Leading The Way

Guest (Male): An up-close and personal look at God’s call and Jonah’s disobedience. Next, on Leading The Way Audio with Dr. Michael Youssef.

Dr. Michael Youssef: In spite of Jonah’s disobedience, in spite of his running away from the call of God upon his life and the mission that God has for him, in spite of all of that, none of that stopped God from using Jonah mightily afterward. And listen, that’s what God wants to do with you. God wants to use you now.

Guest (Male): Thank you for taking time in your listening day for Leading The Way with international Bible teacher and author, Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth from God’s word for more than 35 years.

Storms in your life are common and they’re unavoidable, allowing you to better understand Jonah at some level, especially when life sometimes serves up situations resembling a dark ocean of hopelessness and death. But as you’ll hear next, storms offer opportunities to respond biblically or not so biblically. So, if you’re feeling the weight of life’s circumstances sweeping you away, listen as Dr. Michael Youssef brings practical advice from God’s word on Leading The Way.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Storms in life make us either better people or bitter people. That’s what a storm does in every believer’s life. Either it’s going to make you a better believer, or it’s going to make you a bitter believer. Either it’s going to make you come out of the storm stronger for Christ, make you have greater power and greater faith and greater commitment and greater effectiveness for Christ, a more powerful testimony to share, or you’re going to look at the storm and you look back, even though if you came out of it, and you say, “Where was God when I needed Him? How could God let me go through this? Why me? I don’t deserve this.”

And then you develop a cold love—C-O-L-D, cold love. You say, “Michael, what is cold love?” Cold love expresses itself this way: “I will go to church, but I will never get involved. I will show up, but I’ll never commit to anything. I’m going to stand on the sideline. I might wave hello, but I will never fellowship and I’ll never have intimacy and I’ll never have a relationship.” That’s a cold love.

But also there are two important things that you must understand about these storms that come into our lives. They are never the same to every one of us. See, what is a storm in my life might not be a storm to you at all and say, “What are you whining about, Youssef?” And what is a storm to you might not be a storm to me at all. So we all have different storms and affect us differently and we view them differently.

The second thing is this: there are basically three causes of variety of storms. There are storms in our lives which we cause. It’s our action. It’s something we have done, and it’s the consequences of what we have done. There are storms in life that we did not cause, but others around us have caused the storm. Somebody else did something, somebody else said something that caused us a storm in our lives, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. Other people do, say things that would cause us a storm and we get caught in the backwash.

The third kind of storms that is neither you have anything to do with it or somebody else anything to do with it, but really are those storms that are permitted by the Lord in order to test us and to prove us. The Bible talks about testing the believers like gold. You know, when you boil the gold and gets into a certain temperature, all the dross comes out and skimmed out in order the gold may be pure, and that’s the image the Bible uses of testing of believers.

And that is why the first question you must ask yourself when you are in a midst of a storm, the first question that you must ask, “What is the cause of this storm that is brewing in my life? What kind of a storm is it?” And then I would say, go through what I call the three Cs: what caused it, what is the cure, and what are the consequences? The cause, the cure, and the consequence. Can we say that together? The cause, the cure, and the consequence.

And you must begin by asking the cause. Take time to examine what caused that storm in your life. And then if you react to it biblically, then you will discover that this storm can turn into a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for witnessing. If you deal with that storm in a biblical fashion, you’re going to see that God is going to bless you in such wonderful way you never thought possible. And you say, “How can God bless me through the storm?” He will, if you react to it in a biblical fashion.

Now, there are some people who go through the storm, and as soon as the sign of the storm in their life starts brewing, they get discouraged. They really do. They get despondent and they get discouraged, and they refuse to go through those three Cs process. They immediately react with despair in face of the storm. The truth is, listen to me very carefully, please: God never, never, never wants us to despair. He wants us to pray.

You know, I was thinking about this despair and I was thinking about how many people react that way, and I remember them myself reacting in those situations at times in my life and in despair. And I thought of something that’s really relevant to me. I have a very weak stomach, especially when it comes to seasickness. Those of you who have that problem, you understand what I’m talking about. Those of you who don’t, God bless you, I forgive you.

Well, I read about this passenger who was crossing the Atlantic on a ship, and some way along the way they began to face some really rough seas. I mean, that ship was bobbing up and down like a cork. And the passenger, obviously had my kind of problem, was leaning over on the rail, and I’m going to let you use your imagination here, and he was turning into several shades of green. And right then a steward came by and he was trying to really encourage him.

And he said to him, “Don’t be discouraged, sir. No one ever died of seasickness.” And the nauseated passenger looked at him with baleful eyes and he said, “Oh, don’t say that. It is only the hope of dying that is keeping me alive.” I know exactly how this dear brother felt. In many ways, Jonah knew that only when he gets tossed overboard into the depth of the sea, the storm will calm. He knew that, and he told them so.

But you see, God has had other plans for Jonah. Let’s look now at the three Cs, okay? And if you taking notes, write them down: the cause, the cure, and the consequence. The cause of that particular storm was what? Was Jonah’s disobedience. That’s what caused it. That’s what he said. He knew that, he understood that, he declared that.

And the reason so many Christians do not know how to cope with the storms in their life, the reason so many Christians do not know how to take and have victory in the midst of the storms in their lives, is because they do not stop long enough and ask, “What is the root cause of this storm in my life?” The cure can only come after you examine the root cause. Most people want to find the cure first, then figure out the cause. But that’s backward.

You cannot find the cure before the cause. Ask any doctor. He is not going to prescribe medicine to you until he diagnoses the problem. And so you have to diagnose the problem. You have to figure out the root cause. Don’t become obsessed with the cure before discovering the cause, because most often God is waiting for you to discover the cause before He prescribes the cure.

Don’t focus only on the cure and “How do I get out of this? How do I get out of this? How do I get out of this?” Because the cure will come out of your discerning of the root cause of your storm. Did you cause the storm? Did somebody else cause the storm in your life? Well, there is a cure for that, too. Is that storm did not cause by you or somebody else, but the Lord permitted it in your life? There is a cure for that, too.

But let me warn you that whenever you get into a storm in your life, my goodness, there are a bunch of people, they immediately point their bony finger at you and say, “See, it’s your fault. It is your sin. It is your lack of faith.” And they heap false guilt on you before even you had time to find the cause. Like Job’s friend. Remember Job? I mean, no matter what he said, his friends kept saying, “Oh no, you must have been a bad boy. Surely all of this would not have happened if you were not a bad boy.”

He said, “I examine my life. I examine my life over and over and over. I know I have not done anything,” but they kept saying, “No, no, no, you been a bad boy.” I’ll tell you what, I don’t want anything to do with these self-righteous creeps. You know what I mean? These called friends, they’re not friends at all. Read my lips: no one can tell you the cause of a storm in your life except you. You’re the only one who can do that, between you and God.

Oh, to be sure, sometimes you may reach out to some godly person to help you think through it, help you identify the cause if you can’t. But that’s very different from these people pointing their bony finger at you and saying, “It’s your fault.” Now back to Jonah. The storm that threatened to break this Mediterranean cruise in two was caused by Jonah himself. He was the one, and he gave them the reason. He told them, he said, “I’m the guy.”

But please listen carefully, listen very carefully. This storm was an indication that God had not, had not—did you get that?—had not given up on Jonah. And that is why in spite of Jonah’s rebellion, in spite of his disobedience, in spite of his running away from the call of God upon his life and the mission that God has for him, in spite of all of that, none of that stopped God from using Jonah mightily afterward.

And listen, that’s what God wants to do with you. It doesn’t matter what your past refusal to obey God is. It doesn’t matter your past disobedience. It doesn’t matter your past doubt. It doesn’t matter your past reluctance. God wants to use you now. Whether it’s in your workplace or your neighborhood or your school or the community or the golf course or the sports arena, wherever you are, hammer out on this one.

God wants to bring glory for Himself out of your storm, whatever it may be. God wants to make you a blessing in the midst of your storm. God wants to bring victory out of your storm. God wants to bring a revival out of your storm. God wants to manifest His power out of the storm in your life. But you want first to identify the cause of the storm.

Secondly, there is the cure. Look at verse 12 and 13 and 14 of Jonah chapter one. Look what he said. He said, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea and it will become calm.” Jonah knew the cause, but he also knew the cure. Instead, they refused. And they said, “No, no, no, we don’t like what you’re saying. What we’re going to do, we’re going to keep trying on rowing and we’re going to row and row and row back to land.”

Not that they only refused the cure, they were fearful that God will punish them for accepting the cure. Beloved, let me tell you something. There are several ways that you can react to the cause of the storm. You can row harder and harder and harder. You can try to get yourself involved in all sorts of busyness and activities in life, and you can even bury yourself in your work, and you can use your own strength to try to bring yourself out of the situation.

You can dig deeper and try harder, and you can grit your teeth a little more and tough it out. But the problem cannot be solved that way. None of these things will work. They will not work. The sailors tried everything, and nothing worked. Beloved, let me tell you, when it comes to the call of God in your life—and one of the saddest things, there are some people think that only God has a call on the life of those who are in full-time ministry.

That’s not biblical. I mean, it’s biblical that He has the call, but He has a call on every one of His children. He has a call on your life. He is calling you wherever you are. He’s calling you right now. And the question is, have you identified that call and have you obeyed that call, or you’re trying to be like Jonah and say, “Surely not me, Lord, and definitely not them.”

When it comes to the call of God in your life, He wants you to say, “Oh Lord, here is my mind, think through it. Here is my heart, love through it. Here are my hands, work through them. Here are my feet, walk through them.” A well-known South African theologian once said, he said, “The Christian life is not difficult.” Did you hear that? It’s not difficult. He said, “It’s impossible.”

On our own strength, absolutely it’s impossible. The call of God in your life sounds so humungous you don’t want even want to face it. Only when Christ lives in you that the Christian life becomes fun and joy-filled. Did you know that there are many Christians like these sailors on this Mediterranean cruise? They know the cure of the storm, but they don’t want to follow it. They got their ideas.

They don’t want to take the medicine. They want to think with their emotions instead of thinking with the Holy Spirit. They want to use their human secular wisdom instead of biblical wisdom. They want to apply humanistic principles instead of biblical principles. They want to do it themselves. And God is saying, all you need to do is confess, repent, and make restoration.

These sailors tried to throw cargo overboard, it didn’t work. I mean, they tried to row as hard as they could, didn’t work. There was only one way for their deliverance and the abating of the storm. It was to throw Jonah where? No, not to the sea. It was to throw him in the hands of God. That’s where he was going to go. It is to surrender him to the sovereign God. It is to give him up to the loving arms of God.

And it was through those three days of death in the belly of the fish, and then coming out again, that God brought salvation to Nineveh. You know, there are a lot of people all around us who believe that they’re going to make it to heaven if they try hard, if to be good enough for God. And you and I know that it is only through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, His death, His burial, and resurrection can they ever make it to heaven.

Let me ask you this: are you rowing hard in the middle of the storm of your life? Are you burning the candle on both ends? Are you pushing every lever in your life and nothing is happening? Are you spinning your wheels and going nowhere? All you need to do is say, “Surely Lord, it’s me. And definitely I’ll go to them.” All you need to do, stop blaming everybody else and say, “Lord, I’ll go. Lord, I’ll do. Lord, I’ll give. Lord, I will obey. Lord, I’ll sacrifice. Lord, I will offer myself.”

Jonah recognized the cure from the storm. It was to stop running away from the will of God in his life, is to stop running away from the ministry that God has given him, is to stop running away from the plan of God and the call of God upon his life. But the question is this: have you ever asked yourself, why did Jonah ask them to throw him into the sea? Was he suicidal? Was he self-destructive?

Was he fatalistic? Did he have a martyr’s complex? The answer is no, none of the above. When he said, “Throw me overboard,” he was saying, “I am done with running away. I am done with disobeying. I am done with wanting to do my own thing. I’m now ready to trust God fully.” The cause, the cure, the consequence. Look at verses 15 and 16 of Jonah chapter one.

The raging sea immediately calmed down. The moment Jonah surrendered to God’s plan and God’s call, the moment he stopped saying, “Surely not me and definitely not them,” peace and calm was restored. The clouds rolled like paper and the sky was blue again. Did you know that Jonah’s effectiveness for God did not begin when he got to Nineveh? No, no, no. It began much earlier than that.

You can see it in your text. It began the moment he said, “Yes, Lord.” You know who were his first converts? The sailors, these pagan sailors. Look at verse 14. It’s right there in the Bible. They called on the name of, not their pagan gods like they did in the beginning of the chapter. No. In fact, it says the Lord, but it’s Jehovah. They called upon the name of Jehovah.

Hear me right on this one. God did not want to kill Jonah. God did not want to destroy Jonah. God did not want to hurt Jonah. He wanted to save him and save others through him. He wanted to give him victory. He want to use him mightily. He wanted to make him a blessing to many, just like He wants with you. He saved you for a purpose. He saved you so that you might help save others and bring the redeemed to the foot of the cross.

Let me ask you this as I conclude. What are you holding onto? I mean, what are you really grasping on, that clutching your hands and you’re saying, “Not this, not this.” What are you refusing to hand back to God? What is it that you’re refusing to surrender? Only you know that. Only I know that. Here’s the irony. God doesn’t want to take it from you anyway.

He gave it to you. Everything you have, He gave you. And you know, if He wants to take it, He can just click His fingers and take it away. He can do that. He’s God. Hello. No, but He doesn’t. Because He really wants to multiply it for you. He wants you to be willing to hand it to Him before He can take it and bless it and multiply it million times over. And He wants you to surrender first. And He’s waiting for you.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for Leading The Way. Are you in one of life’s storms right now? Maybe a conversation with a Leading The Way pastor or a counselor could help shine some light into your darkness. Reach out, start that conversation at LTW.org/Jesus.

Guest (Female): I started listening to Leading The Way early 2000s, and at first I didn’t think I liked it as much. But as the years have grown, this ministry has become more and more a part of how God is refining me and growing me in my life. One of the most significant ways is in my faith as a believer.

Even though I’ve been a believer for a while, I didn’t know what it meant to have confident faith in God. Michael Youssef’s balanced message has allowed me to grow and go to God with more confidence, and I’m continuing to grow in that way. The second way Leading The Way has blessed me is through the ministry of reaching to the Muslim world. I always thought I’d be a missionary, and that so far has not been the way God has guided my path.

But being a part of seeing people come to know Jesus Christ through Leading The Way is a tremendous blessing to me. And just watching how so many countries are being impacted blesses my heart to see even in Indonesia, it blesses my heart to see the impact on London, it blesses my heart to see how you’re involved with Egypt. And I am just thrilled in this very, very small way that God has chosen to use me.

Guest (Male): Learn ways to stand with Dr. Youssef and Leading The Way when you call 866-626-4356 or LTW.org. That’s 866-626-4356 and LTW.org. And of course, you can also reach out to Dr. Youssef through the postal service: Leading The Way, Post Office Box 20100, Atlanta, Georgia, 30325. That’s Post Office Box 20100, Atlanta, Georgia, 30325.

This program is furnished by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth around the world.