West Ridge Students

The story of Jonah is one that mirrors our own. So often, we know what God is calling us to, and we run the other way. Instead of giving up on us, God continues to pursue us with his love and grace so that we can get where we're supposed to be to experience life.

Broken promises happen all the time. Others break promises to us. We break promises to others. Typically when someone goes back on their word, especially multiple times, you are written off and ruin a relationship in the process. If this is how relationships work, then what happens when we break a promise to God? One of Jesus' disciples has some experience with that and learns something about grace that applies to all of our lives.

We all mess up and we all fall short. We sin. Our natural reaction in those moments is to hide. To run away. It's the ultimate game of "hide & seek" that we play with God. It's a game that's been going on from the begin of the human race. We sin, and God seeks. The problem is we will always lose. The an exhausting game when you play it against the one who knows everything. So what if we stopped running away from God, and started running to Him?

In every fight there is offense and defense. In this fight against evil, God has given some powerful weapons to claim the victory we have in Jesus.

We get hit by things in our life that knock us down all the time. In fact we are in a fight daily. There is someone trying to take us out, and he can be relentless. Take heart, because God has already won this fight for us. Through Jesus we can overcome. So when the devil comes at you, you can simply say "not today".

We may trick ourselves into thinking we are good people. After all, we do good things from time to time. The problem is that we also do some bad things too. Specifically, we sin. This means we have fallen short of good. But God gives us Jesus. And Jesus gives us His perfection. Now instead of just being good, we can be made perfect.

Our sin has caused us to have no future and lose all hope. But God has given us Jesus. Now we have a future and hope for today.*The power went out and caused an issue with the recording. This is the second half of the message from that night