“Dare to Dream: Setting Aside Your ‘Buts’” Jonah 1: 1-17

For the last several weeks together we’ve been talking about what it looks like to dare to dream God’s dreams. To be part of God’s vision for this world. To be someone who listens to the call that God has placed on their life. 

As wonderful and exciting as being part of the vision and mission of God is, however, there is something that all too often can get in the way - ourselves. 

We as humans seem to be masterful at coming up with excuses as to why we can’t or won’t do something - even if we are being called to do it by God. Think of the scripture we heard last week about God calling Moses through this holy experience with the burning bush. What was one of the first things that Moses said after God explained to him what he was being called to do - “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”. In other words, Moses’s first excuse (and there are many more to come) was that he wasn’t qualified. There have to be people with better pedigrees. Who have more training. Can’t God go and tap one of them to lead? Why Moses? Why now?

But God assured Moses that he was the one being called. That this was his unique God-given purpose and call. Even more, God wasn’t going to ask him to go alone, for God would be with him along the way. But as assuring and comforting as that was meant to be, Moses took it as an opportunity to come up with another excuse, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 

At first glance, this may not seem like much of an excuse, more like a question, but Moses, with all of his baggage was essentially saying, see, I’m so spiritually unfit and unqualified that I don’t even know what your name is. I don’t know who to tell the Israelites who you are. 

When we think of Moses and tell the storybook version of his life story, it seems like he has it all together, but really that wasn’t always the case. And those bumps and bruises that he had experienced throughout life had led him to believe that there was no way that God could call him - he was to stained. To un-pure. Couldn’t God find someone more spiritually fit and free of baggage to call to go? 

God of course didn’t except this excuse from Moses either, simply telling him, “I am who I am.” In other words, I am God and you are not. You don’t have to be perfect, you simply have to listen to me and go. 

Someone else in scripture who was known for making excuses was Jonah. Jonah received a call from God to go to Nineveh, this town that was known for being exceedingly wicked and cry out against it. Jonah didn’t think it was a great idea, but instead of listing his excuses and objections with his mouth, he showed them with his feet as he fled. 

He fled the whole way to a boat that was going the absolute other direction, but God kept pursuing Jonah. God wouldn’t give up on him or let Jonah give up on his call. 

God wouldn’t give up on Moses either as Moses’s excuses continued. “But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.” And “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” But God told Moses once that he would be equipped for the call that he had been given, no matter what. 

When God calls for such a time as this, it should be noted that God’s call is not in our timing. God’s call involves interrupting us during what we are doing and asking us to go a new direction. Asking us to face the unknown. Of course our response is going to be fear! For the call of God is never fully explained nor convient. It often asks us to give up more then we are willing to let go of. For Jonah it asked him to risk his very life to bring the people the Word of God. But the thing about the call of God is that it is relentless. You can try to ignore it all you want, but when God gives orders about what we are supposed to be doing, you can only run away from it for so long. You can only make so many excuses. Jonah was swallowed by a whale when he ran the opposite direction from God’s commands for him. Moses tried every excuse in the book, but God kept saying that he was the one who was called, not anyone else. The call of God we receive is specific to us - no one else can do it - and will not let us go. God insists that we follow.

Often we are called to do things that we do not feel equipped to do. Like David facing Goliath we feel that we are called to do the impossible, but God empowers us, giving us the gifts we need to face any situation when the time comes. 

However, we can’t talk about the excuses that distract us from God’s call without talking about perhaps the hardest one - when other people around us are the one’s giving us the excuses, telling us who they think we are, instead of who God says we are.

One of my hardest weeks in seminary came my second year. I had a field placement that I was very excited about and the school was excited about, but the director of the program couldn’t wrap her mind around - which led to her saying some really hurtful things. As I sat in the office of two of my mentors, I just cried and cried. I pondered out loud if her hurtful words were trying to tell me that ministry was not my call. But I still remember one of my mentors saying to me, “Michelle, she is not God.” 

And that’s what it boils down to, is it not. That the excuses made, wether they come from within or without aren’t what’s most important. They can’t override God’s vision or call in our lives. The calls that God places on each of our lives may not be as dramatic as Moses or Jonah’s. And perhaps thats why we miss them or ignore them so easily. We expect to be called to something monuments in a very clear way, when God is calling us to be faithful to things different from the prophets daily. Are you being sent out to speak to the nation? Or are you being called to take a lay preaching course or deliver meals on wheels? To God they are all calls that require our faithful responses. All tasks that we cannot do on our own, but only through the grace and strength of God. 

Brothers and sisters, what is God calling you to do? What is the tug on your heart that won’t let go? What keeps coming up even though you try to ignore it? What do you make excuses about not doing? What did you feel called to when you were younger, that you’ve given up on? What is God requiring of you? For some people it may be a call within a call or a call that only lasts for a short period of time. For others God may be calling you to change your vocation or reprioritize your life. Whatever God is calling you to, what will your response be? Amen.