Navigating A Turnaround | Part 2 | Diving Deep

well this time last year um i was in the process uh me and my wife in the process are moving our family across country to come be a part of buckhead church here and um man it's been yeah thank you you you were clapping on the front row you can't the rest is too late it's too late but thank you so much to you the rest of you you're you're behind on that one but we were transitioning across the country and um obviously uh our family was a big concern in that we have four kids and uh for those who don't know we have sort of two sets we have two older kids and two younger kids uh we call them the bigs and the littles our two olders last year were beginning eighth and ninth grade so teenagers and then kinder kindergarten second grade were our younger guys when we were when we were moving here and um so we were we were trying to figure out like you know i i knew for me my wife's really good at this i needed to step up and like be a bit more intentional in this season and with all the new stuff with moving and job and and all of that entails i knew it could be easy for us to not uh kind of focus on them so we spent a lot of time specifically on our older kids because you know that's a difficult time to move in life especially that big a move and um and so uh we got into the year somewhere and i i just on him at one point it's like i think the little guys are doing good but i don't really know and so i'm riding the car one day with nixon who's our youngest he's six and and i just said um so nixon how are you feeling about living in georgia and like moving here versus arizona and he goes dad i love my childhood i was like well that's awesome buddy like tell me about that like what do you love about your childhood he's like well he's like i got this new school and i have all these new friends and i don't know if you know there's a pack at school and i'm in the pack and so like i'm part of the pack and like he's like and and you know we have a great house and my new room i love my new room and we have a great family and a great church and and he's like he's like i mean who wouldn't want to be me which i'm like yeah you have a pretty good life buddy i mean yeah like life's going really great and then it was quiet for a second and he said dad can we go get milkshakes i was like and there it is and so i discovered in that moment i've been accused of um parenting our older kids and grandparenting our younger kids and this was a moment where i realized like okay that's really true and i needed to turn around it was clear who was in control of the relationship at that point so um if you haven't if you weren't with us last week we're in a series called navigating a turnaround and i clearly needed a turnaround in my parenting i'm working on that by the way i'll give you an update later on um but this series uh is about what to do when things are headed in the wrong direction whether it's in your marriage or in your career in your personal life whatever it is in your family um and we're diving deep into this ancient story um this story of jonah and if you weren't with us last week this ancient story has like time tested wisdom for turning around just about anything regardless of what you're in the midst of and some of you are thinking i know you don't understand what i'm in the middle of well today you're going to be encouraged because jonah finds himself in a tremendous predicament as a matter of fact to catch up a little bit last week we talked about the genre of the story and this is important to understand that the genre of this story was more like parable and um you know this is like what jesus when jesus would tell a story in the new testament it wasn't like it wasn't true he was telling a story about someone or about a circumstance to to teach a point and that's the way this story is designed as a matter of fact the author primarily uses satire in the story which is kind of like poking fun at or making fun of certain behavior to correct because particularly jonah who's the prophet in the story he's not acting as he ought to he's not doing what you'd expect the prophet would do and he kind of uh writes this like like uh in our modern day culture it's sort of like snl or colbert it's like it's sort of trying to get uh the people the audience to correct their behavior and not be like jonah and and the way this the author structures this story is like a two-act play and we talked about this last week and um act one is chapter one and two because there's four chapters in jonah chapter one and two and act two is chapter three and chapter four and each each act has two scenes so there's act one and act two each have scene one and seam two and there's incredible parallelism between these two in chapter one and chapter three scene one of each act um what we're gonna see as we saw last week we're gonna see next week is the word of the lord comes to jonah and then there's he there's some wrestling and there's this external conflict that he goes through and then in chapters two and four which are scene two of each act uh there's another parallel and in this as we're gonna see today in this scene of both acts uh jonah's crying out to god and he's dealing with an internal conflict and last week in in act one scene one if you will chapter one of jonah jonah sets out in the wrong direction and we we've all heard the story we know the story he gets into a mess there's a storm and then in in the the literary technique shows this as we illustrated last week this downward spiral that jonah goes on and he creates chaos for people around him and um those people had no idea what was going on or why them they were in the middle of a storm and which often happens in life when people are behaving badly or not acting as they ought to and and other people don't know and and then usually the person who's acting poorly is not the one who's affected first in fact jonah's actually blissfully sleeping below deck uh in chapter one and then jonah gets woken up by the captain and by the crew and and and the first step which is sort of the first step as we said last week to turning around anything is opening our eyes to the reality of what's really going on when you find yourself in a situation whether it's your fault or not it the first step to a turnaround is bringing to the surface as much as possible the reality of what's happening opening our eyes and talking about and putting on the table the reality of the circumstances and situation last week i gave an opportunity if you didn't have somebody you could talk to or somebody you could do that with we wanted you to take a step just by praying we had over 150 people text us saying i'm in the midst of a turnaround situation and i need your prayers and it's all sorts all manner of things and if you didn't participate in that last week i'm gonna give you another opportunity uh today but today uh we're gonna talk about act one scene two and i'm gonna continue uh sort of with this theatrical um idea because i want us to remember uh the the the literary techniques that are going on because it's it's so helpful in understanding what's actually going on in the story and as i said last week for those of you who are concerned i'm saying this isn't true what i'm saying is it's more than true this is a story that stood the test of time and it has deep meaning for what's going on in the world in our lives and this parable it's like it's like the condensed version of them the most important parts of this story and and this fable or this parable is to teach us a point and it's it's written in this literary style that's incredibly rich and this scene the part today not only includes the fish which again sorry to you veggietale fans is not the main character of the story um but it also contains the next step in a turnaround after waking up we discover what happens next and um also as a part of today last week i opened with a story about a situation i found myself in that was in need of a turnaround and i got a bunch of uh inquiries from people like hey what happened in that situation and did things turn around how did you get things turned around so i'm going to come back to that and talk about that a little bit later as well um but we have to begin where we left off last week at the end of scene one uh jonah's thrown overboard and then we're told uh now the lord and i held out on you you didn't know this but there's actually one verse left in chapter one at the end of scene one and it's after jonah gets thrown overboard it says now the lord provided a huge fish to swallow jonah and jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights now i just want you to imagine this is where the curtain comes down on scene one you know we were on the boat and jonah gets thrown overboard and a fish swallows him and and this is an interesting motif because this is actually a literary motif that if you if you um if you were a literary major or english major something like english lit you know this this metaphor of being stuck in the belly of the beast is a is a really old metaphor but jonah jonah and um his his fellow sailors they were on this boat and this storm comes up and and again i review this because these are important details in the story so they're on this boat and i did a better job drawing this the first service saw forgive me for that but they're they're on this boat and and they're the seas are raising the you know the rain's coming down the wind's blowing like there's all sorts and they they launch jonah overboard so he goes overboard into the water splash uh into the water and then he's sinking down into the water and we find out and and this is my little bit of an uh a nod to veggie tails because i've beat up on veggie tails enough and veggietales does really great work and they're trying to do something awesome but the point is is the fish probably didn't look like this um but uh the truth is is um a huge fish and you know again metaphorically this is like this monster in the deep that comes out and and it swallows jonah hole which this motif by the way which whether you realize it or not um and he's you know he's got a little spout right here you know we got we gotta we gotta make sure we have all the details in here but he whether you know this or not this this motif of being the belly of the beast is one of the most famous and most often uh repeated story motifs in in all of literature which is ironic just as an aside that people often try to discredit the scriptures because of this story they say well there's no way that could happen and it's like and then we repeated the same motif over and over and over and this is one of the this is one of the earliest stories that we know of that has this motif and it was it was literally copied by pinocchio with geppetto and the belly of the whale um but it's also the central idea in the lion king and in star wars and gladiator in harry potter and and i could go on and on and on it's this somebody's stuck in this really difficult really hard situation it's like how are they going to get out of this like can you escape this can you get out of this and here's the thing if it didn't resonate or it wasn't relatable or it wasn't true to the human experience i mean it would have never survived much less been repeated over and over and over throughout literary history and so so jonah's trapped in the belly of the beast and he he's in this this beast and that sort of represents i guess for today like if you think about this it for us the audience it represents being stuck in circumstances or in a season of hardship or brokenness or pain or difficulty when you're wondering like how did i get here and how am i ever gonna get out of here and if you're a jesus follower in the midst of a season like this or circumstances like this you wonder to yourself like is this some sort of punishment of some kind or is there purpose for why i'm going through what i'm going through and why i'm experiencing this is is this a result of something i've done or is this something that someone else did that's caused me to be in this situation or is this something that god is doing and how long will it last and how the heck do you get out of this i mean will i ever be able to escape this and so this is the beginning of act one scene two or jonah chapter two and here's the wild thing is the curtain went down we were on the boat curtain goes down at the end of chapter one at the end of scene one and the curtain comes up on scene two and we're in a different setting from inside the fish jonah prayed to the lord his god so just to play along with you i want you to imagine this the the curtain comes up and we're in a dark place and i don't know what what it would look like if we were actually watching this in a play but we're in a seri a darkness that the whole set changed and um jonah's in the belly of the fish and he's praying out to god and what follows this is a brilliantly crafted poetic prayer from the belly of a fish you see the satire it's like i mean you read it and you go okay that probably isn't the way it happened in the belly of the fish so this story is being told in such a way that jonah's crying out to god and jonah learns some things in this situation and as a matter of fact as his prayer is repeated and i'm gonna do a little bit of work here for us but but there's there's four things sort of four quadrants and then there and the reality is is there's four couplets in this prayer and it's this theme that repeats of things related to jonah are still going down and things related to god and his interaction with god i mean remember this is an inner struggle this isn't an external struggle it's an inner struggle in him as he's wrestling with god um things are still going down for jonah and there's this upward motif with god and each of these couplets provides some unique insight regarding his experience and it's written in such a way that we're meant to take away some things from this a matter of fact it's meant to be a set of glasses through which we view our own struggles and our own circumstances and our our own difficulties so this is how it begins he said in my distress i called on the lord and he answered me from deep listen to this language from deep in the realm of the dead i called for help jonah's in deep in the midst of circumstances that he would say take most people out there are things that most people don't come back from he describes it from being in the realm of the dead and in the realm of the dead he cries out to god sound familiar in a situation where it's like i don't know what else to do i've done everything i know to do so i'm going to cry out to god and and this is where you and i can relate he's done something that he uh and this has happened many times in my life he he doesn't do what he ought to do or he thinks he has a better way or i know better for my life i know what the scripture says i know what god says but like i i think i know i know a better way that's really old literature and i know it's what's right for me and so i'm going to go my way i'm going to do my thing i don't want to go to the rocky hills of northern iraq i want to go to the beach in spain duh don't we all so it's like that's where he's headed and and when he creates a mess for himself and others then he cries out to god to save him after he's created the mess which i can relate to i know none of you have ever done that in your life but like he cries out to god like help me and wait for it and you listen to my cry god listens to him in the midst of the depths of all the like at the bottom in the belly of the peace in the worst possible situation he's kind of behaved his way into he cries out to god and here's what i think jonah would say jonah's learning from this i believe jonah would say look here's what i discovered even when you find yourself in that place you're never you're never too far you're never too far away from god that if you cry out to him he won't hear your voice you're never too far regardless of what you've done or where you've been or what you've been up to where you were last night you're never too far away to call on god because when you do he will hear you he goes to the next couplet of this going down versus going up he this is interesting it's sort of like it's the same thing over again so it was he was going down and he cried out up to god and now it's you hurled me into the depths into the very heart of the sea so jonah's going down and the current swirled about me all your waves and breakers they swept over me it's like he's being overwhelmed by this stuff it's taking him over but i i immediately go time out wait a minute we read in chapter one that the sailors threw him into the ocean but that's not jonah's perspective jonah hears he's acknowledging god's involvement in god's authority in these circumstances so the question is like so did so did god do this or did jonah do this like did is this a result of god's activity or is this a result of jonah's behavior and as the answer usually is the answer is yes it's both and god is working in the midst of jonah's behavior even though it's not what god wanted him to do and at first for jonah it felt like punishment for not aligning with god's direction look what he says he continues he says i said i have been banished from your sight yet i will look again towards your holy temple this this word banish is like an abandonment he's saying i thought you abandoned me i thought you cast me out when when you brought the storm and you launched me into the to the you launched me into the abyss and and the waters came over my head and the huge fish it consumed me i i thought you'd abandon me but then jonah's like having this head flat moment it's like but i realized like there's something about my the consequences of my situation that are not about you abandoning me it's not it's not like we think about that as punishment when when there's there's consequences but jonah's saying look here's what i discovered i discovered that the the consequences were about me being corrected not rejected this was about you correcting me and leading me in a different direction bringing correction in my life not rejection in my life you were trying to help me to turn things around and lead me in another direction and yes my behavior was part of that but you also brought some natural consequences which isn't it true like some behavior in our lives have natural consequences like you do certain things and there's consequences and you realize like okay that was my doing and and they're natural like when you're when when if you have kids or when you were a kid you didn't have to be taught um to touch the fire not to touch the fire more than once right like you touch it and like there were natural consequences it burned so you're like oh i'm going to touch that because it burns but there are other things that don't have natural consequences or at least immediate consequences like lying or disobeying or things like that and when our oldest was was young we were one of those naive parents we were like we're not baby proofing our health like we're not doing anything like that we're not lifting things up we're not gonna get it out of the reach of children it was like i was like we got electronics and they're low and i realize there's like lots of lights and knobs and it looks enticing but we're gonna teach our kids not to touch that stuff and so my son uh my oldest um he'll be in therapy one day but when he when he when he because we we tried everything out on him so he he's trying to he's trying to touch the electronics with the tv and the and the the radio and the stereo system and all that surround sound system because it looks enticing and so you know when he was touching it like i went over i was like i got to teach him not to touch that stuff so i go over i pop him on the hand don't judge me i pop him on the hand and i'm like you know like you're not allowed to touch that and and he tries to touch it again i pop on the hand i'm like no no no no no and you do this a few times and then one day my wife and i were in the kitchen we saw him crawl over to the stuff like he was in touch i was like just watching me he goes over he's about to touch and he goes no no no no no like perfect i'm brilliant it works like a consequence they need it and the point is like this is this is what god does in his kindness like this is jonah saying i thought i knew the direction i wanted to go or the direction i should go or the direction i needed to go but clearly my competency for navigating my own life is severely lacking and god brought some consequences not because he's rejecting me not because he's casting me out but because he's trying to correct me maybe looking back up to him will help me navigate this disaster i found myself in which leads us to the third couplet and the engulfing waters threatened me the deep surrounded me i love this part seaweed was wrapped around my head to the roots of the mountains i sank down the earth beneath barred me in forever this feels like the most hopeless and the most desperate and i love this this seaweed turban part is like super interesting like he's in the water and it's enveloped him it's all around him and in the ancient world um the water represented the consciousness and and going deep into the consciousness like going into the subconscious into things that are sort of repressed things that you have to really press into to explore those things meant to go deep into the inner world into your inner psyche into your inner self to understand the deeper you go like in the water metaphor it's like the darker things get which by the way just side note is my greatest fear in life deep dark water i mean anybody else with me okay maybe you're not terrified yet i just want you to imagine being on the back of a cruise ship at night falling off and being in the middle of the ocean watching the cruise ship sail away while nobody knows you're in the water terrified i i mean it's that's like the most terrifying thing you can't see what's underneath you you know there's monsters down there which which by the way this is like a great disservice if you're a new parent i want to help you um so kids aren't afraid when they're young we tell them there's no monsters in the dark that's not true that's just not true like maybe there aren't any under the bed or in the closet at the moment but all the monsters are in the dark like that's how we've survived as a people that's why you're that's why you're supposed to come home when the street lights come on remember that or or your mom told you nothing good happens after dark i mean the worst crimes take place at night like this is it's not typically in broad daylight do things like that happen and whether you know this or not if you're a science person you'll love this like did you know that we're biologically predisposed to fear in the dark like it's it's been hard wired into us neurologically over thousands of years like if you strayed too far from the fire like our ancestors like you got picked off by a predator or by a monster and this is this is symbolic here like the writer of jonas using this story to say look i get it when you go try to explore the parts of you that you've been avoiding or suppressing or trying to forget or cover up and hide it's scary it feels like they've barred you in forever like like you're never going to escape it because these things plague you over and over it's going back to last week it's not simply that you're not doing what you ought to do because just just trying to do what you ought to do is behavior modification that's not going to fix anything the question is why why aren't you doing what you ought to do that's that's a different animal that's a different monster if you will that you have to face that's often deep down inside it's in darkness it needs to be pulled out and you can't conquer those demons from your past or the difficulties or the mistakes if you're not willing to face them you know this you've heard this and so here's jonah going like this barred me and i did not think i could get out of this but god but you lord my god you brought my life up from the pit and this this term this hebrew term the pit this was actually a name it was a proper name for for something that they used to describe a trap that they would catch lions in so so what what jonah's saying is like look even though i fell into this trap you rest me rescued me out of this trap i fell into and it's the same trap i've fallen into over and over and over which interestingly enough that's that's the way it works right you you repeat the same mistakes you you you fall into the same things over and over spoiler alert for next week jonah does the same thing he falls into the same pattern again and it reminds me when i was a kid i probably don't have time for this but when i was a kid um we used to go to the thousand islands it's not just a salad dressing we used to go to a place called the thousand islands literally there's thousands of islands go figure and um we used to stay our friends owned an island which how cool is that and so we used to go there in the summer for vacation and and one of the things we love to do is is fish you can fish right off the island there's tons of fish and i didn't know we were young and we we didn't know that like catching a little bluegill and stuff like that that there was a lot better fish to be fishing for but we just like pulling them out of the water and so at one point we realized like these these little fish in the boathouse they're really easy to catch and so you put a worm on there and like you throw your hook in in seconds you're pulling a fish out which as a kid if you're pulling a fish out of the water you're catching you're not fishing so this is awesome like you're so we're having a competition me my older brother uh he's 18 months older my younger sister's four years younger and all of a sudden my sister like every two seconds pulling fish out and my dad's like taking him off the hook and she's back in catching my fish i'm like what are you doing she's like i'm not taking time to put a worm on he's like they'll just jump on the hook like walk over there i'm like i wanted to yell into the water it's a hook but this is what we do right we get hooked by the same things hooked on the same things over and over and over and you gotta at some point back up and go why am i doing this and it's like if i think if i could extrapolate what i think jonah's saying is look you have to go deeper you have to you can't just change the behavior because as you go deeper you'll become freer that's how you get rescued that's how god rescues you out of the pit is when you go deep enough to discover why am i falling into this trap just when you think you're barred in and you're never you're gonna be in this prison you can't get out of god lifts you out of that trap and then the last couplet when my life was ebbing away this is after the most intense part of what he he's experienced now it's like the lights going out like this is the most difficult moment where it feels like all hope is lost when my life was ebbing away i remembered i remembered you lord and my prayers rose to you to your holy temple hey he's calling out again and this this this idea of remembering what was a was a really profound theme in the prophets just when i thought my life was slipping away and i was never going to recover from this i remembered and to remember think about this to remember is to shift your focus you're thinking about and focused on one thing and then you remember something else and it shifts your mind from this thing to this thing and what he remembered was the lord his god and what he was capable of and he shifted his mind to from the thing that was overwhelming him as he was ebbing away he was overwhelmed he shifted his mind from the thing that was overwhelming him to the one that could help him overcome that this is this shift is is a shift to the one who could overcome all of the problems the whole the one that would eventually overcome the whole world and this this shift in focus it was a shift from um the thing that overwhelms to a place where he could overcome he could overcome versus being overwhelmed which is which when you think about it is what happens you know those of you who've who've done this and and you've worked through therapy you know when you the mind is a powerful thing when you shift your mind to something or someone that you know that they can help you lift lift you out of the pit or rescue you like you you you stop being as overwhelmed as you were before and you begin to believe that you can be overcome and and this shift in focus was ultimately a shift in trust for jonah and this is what he says about that he said those who cling to worthless idols which is what he used to trust in what he used to be focused on those who cling to worthless idols turn away from god's love for them he's saying like i used to trust in something else to kind of control my life which was the nature of idols in the in the in this this time period they actually created idols think about this they created idols that were things that they constructed they were man man-made idols and then they protected these images and they would sacrifice to these image images to try to manipulate them into getting what they wanted so they would use stuff they would use stuff in their life to try to make them happy and to control their life and to pursue and get out of life what they thought they wanted out of life which is what jonah was doing and jonah said you know those things that i was clinging to that i took hold of they took hold of me and they led me away from god's love god's best for me but but i with shouts of grateful praise will sacrifice to you instead i'm going to look to you and i'm going to sacrifice to you god what i have vowed i will make good which is what we do right we promised god like hey i'll if you get me out of this i'll never do it again right hey but i'll never do it again i'll make good i want to be proud and i will say salvation comes from the lord which you look at that and you go what a turnaround but here's what's so interesting jonah has this turn around but but look where he is all along the way he's still in the belly of the beast and he's claiming salvation which isn't exactly the belly so forgive the drawing but you get the idea he's still in in in the belly of the beast he's still in the midst of these dark circumstances and what's interesting is his circumstances haven't changed but he's found salvation he's found gratitude and here's why i think that is i think it's because the beast or the fish wasn't what he needed rescued from and this is how i know this you have to remember what happened in scene one at the end of scene one it's why i began with this as we started scene two you know the play was last week so you you need to get caught up but the beginning the end of chapter one says this it says now the lord provided a huge fish he provided the huge fish that swallowed jonah oftentimes we wonder why god prevents certain things and why he permits other things and i think jonah's saying i don't know why he he prevented you know me from he didn't prevent me from going in this situation why he permitted all this bad stuff to happen but here's what i know i know the lord provided this huge fish this place for me to be swallowed he he provided an environment for me that would help me grow and that would help me level up in life to become who i ought to be last week i told you about a situation where i was in some circumstances where they were way over my head and and many of them weren't my doing when i first got there that um i was leading a church and this organization was in a free fall and um we were losing 30 to 40 000 a month and we were four or five months from not making payroll and and like really difficult things and i was i was struggling and this is this is uh almost two years in a year and a half in and i was dealing with significant turmoil things are still not going well and in fact on my nine-mile drive from the church to my house there were times and i'm not proud to say this but there were times i'd be riding my car and i'd say okay god if this is what it is to follow you i don't think i want to like not just in these circumstances but like in life like i thought we were taking a step and we were doing what you wanted us to do and now we're here and i'm a year and a half we're almost two years in and and things are still going terribly like in in this these circumstances that i'm in and and this inner turmoil that i was dealing with was spilling over um to people around me to people i worked with in my own home and unfortunately i had some people who recognized this and recognized there were difficult things going on and began to ask me some hard questions and it led me to sort of reach out to some other people and talk to a counselor about what maybe was going on inside of me and i began to discover that a lot of this was driven by my own insecurity and and i had this fear like and i was being driven by this fear and i was operating i wasn't allowing uh god to work in my life i was i was trying to handle these circumstances by myself i was trying to do it my own way i was trying to figure it out my own way and yes we had taken a step of obedience but only to get there since i got there it was like no no i can figure this out i can handle this i can do this on my own and when things weren't turning around i was rescuing or wrestling with what happens if this thing fails like if i'm really really honest like there were days i thought like if we have to put a for sale sign out front like because the church is failing if the church doesn't make it i don't think i can make it i wasn't sure i could be okay and i had to wrestle through that i had to wrestle through the fact that i was finding my identity in what i do instead of who i am and and i was wrestling with like what this would say about me and what this would mean about me and i realized this a lot of this was about me and i'd been shielding people in the church from like what had been really going on and because i didn't want to tell them and i wasn't lying but it was one of those things where it was like you know i wanted to focus on the good news and the positive hoping things would turn around and so me and the board behind the scenes were navigating all the difficulties of the finances and all the all the difficult things and then i i called i called andy one day i include this part of the story i called andy and i just said hey listen um i need your help i need you to talk me out of something i have this idea and it's a terrible idea and i don't know what a good leader would do you've always told me think about what a good leader would do ask yourself that question i don't know so that's why i'm calling you but i'm pretty sure this is a terrible idea and i need you to talk me out of it he said okay what's the idea and i said i think i'm gonna on sunday i just wanna just like go tell the church everything that's going on it's back to school weekend it's supposed to be you know other than christmas and easter this is like a big weekend in church it's like everybody's coming back and new people show up and like this is a big big weekend of the church and i was like i was like i just feel like i just this week it was a tuesday i was like i just think i just need to tell everybody but that's a terrible idea like save me what should i do he's like i think that's exactly what you should do well that's not helpful i need to call somebody else because that's i think this is a terrible idea and he's like no that's exactly what you should do he's like i don't i've never been in a situation like that but i i think i think that's important and so literally i didn't have a fancy chalkboard then i at that time i was using a flip chart and on the flip chart i literally started the message this is no lie it was i was terrified it was it was like hey before i got here i can't really like comment on what happened like that didn't have anything to do with me and i know there were things that caused things to go downward but i've been here almost two years year and a half almost two years and here's what's happened since i got here and i'll tell you um i never been more terrified about how people would respond and i just said hey look here here's what's happening like and i laid it out loud and i just explained to them what you know how things were going down and why they were going down and i and i just told them i said like humbly like i i've never done this before and i don't i don't know what to do and and i need your help and i i realized that like i was centered around me and what i thought and me trying to figure out how to do this and what it would say about me if i couldn't and i realized this was your church before it was my church and i need your help i don't know how to fix it there are some good things happening but i need you to lean in and i saw people that for for weeks and months had sat there with their arms crossed i saw their arms come down and then start to lean forward and i just said look um we need to do this together and i need your help and it was terrifying for me to uncover that it felt like being in the belly of the beast and i thought there's no way out of this like after this day i'm not gonna have a job and i have four kids i have a family i gotta support what am i gonna do so i ended the sermon and i i told him some things they could do to help and and i prayed i'll never forget as long as i live i finished praying and i opened my eyes and i started walking off the stage and everybody in the room stood and clapped here's why this was so impactful is because that's not what you expect when you bear your soul and you tell people like hey here's what's going on inside of me here's what's really happening and i think for the first time the church was like oh we'll trust you now we trust that guy like i want to lean in i want to help you i want to lean towards you here here's the deal some of you today you're in a dark place and and and you're in a dark place here's the thing sometimes it can be terrifying you think nobody's going to lean in but sometimes when you're in a dark place you think you've been buried but you've really been planted see often what terrifies you most the owning up or the uncovering something or going to counseling or going to rehab or some residential treatment center or whatever it is is actually something that the lord has provided it feels like it swallowed you up but it's something the lord has provided as a vehicle for your growth and your transformation for you to level up for you to grow for you to become all that he desires for you to be and at just the right time when his work is completed if you'll humble yourself and look up he will deliver you out of the belly of the beast just like he did jonah verse 10 last verse the chapter says in the lord commanded the fish and it vomited jonah i know that's disgusting but it threw him up onto dry land look as we conclude today look the first step was to wake up to own up to to to reality what's really going on step two is diving deep you you have to do this like this is this is part of the work it's it's part of what's necessitated in a turnaround you have to explore why why am i doing what i'm doing why is what's happening happening and being willing to go i realized part of this might be me like maybe there was already problems here but maybe i'm perpetuating them maybe i'm contributing to them maybe i'm enabling them there's a reason why you're headed in the wrong direction and things aren't going well the same as there was jonah and you owe it to yourself and to those around you to discover why that's necessity to finding your way out and you should also second you should consider asking for help you may have people around you or you may at times need someone who's skilled with doing inner work in your life to lead you to explore the the darkest parts of you the things that maybe you don't even remember that have happened to you or that you've done now not everybody needs counseling but i'll just tell you many do my wife jen and i both in different seasons in our lives we've needed that to to understand what's happening on the inside of us i'll just tell you you shouldn't just see anyone there's a lot of bad counselors out there i mean no offense to any of them but you should get a referral for a trusted counselor and and and at your church um or at this church someone's going to come up at the end of the service and and tell you uh what you can do at your local church and what resources they have available but here's the other thing i would say if you're not ready to explore why and you're not considering you're ready to consider asking for help would you at least let us pray for you if if that's you it's not too late you can still text turn around to five five one two five five and there's a army of prayer warriors that love interceding for people and we would love to pray for you put you on our prayer list we're not gonna badger you we're not gonna make you do anything you don't wanna do you can stay anonymous we just wanna pray for you and ask that god would turn things around he would help you understand and that you would with wisdom decipher how to turn things around see when you're ready to face the things that are holding you back that are leading you in the wrong direction the things you're terrified will take you out here's what i want you to remember you're never too far no matter how far away you think you are how bad you think things are you're never too far the consequences of what you're experiencing are god's correction not his rejection the deeper you go and exploring why you are where you are the freer you'll become and what seems overwhelming it's already been overcome 700 years later jesus would show up he would quote and affirm the story of jonah and say hey one even greater has has come and he confirmed all the things jonah said and he said look i don't even i don't need rescuing but through his own death and resurrection he proved his power to rescue and he validated jonah's declaration that salvation comes from the lord let me pray for you god i pray for somebody who's here today who maybe is a friend of somebody or maybe if they themselves are in a situation that it's difficult they're not sure why what's what's going on is going on maybe it's not even a full-blown mess maybe they don't feel like they're in the belly of the beast yet i pray that you would give them the wisdom to realize that it's never too early and it's never too late to look up to cry out to you that the consequences and the difficulty is not you abandoning them it's you trying to steer them back and correct them back or maybe you want to use them to try to steer somebody else and correct somebody else back god i pray that you would give somebody courage today to take a step to ask for help to be willing to do the hard the deeper work that leads to maximum freedom from those traps that that catch us over and over and over and then god today i pray that somebody who's in the midst of circumstances that seem overwhelming they seem like it's a prison they'll never get out of that you would help them to recognize that there is one who's overcome in fact he's overcome the whole world that they would look up and they would choose to shift their focus they would remember there's a god who sent his son who gave his life for them that they would look up and they would recognize the truth of what it looks like to trust you and how you'll raise them up out of the pit we pray it in jesus name amen