"Jesus take the Wheel" A sermon by Kyle Cox

Jesus Take the Wheel

Hey everyone! For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Kyle and I have been attending Wesley for a little over two years now. You know, if you would have told me three years ago that I would be delivering a sermon one day, I probably would have said that you were clinically insane. Three years ago, the words faith and God were barely even in my vocabulary; but thanks to the persistence and, if I am being honest, nagging of my good buddy Will Hetico, I was introduced to one of the best, if not the best, community that I have been a part of during my time here at UCF. Two and a half years after finally deciding to give this whole Christianity thing a try, I can honestly say that my life has forever been changed by Wesley for the better. Over the past two and a half years, I have been accepted and loved by this community and I was eventually encouraged to join leadership as a community group leader which, in itself, has been an incredibly humbling and rewarding experience for me.

Which brings me to why I am here today speaking with you. Erwin approached me one day, not really asking, more so telling me that I would be delivering a sermon to you all at some point this summer and after much resistance I finally said yes. After all, as Erwin always says, “It’s all about saying those little yeses to the things God is calling us to do in our lives.” So, this evening I am going to be speaking to you about a topic that is very close to my heart and something that I have struggled with fairly frequently in my life. The title of my sermon is “Jesus Take the Wheel” and it is about trusting God, plain and simple.

I have Proverbs 3:5-6 written on my bathroom mirror. It says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” I struggle with this verse so much! I am the type of person where I need to understand everything. I have a passion for knowing how things work. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons why I want to be a doctor. So when this scripture tells me to trust God and lean away from my own understanding, I get very uneasy. I want to be in control of my life. Before I found Christ, I operated under the “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” mantra so my tendency, especially during seasons where my faith is tested, is to always focus on doing things myself and doing things that I want to do. I tend to revert back to my old egocentric tendencies, grab hold of the wheel of my life, and focus only on the things that I want to focus on; which, more often than not, results in me spinning out of control and driving myself into a wall; figuratively.

Even today, being called to stand before you and deliver a sermon is something that I have struggled with because Lord knows I struggle with public speaking. There was one weekend we were doing a Change For Change fundraiser at a local church and I unknowingly and stupidly volunteered myself to speak to the congregation and explain what the funds were going to be used for. I was totally unprepared as I stood up there, microphone in hand, visibly shaking as I spoke. It was the most grueling minute or so of my life. But that wasn’t even the worst part! The worst part was when a woman in the front row goes, “Oh honey, I hope he doesn’t want to be a surgeon…” For those of you who don’t know, that is exactly what I want to do with my life. So as embarrassing as that was I’m like, “God, are you sure you still want me to do this??” Another reason why I’ve struggled with speaking today is because, even though a lot of people in Wesley look up to me, I feel in my heart that I am the least likely person to deliver a sermon. I know in my heart the doubts that I have had, the struggles in faith that I have had, and sins that I have committed and don’t feel that I am worthy of such a task, let alone speaking about a subject that I have struggled so frequently with. But hey, maybe that is why God called me to speak about it? Who knows?

But we all go through seasons such as these. I’m sure you all can agree that our faiths can be a roller coaster at times; a constant ebb and flow between seasons of spiritual abundance and drought, abundance and drought. And your struggle doesn’t necessarily have to be like mine. If you recall back to the sermon series Erwin did about “Seasons”, seasons of struggle don’t necessarily have to mean droughts in faith or doubting God. It can be anything: seasons of depression, seasons of silence, stagnation, complacency, transition, stress, sadness, etc. Insert struggle here. Your season might be a season of financial instability. Or maybe you might be uncertain about the future. Or your struggle can even be the fact that you just don’t feel God in your life. Or maybe you just don’t believe in God or you’ve stopped believing entirely. In one way or another, we all experience some form of struggle in various seasons of our lives. But when we are in these seasons of struggle it can be incredibly difficult to constantly keep our focus on God. The reality is, when we get caught up in life, we tend to put our own priorities above His.

When I was looking through scripture to use in this sermon that best captured how God responds to us in seasons such as these, the one story that stood out most to me was the story of Jonah. Jonah is a story that many of us know about but we’re going to take a deeper look at it today.

The story of Jonah begins with God calling Jonah to perform a task. Here it is:

(Read Jonah 1)

So there is a lot of stuff in this first chapter but, before I dive in and start explaining things I want to provide a little context into the back story of the Book of Jonah. Jonah was a preacher who was often regarded as a prophet in Israel. In Hebrew, the word prophet literally translates to the “one who carries the burden”. So, when God tells him to travel to Nineveh and preach against them, it isn’t as if he is being called to do something that is completely out of the scope of his capabilities right? So why does he flee? Why does he run away? And when I say “run away”, I don’t just mean he ran away. He got the heck out of dodge!! I want to show you this graphic really quick. 

 At the beginning of the book when Jonah receives his call, he is located in a town called Gath-Hepher which is here in modern day Israel and God is calling him to travel roughly 600 miles northeast-ish to Nineveh which is located in modern day Iraq, I believe. But what does Jonah do? He travels south to Joppa, and boards a ship to sail waaaayyyy over here to Tarshish which is located 2200 miles in the opposite direction in the south of modern day Spain! Spain Guys!!That is clear across the Mediterranean ocean! And to give you an idea for how far Jonah wanted to run, during his time, Tarshish was considered the most distant city known to man in the entire world!!! So what would make him want to disobey God’s call so bad that he would rather travel to the ends of the known world?

According to many scholars of the bible, and when I say scholars I mean Erwin (JK), there are several postulates as to why he may have fled God’s call.

1.)   The first and most recognizable one is that Nineveh is straight up just a messed up place. The bible quickly alludes to it saying that “its wickedness has come up before me” but this is a serious understatement!! To many people in that region, the Ninevites, were people who were capable of unspeakable terrors! There are stories of how the people of Nineveh were would often commit mass murder and terrorize foreigners so Jonah may have just been scared for his life to travel to a place like that.

2.)   Another reason he may have fled God’s call is that, to the Hebrews, Nineveh specifically was a place that they resented. When I mentioned mass murder earlier, Hebrews were the most common victims. So for Jonah to travel to Nineveh to preach to them and try to save them would be totally blasphemous. It’s almost as if a Jew who had endured the Holocaust went back to Germany to try and save Hitler. He would have been instantly ostracized, hated, and exiled from his people because why on earth would you want to save someone who caused his people such pain, anguish and terror?? So I can only imagine that Jonah wouldn’t want to put himself through that sort of public humiliation.

3.)   The last and, to me the most important reason why he may have fled God’s call, is that, yes he was being called to do something he was good at, preaching; but it just wasn’t in the manner in which he envisioned it being. In Jonah’s time, Israel was separated into two factions Northern and Southern Israel and, according to history, Northern Israel was also a pretty messed up place. Maybe not quite on the level of Nineveh, but it still had its fair share of problems. Southern Israel wasn’t as bad as the North but at least every once in a while a God-appointed King like Saul, David, or Solomon to come into the picture lead them from their misfortunes. So to a Hebrew preacher, preaching to save Northern Israel, a land of his own people, was a good call and one that he probably would have preferred to carry out.

But God didn’t want to send him to Northern Israel; he had better plans for Jonah. All of these things that went through Jonah’s head were things that he had in mind for himself. Jonah had placed his own priorities ahead of God’s priorities. Don’t we all do this? At some point or another, don’t we all put our own priorities ahead of God’s priorities? Don’t we all put God in the back seat and try to take the wheel ourselves? We want to say “I don’t like this change that is occurring in my life, I’m going to go the other way, I want to build my own identity, to live life as I want to live it, I am going to control my life.” I know I do. All the time.

You see guys, Jonah is just like us. But then, something interesting happens, and this is the important part. God intervenes! Jonah 1:4, “Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up.” Then, after confessing to the sailors that he was running from God’s call, Jonah gets thrown overboard and again, God intervenes!! Jonah 1:17, “Now the LORD provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” God intervenes! Crazy, right?

Now I know that this is one of the most exciting books in the bible in terms of action but I am pretty dang sure that this book was not written just because they wanted to tell a cool story about how a man was eaten by a fish and chilled in his stomach for three days and nights. I believe that this book was written to show us that God is constantly intervening in our lives to bring us closer to where he wants us to go in His Great Plan for us. If you didn’t know that, whelp spoiler alert, HE DOES!!! And guess what else?? His plan is GOOD!!! Jonah had a task sent by God and he ignored it because he was so overwhelmed by it that he was determined to flee to the ends of the earth, but God says “No, I have better plans for you.” He wanted to let him know, “Hey, it’s not about YOU! It’s not about YOU saving a nation, or about YOU putting yourself in danger. It’s about THEM. The PEOPLE of Nineveh, and helping OTHERS come to know Christ. THAT is what is important. THAT is my plan for you!” So God intervened. He sent a storm to provoke Jonah to jump ship and then rescued him by sending a great fish to swallow him up. And while Jonah was in the belly of the fish, do you know what he does? He prays. Hard. Basically all of Jonah two is Jonah’s prayer to God.

(Read Jonah 2, but stop before the last verse)

Jonah pours himself out to God! Oh and look what happens next, Jonah 2:10, “And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.” God saves him.

This brings up another interesting point. Even though Jonah doubted and doubted God and His plan for him and even though he tried to run to the ends of the Earth to flee Him, God still saves him. Jonah defied God. Yet God still saved him. Is that not Grace at its finest?! It’s intriguing here in this story how God appears to be vengeful when he sends the storm that is so violent that it threatens to break up the ship and cause everyone on board to drown but then God shows compassion to Jonah and rescues him from the depths of the ocean. Jonah then goes on to Nineveh to preach to the people about their wicked ways, they listen and accept God as their Lord and Savior, God shows compassion to them, and Jonah saves the city. This is how God works in us! God still seeks to use us no matter what season we are in. Jonah was a sinner who defied God, yet God still used him to save Nineveh. That has to be so encouraging for us!! Even when we are beaten, even when we are in doubt, when we don’t have faith, when we are struggling, God still yearns to use us and to bring us closer to Him and what He has planned for us!!

There was a poster that I saw once that said “Do you seriously thing God can’t use you? Noah was a drunk, Abraham was too old, Isaac was a daydreamer, Jacob was a liar, Leah was ugly, Joseph was abused, Moses had a stuttering problem, Gideon was afraid, Samson had long hair and was a womanizer, Rahab was a prostitute.” And this list goes on and on! “Jeremiah and Timothy were too young, David had an affair and was a murderer, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached naked, Jonah ran from God, Naomi was a widow, Job went bankrupt, Peter denied Christ, the disciples fell asleep while Jesus was praying, the Samaritan woman was divorced, Zaccheus was too small, Paul was too religious, Timothy had an ulcer, and Lazarus was DEAD!!” All of these people were written about in scripture to show us that we are not perfect!! But despite our imperfections, God still uses us for great things!!! Can I please get an AMEN!!! (That one is for you Erwin). We all go through struggles but God still uses us.

The story of Jonah speaks particularly profoundly for me because I can relate to it in so many ways. At the beginning of this summer, as many of you know, Wesley took a mission trip to Costa Rica; but, the months or so leading up to the trip was a season of serious spiritual drought for me. At that time, I was so caught up in trivial things like drudging through work, lusting after women, and going out every night that I had eventually pushed God out of my life. I was in the driver’s seat and I was only focusing on what I wanted to focus on. In the back of my head, I knew that my heart and my mind weren’t in the right place but I ignored that still small voice and continued to live a self-centered and sinful life.

                  So, when this mission trip came around, I’ll be honest it totally snuck up on me. I think it took Erwin or Charity saying, “Hey dude, you do realize we have a mission trip in like two days right?” for me to even start thinking about what I needed to pack. But the biggest concern for me going into the mission trip was that I never took the time to mentally or spiritually prepare myself for the ways God would be working in my life while in Costa Rica. I actually found myself dreading the trip, because I was afraid to be emotionally bombarded when God started knocking on the door and asking me to confront all the sin and things I had been repressing or ignoring in my life. Like Jonah, I too wanted to flee from God and what he had in store for me. But I knew there was really no way out of it, so I decided to go anyway but I had created this shell around my heart in hopes that God wouldn’t be able to penetrate it.

On the way to the airport the morning we were supposed to board the plane and leave, I actually had my first conversation with God in a long time. I asked, “God, are you sure you really want me to go on this trip?” And I kid you not, not two minutes afterwards, my car fish tailed coming off the exchange ramp between the 408 and the 417. I had lost control and spun out into a wall (literally this time). My car was totaled. And there was seemingly no way that I was going to make it to the airport before the flight left in an hour and half. I looked up and said “Well God, you have my attention. I guess you don’t want me going on that trip after all.” But then, God said, “No son, I have better plans for you!” And he went to work!

Florida Highway Patrol showed up almost instantly, which (if you have ever been in an accident you know) almost never happens, to evaluate the accident and while he was writing my ticket, the tow truck showed up to take my car away. The police officer walks out and recognized my insurance as protective services insurance that I got from my dad being in law enforcement and said, “I don’t normally do this, but out of respect for your father I will not write you this ticket.” Still stranded in the middle of the road in the rain, I called Erwin to tell him that I wasn’t going to make it because I was in a car accident. But then he called Charity, who got out of bed and went out of her way to pick me and my roommate up to take me to the airport so I could make my flight on time and then took my roommate, who she barely even knows, home. Not to mention the most miraculous part in that no one was hurt. Not even a scratch! I could have ended up dead in the ravine, I could have flipped over the guard rail, there could have been another car; but it was just me and the wall. God worked in my life!

As I mentioned earlier, I made the flight and I had an incredible experience in Costa Rica, building a well for a community who didn’t have access to clean, usable water. But even more so, I had opened my heart to God, and allowed Him to work in me the way the He had intended. It blows my mind how perfectly this series of events symbolized my life and how God works in it; how it symbolizes OUR lives and how God works in it. Just like Jonah, I turned my back on God. I took hold of the wheel of my life and lost control and drove into a wall, but God was there for me. It was almost as if He said “Kyle, Listen to me! I have better plans for you than you have for yourself!” And he rescued me from the depths of the ocean. God still used me to do His work in Costa Rica. He is using me right now to speak to you.

If there is anything that I want you to take home from tonight, it is that God is actively intervening in our lives and that he uses us and wants to use us, sometimes in the most unexpected seasons and in the most unexpected ways.

A little over a year ago I was finally starting trying to embrace my faith in God but I realized that I didn’t really know a lot about God and how he communicates with us or how we communicate to him so I went searching for answers and I found many of them in a book called Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it! It is a super easy read. It is basically a 40 day devotional that you can do during lent, or really whenever, but each day is basically 4-5 pages of reading that challenges you to communicate with God through prayer and to try and see how God is communicating to you in your everyday life. Those of you on leadership may know that I quote phrases from this book fairly frequently during our discussions and such, but one sentence that stuck out to me that illustrates how God works in our lives and has been extremely enlightening to me ever since I read it, is this: “God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time, but it is up to us to see and seize those opportunities that are all around us all the time.” I love this quote! I almost envision that as we are moving through our day to day lives, he is continually opening doors for us and through those doors is a life better than what we envision for ourselves. But he never makes us walk through those doors; that is up to us to recognize where those doors are, trust that wherever those doors lead are going to make us better, and walk through ourselves.

So I challenge you to try and see how God is working in your life. Try to recognize what doors he is opening for you in your life. But I have to warn you. There are always two doors: one leading towards salvation and what God has planned for you and another that leads to where you think you need or want to go. I wish the story of Jonah ended with him saving Nineveh and everything was all hunky-dory but the reality is that in chapter four, Jonah curses God and is angry with him. This coming just after he professed his life to God, saying “I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple,” and “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the LORD’”. But this is important to understand. I wish I could tell you that all you have to do is trust in God and that He’ll save you and everything will be okay after that but life is not like that. Life is not always upward shooting. There are always two doors. And you know what? We are going to walk through the wrong door, even when we’ve been walking through the right ones for a while. If you are a recovering alcoholic or drug user, there will always be an opportunity to use or drink. If you struggle with pride, there will always be an opportunity to boast or put someone down rather than humble yourself and encourage others. The struggle will always come back. I still struggle with trusting God, and all the things I mentioned earlier. But the great thing is that God will continue to create doors for you even when you choose incorrectly. If you don’t walk through one that he wants you to, then later down the road, there will be another, and another. God will always be there for you ehen you decide to come back; even when you make the wrong decisions or miss out on His opportunities.

So how do we move forward? How do we put our trust in God during our seasons of struggle and doubt? How do we recognize when God is intervening in our lives for us? The first thing that comes to mind is prayer. After all, communication is a two way street, right? How can you expect Him to communicate with you if you don’t communicate with Him? Second, is to put your self aside and put God first. Sometimes we get so caught up in life that all we can think about is ourselves and how we can survive the season we are in but we need to swallow our pride and egocentricity and put first what God would want us to do rather than what we want to do. And most importantly, I don’t know if you all caught the ESPY’s last week, but Stuart Scott was giving his acceptance speech after winning the Jimmy V Perseverance Award and said something that caught my attention. For those of you who don’t know, Stuart Scott is a TV analyst for the ESPN show SportsCenter and has been fighting cancer for the past seven years. But while giving his speech, he said this. “When you die, it does not mean you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live. So live! Live! Fight like Hell! And when you get too tired to fight, then lay down, and rest, and let somebody else fight for you.”

Let God fight for you! God wants to help you. God wants to intervene in your life and bring you closer to him. God can and wants to use you in any season of your life and in a manner that will make you a better person and give you a better life than you can envision for yourself. So when you are experiencing struggle, and doubt, and you feel like you can’t fight; Let God fight for you. Seize the opportunities that God presents to you in your life and walk through the doors that He opens for you. “Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” And most importantly, let Jesus take the wheel.

Let’s Pray.