Lord, There's A Little Bit Of Jonah In Me

A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
______________

Robert J. Morgan
July 21, 1999

It is an honor to be invited to speak at the Wednesday night service of the National Association of Free Will Baptists; and I want to begin by telling you something I've never shared before with an audience; and I'm not even sure I've every told this to my family or friends.

But it was on just such a Wednesday night as this, at a National Associational service many years ago, that the Lord began dealing with my heart about Christian service. I wasn't very committed to Christ at the time -- just a confused teenager -- and I recall sitting in the high galleries as far away as possible, with Jon Wilson, son of Foreign Missions Director J. Reford Wilson. It was a long, hot service, and I was glad when the preacher finally rambled to an end.

But to my surprise, there was response to the invitation. The Holy Spirit seemed to descend upon the crowd, and from my perch looking down on the hall, I saw scores of people leave their seats and clog the aisles. Without saying a word to me, my companion slipped from his seat and went forward. Suddenly I felt the Lord knocking at my door that night, saying, "Shouldn't you be up there, too? What are you waiting for? Why not give yourself fully to Christ tonight?"

But there was a little bit of Jonah in me, and I just stood there; and it wasn't until later that the Lord got hold of me. But it was that service that first pricked my conscience about surrendering my life to Christ for fulltime Christian service.

And perhaps tonight you're in the same boat.

It's no accident we've gathered together here on this summer's evening at the end of the 20^th century. It is a poignant time in history, and we are here by divine appointment. You are present by divine providence. You may be a young person, but perhaps you are like I was -- you haven't yet fully committed your life to Christ and to his kingdom.

Maybe there's a little bit of Jonah in you, too. Tonight I'd like to speak on the subject, "Lord, there's a little bit of Jonah in me!" and I'd like to ask you to turn to that book of the Bible, Jonah -- chapter one, verse one:

A Story of Weeping

I'd like to say three things tonight about this book in the Bible, and the first thing is this: The story of Jonah is a story of weeping, for Jonah was told to go to Ninevah and to cry… to cry out… to proclaim a message that reflected the weeping heart of God. It is the story of the heart of God weeping for a lost city and for a confused world. We, too, are living in times that make us cry.

We live among people who are hurting very badly. I know of a family who was raising a teenage daughter, and one night there was an argument in the home. The teenager stormed up to her room and locked the door, and the anxious parents went to bed disheartened. The next morning when the girl didn't get up for school, they knocked on the door. There was no answer. Breaking down the door, they saw the trap door into the attic opened, and going up there they found her hanging by her neck. In an instant, the lives of every member of that family were ravaged forever. We are living in times that make us cry.

I've been following news from Zambia. 90,000 children live on the streets of Zambia, most of them orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. More than half the 600,000 children of Zambia have lost at least one parent. Death is so common that coffins are sold out of brightly colored vans parked alongside the roads. The younger children living on the street find abandoned petrol or aerosol cans to sniff, trying to remain numb. Teenagers live in a state of constant drunkenness from a homemade beer and from smoking something called jekem, which is fermented human feces scraped from sewer pipes. They are an abandoned, lost generation, living dazed on the streets and dying in the sewers. We are living in times that make us cry.

The other night on the television news, there was a story about a man on the New York subway -- 37 years old, 5 foot 6, 170 pounds. He had on jeans, a gold polo shirt, and black boots. He was sitting there on the subway as people got on and got off, coming and going, bustling movement all around him. But he was dead. He had sat down and died and nobody had noticed.

Here we are, Christians, living in a world full of dead people -- we come and go and ride around in circles, and sometimes we lose our burden. We forget that we're surrounded by people who are dead to Christ and dead to hope. We forget that we are serving a Savior who wept over the city of Jerusalem and by the tomb of Lazarus. He weeps tonight over this city of Atlanta, over this state, over this backslidden country, over the 259 nations of the world, and over the 10,000 tribes that remain unreached with the Gospel.

A Time of Sleeping

So the Lord told Jonah, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry… Care about them! Do something for them! Evangelize them. Save them." But what happened to Jonah? That's the second thing to notice -- the story of Jonah is also a story of sleeping.

The book of Proverbs says, He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.

And I wonder if it isn't likewise with us. Here we are at the end of the second millenium, in the middle of the greatest harvest season the church of Jesus Christ has ever known in its entire history, but most of us, to be honest about it, are relatively unaware and uninvolved.

A couple of years ago Don Robirds asked me to write an article for Heartbeat Magazine on whether or not our denomination could afford to substantially increase the number of missionaries we were sending out. I was shocked to discover that our entire international missions budget could be met if the average Free Will Baptist church member gave just 7.5 cents a day to the cause.

To put it differently, if each one of us gave to the 50 cents we spend on our morning newspaper, we would increase our denominational missions budget seven-fold, and instead of 100 missionaries, we could support 700.

Somebody's asleep.

And what about our prayer support. J. O. Fraser was a missionary to China in the early 1900s. He credited the conversion of hundreds of Lisu families to the prayers of his very earnest little prayer group back in England. He said, Christians at home can do as much for foreign missions as those actually on the field. It will only be known on the Last Day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home.

But most of us don't take those prayer letters very seriously. We're more likely to scan them and toss them in the trash than we are to spread them out before the throne in earnest prayer like Hezekiah during the Assyrian crisis.

Somebody's asleep.

And what about the internationals flooding into our country? There are approximately 800,000 international students in the U. S. right now for training. Some of them will go back to be the political and military and educational leaders in their countries. We can reach some of them. But not if we're asleep.

Recently a missiologist friend of mine related to me what she called "the biggest lost opportunity in missionary history." There was a 13-year-old in Mongolia who inherited a bit of land from his father. This boy was a precocious warrior with instinctive brilliance as a military strategist; he was also ruthless, and he formed fighting bands that went from village to village until he was ruling over two million people in a Mongolian Empire that stretched from China to India, and from Siberia to edges of Western Europe. They gave this young man the title of Genghis Khan and he ruled over more of territory than any man has ever ruled.

Meanwhile at the same time in Western Europe a great revival was occurring under the preaching of men like St. Francis of Assisi, and thousands were becoming Christians.

Following Khan's death, the bulk of his empire eventually went to his grandson, Kublai Khan, who established his capital city in Beijing. He had two Italians in his court named Polo, the father and the uncle of famed explorer Marco Polo. They began to tell Kublai Khan about Christianity, and the great ruler became very interested. He sent the Polo brothers back to with a request for 100 missionaries to tell the Mongolians and the Chinese about Christianity. "When we learn about Christianity, there will be more Christians in my empire than in all Europe," he said.

The Polos returned with the message, but no one was interested in going. Finally two friars agreed to go with the Polos (and Marco Polo accompanied them) but along the way the friars got fainthearted and turned around and went home.

When they got back to Kublai Khan, he said, "Where are the missionaries?" No one came. Eventually the church did send a small handful of missionaries, but by that time the opportunity had passed.

Perhaps tonight the Lord is speaking to you about being willing to travel overseas for his cause.

Well, the story of Jonah ends better than the one about the Polo brothers. You're aware of the story of the whale, how God eventually got Jonah headed in the right direction. And thus we discover that the story of Jonah is not only one of weeping and sleeping; it is one of reaping.

A Time of Reaping

Jonah went to Nineveh, went around the city preaching a sermon of one sentence, and the entire city was converted. Jonah 3:5 says, So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.

And I want to suggest that just as the book of Jonah brings us to the greatest single ingathering of souls in the Bible, so you and I are privileged to live during the greatest single harvest season every witnessed by the church of Jesus Christ.

According to Bob Sjogren, it took from the beginning of church history until the year 1900 for committed believers to become 2.5% of the world population. It took only 70 more years for that percentage to double. By 1970, committed believers were 5% of a much larger world population.

Then it took just 22 years to double again. In 1992, committed believers grew to become 10% of a still larger world population.

According to George Otis of the Sentinel Group, about 70% of all the church's outreach since its beginning until today has been accomplished in this century alone, and about 70% of what has been accomplished in this century has taken place since 1945. And 70% of what has happened since 1945 has happened in this decade of the 1990s.

According to missionary statistics, over 260,000 people every day are now being presented the plan of salvation, and there is a growing sense of excitement among missiologists that we could actually be within striking distance of seeing the Gospel presented to every known people group within the lifetime of some who are in his great hall tonight.

But the greatest areas of harvest are overseas. Only about 15% of the worldwide body of Christ live in North America, and we aren't doing so well. 85% of our churches are plateaued or declining. American society is entering a post-Christian era. Our culture is becoming so secularized and cynical that only a revival of biblical proportions will save the church in the United States.

North American missionaries are, overall, becoming fewer and older while missionaries from new, emerging overseas fields are increasing and youthful.

That means this: If you and your church are not heavily invested in our overseas subsidiaries, you're going to miss out on 85% of what God is doing in this world.

• I want to know when I lay my head down on my pillow at night that someone somewhere in the world is getting up to continue the work, sent out by our church, supported by our dollars and sustained by our prayers.
• I want to have part in a ministry on which the sun never sets.
• I want to be a part of something bigger than I am, something wider than the brick walls of my church.
• I want to be involved in a global harvest of global proportions at the very twilight of history.

I'd like to close tonight by telling you of two hallmates of mine in Bible College. Bill Harding and I graduated together in 1974, but after gradation we both got married and we went our separate ways.

Bill had gone on to seminary, and had gone to Ethiopia with Sudan Interior Mission. Ethiopia at the time was under an oppressive Marxist government that did not welcome missionaries, and Bill had to find some reason to justify his stay in the country. In earlier days, Bill had worked on golf courses, installing irrigation equipment. So he told the government he knew something about water resource management, and they put him in charge of drilling wells for the populace. He learned quickly on the job, and for several years successfully oversaw the drilling of wells, helping provide Ethiopians with fresh water. All the same time, he and his wife Grace were looking for opportunities to quietly witness and share their faith. He especially poured himself into three Ethiopian Christians whom he was able to teach and train.

At length, the Marxists fell from power, and Bill suddenly found new freedom in preaching. These men asked Bill if they could invite some people over to the Harding house to hear more about the Gospel, and Bill excitedly said yes. The day came, and imagine how stunned Bill and Grace were when ten thousand people showed up. There was a large field in front of their house, and for four days, sometimes in the driving rain, the people stayed. Bill preached without microphone and amplification, but multitudes were converted. The crowds would sometimes stand in the driving rain for four hours, listening to the Word of God being shouted to them over the sound of the downpour.

Bill is now stationed in Addis Ababa, with a circuit of preaching points in which thousands show up. He told me that whenever he preaches, he can see nothing but "boom boxes" being held aloft in the first several rows, as people record his sermon. When he later returns to the same spot, he finds many people who can preach his sermon word-for-word, having listened to the tapes over and over. Thousands have come to Jesus Christ, and it is a time of harvest, a time of reaping, a time of revival.

I had another hallmate named Chet Bitterman. I'll never forget Chet. The thing that impressed me about him was his cocky self-possession, exhibited chiefly in a smile that always bordered on a smirk. He would stick his head through the door of my room, flash his devil-may-care grin, ask how things were going, then disappear as quickly as he had come. He always left too soon, and he seldom looked back.

Chet walked across that stage as we got our diplomas, and that's the last time I ever saw him. He married and had three daughters just like I did. He ended up with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Columbia, South America. On January 19, 1981, terrorists burst into his apartment, tore him away from his family, and a few weeks later his body was found stuffed in a truck, a single bullet in his chest.

When he had realized that God was calling him to be a missionary in Latin American, Chet penned something strangely prophetic in his journal: Maybe this is just some kind of self-inflicted martyr complex, but I find this recurring thought that perhaps God will call me to be martyred for Him in his service in Columbia. I am willing.

I believe there are some people here with some Jonah in them who need to say, "I am willing."

• Some young people who need to give their lives to Jesus Christ tonight without hesitation or reservation. I have decided to follow Jesus.
• Some pastors who need to get serious about leading their churches into earnest missionary involvement. I have decided to follow Jesus.
• Some here who feel God may be summoning you to fulltime Christian service, and he's just waiting for you to say "Yes." I have decided to follow Jesus.
• Perhaps tonight you feel that God would have you seriously dedicate yourself to a ministry of prayer for global outreach.
• Perhaps tonight you feel that God would have you dedicate your goods to extend the global harvest.
• Perhaps you've been resisting the Lord, like Jonah.
• Perhaps he's calling you to go, and you're ready to say, "I have decided now, to follow Jesus."

Why not say: "Where he leads me I will follow"?

What not say, "Here am I, send me"?

Why not be a reaper?