Who caused the storm? In this episode, Steve discusses the ways that God speaks to corrects His people.
Step 1: God sends people as his messengers to tell us things He wants done.
Step 2: God will take other measures if we don’t listen and obey. He begins to change who is in leadership and who gets blessed. Things may be taken away from some and given to others.
The Cause of the Storm
We have recently been hit by a global pandemic. Is it possible that we have entered the realm of God’s correction? As this pandemic and its effects stretch on, we might wonder if something’s going on in the spirit realm.
In Jonah 1:4, God sent a terrible storm that threatened to sink the ship Jonah was on with a crew full of pagans. Jonah told the crew that they weren’t on the brink of death because of their paganism and unbelief. No, Jonah even admitted that he was the cause of the storm! There was storm because Jonah was unwilling to preach what God wanted him to preach. The crew of the ship threw Jonah overboard, and the storm stopped; the prophet was indeed the problem.
“We don’t want to preach what God wants us to preach: holiness, consecration, sacrifice, and loving the Lord with all our hearts.”
The preachers today could be the cause of the storm! They’re not preaching what God wants them to preach. It’s time to stop preaching about feelings and enabling believers to stay stuck in their hurt and reliant on sermons that only prop up but do not heal.
Can You Relate?
In Luke 20, Jesus tells the Parable of the Tenants, in which the master of a vineyard sent servant after servant to retrieve some fruit. The tenants beat all the servants and sent them back empty-handed. The master even sent his heir, his son, and the tenants not only beat him but even killed him. Verses 15 to 16 say, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
Relate this parable to your life. God sends His Word through all kinds of sources: the Bible, a podcast, an evangelist, a guest speaker at your church, a friend etc. God is sending you a message. He wants you to produce different fruit, because He is expecting a return on His vineyard. But instead, you beat up on that message in your heart and remain determined to keep preaching your own message.
God wants preachers to grab hold of His message of repentance and change! Be transformed by the renewing of your mind and the power of the Holy Spirit! But if they refuse to listen, God will have to take His anointing, power, and message and give it to someone else.
So the question is: Are you ready to preach God’s message? To be picked by God? And, to help bring revival to your church, to the world?
Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe[a] in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”
4 Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.
5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.
6 The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.
8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.)
11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
9 He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time.
10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed.
11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed.
12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’
14 “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’
15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?
16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When the people heard this, they said, “God forbid!”
Questions:
Do you hear the voice of God and obey?
What is the difference between a God-powered sermon and one that props up?
3:13Something’s going on in the spirit realm because we’re not paying attention and preaching and teaching the things God wants us to say.
5:38Could it be that God wants us to preach repentance, and we don’t want to do it? We don’t want to preach what God wants us to preach: holiness, consecration, sacrifice, and loving the Lord with all our hearts.
6:01Because the preachers, denominations, and church leaders don’t want to preach what God wants us to preach, we are causing the storm! If we’d preach what we are supposed to preach, the storm would stop.
8:08You need to start producing different fruit. God is sending you a message: He is expecting a return on His vineyard.
