Jonah 4: 5-11 - When I Love My Comforts More Than People

SCRIPTURE:

Jon 4:5-11 MSG
(5) But Jonah just left. He went out of the city to the east and sat down in a sulk. He put together a makeshift shelter of leafy branches and sat there in the shade to see what would happen to the city.
(6) GOD arranged for a broad-leafed tree to spring up. It grew over Jonah to cool him off and get him out of his angry sulk. Jonah was pleased and enjoyed the shade. Life was looking up.
(7) But then God sent a worm. By dawn of the next day, the worm had bored into the shade tree and it withered away.
(8) The sun came up and God sent a hot, blistering wind from the east. The sun beat down on Jonah's head and he started to faint. He prayed to die: "I'm better off dead!"
(9) Then God said to Jonah, "What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?" Jonah said, "Plenty of right. It's made me angry enough to die!"
(10) GOD said, "What's this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night.
(11) So, why can't I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than a hundred and twenty thousand childlike people who don't yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?"

OBSERVATION:

Jonah grew an attachment to an inanimate object that provided him pleasure, but still couldn't give a rip about the Ninevites (in fact he had set up this makeshift shelter to the east of the city so he could watch God's wrath overtake the city!)

I look at Jonah's miserable attitude and i think, 'What a punk!"... but then I think about all the things... comforts... that I put ahead of investing in Lost people.
I think how I shrink back in my investment into them:

• with my finances
• with my time
• with my relationships and networks
  
• with MY plans
• with my voice

(Perhaps this is why giving and serving are such frowned upon subjects at church?)

APPLICATION:

I need to up my relational investment into my nonnies (time and money)
I need to serve my community and the poor practically

Ok, so what does that mean and how does that look?

I want to commit to spending 2hrs a week with my nonnies (visit and phone calls). I must put this in my diary!
I want to sponsor a financial upliftment project through world vision as well as mentor a lifestreams young person.
What can I do in my community? I must research this.

PRAYER:

DAd, help me to not be so obsessed and attached to my comforts, help me to daily lay them down so that I can serve You more. You are worthy of everything I have... everything of who I am!

Please show me how I can serve my community... my street.

Help me to be more like You... help me to live this all out.
Amen