you a lifetime supply of mulligans. I'm going to let you do this again. I'm going to be the God of the second chance. I can't wipe away all the consequences, but I'm going to give you that second chance. I'm going to give you that hope."

We'll pick up chapter three, verse one next week. Father, thank You for that truth. Thank You for that amazing truth. Do it deep to our hearts. Let us rejoice that salvation is found in You. Let us take our faith and trust and put it in You, put it in You as completely as we possibly can, because You're trustworthy. God...

Thank you for saving us. God, thank you that we are saved by You and from You and now for You. God, we know that we'll fail, but we trust You to use people like us to turn this world right side up. We pray these things to You in Christ's name. Amen.