In the story of Jonah, he is ready to die because he is so angry over the destruction of a vine in the desert, but he feels nothing for a whole city of people made in God’s image.
His anger is almost laughable if it didn’t sound so familiar. Most Christians are all for outreach and evangelism and reaching the lost for Christ, until those people start taking our parking spot at church, or sitting in our pew, bring kids who don’t behave the way we like, bring in worship music that we don’t relate to. Then our comfort becomes more important. We’d like to see the lost saved, but we’d rather that they got saved somewhere else.
But God’s concern is so much greater than our concerns.
There are people who are dealing with huge issues in their life, but there are others of us who rate our days on whether we could get a good parking spot at the mall. We tell God what we are concerned about, and He comes to us and says, “Do you want to know what I’m concerned about?”
There are millions of people in the world who are daily facing starvation, death from disease, war and disaster. There are millions who are facing a Christless eternity. There are thousands in our own city who don’t know their moral right hand from their left. God comes to us and says “Should I not be concerned about this great city?”
There may be days when we are deeply concerned and complaining about our own comfort level, but God comes to us and says “Do you know what is concerning Me?” As we listen to Him, we come back and say, “On second thought, my life is pretty good.”
It is not that we should not bring our small concerns to God – there is nothing too small or too large to bring to God in prayer, but sooner or later we must ask God what is His concern in the world. God’s great concern is in the salvation of the lost. Is this our concern or are we more concerned about our own comfort? (MIKE WILKINS)