Unwanted Grace

Last week I wrote about Jonah in my snapshot of grace and this week we received the following in an email from one of our missionary friends.

This morning, I read a newsletter from a missionary friend who has cancer
and in it she talked about God's "unwanted" grace they have experienced.
Intrigued, I found my way to a sermon by William Lawrence on the same topic.
You can read his detailed sermon outline on Jonah 1:1-3. Here are some of his concluding points. I needed these words! Perhaps they will encourage
some of you. For the whole sermon look at www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=5838

Unwanted grace is God's unrelenting call for us

* to take greater risk than we ever imagined
* to face stronger forces than we ever dreamed
* to fight bigger battles than we ever thought possible
* and nearly all of this is in ourselves!

We must face the greatest enemy of all: ourselves.

Why does God bring unwanted grace in our lives Unwanted grace always means death:

* the death of pride
* the death of self-confidence
* the death of self-reliance
* the death of false hope

Unwanted grace: the opportunity to become more than we ever dreamed we could become by becoming less than we ever thought we could.

CONCLUSION

Unwanted grace always brings us to one simple choice: the choice to be Jonah or Jesus.

All of us can be Jonah; there's nothing hard about running away from what we don't want. Unwanted grace always leads us to where Jesus went.

Nevertheless, not my will, but yours.

Unwanted grace always leads us to the cross-the decision to take up the cross, to follow Jesus to the grace we need to trust God for resurrection so we can become the men and women God wants us to be. If we resist this we will remain small, caught up in our self-centered and unresponsive hearts, thinking we have a corner on salvation, given over to pleasure and selfish ambition and a life-style of comfort and ease. We will be Jonahs: brittle, demanding, angry, self-centered, and unresponsive. But if we respond to God we will discover what unwanted grace really is:

The opportunity to be more than we ever dreamed we could by becoming less than we ever thought we could.