All of us worry.

About everything.

We worry about a child, spouse, or friendships. We worry about our parents’ health, our kids’ health, our spouse’s health, our friends’ health, and our health. We worry about finances, education, job prospects, and making ends meet. We worry about conversations we’re going to have, discussions we’ve had, and conversations we only imagine having.

We worry when we get into a car, take a walk, go to the gym, and get on a plane, train or boat.

We worry.

We worry in the woods, in a cabin, in an apartment, or a beach house.

Around every corner are disasters and calamities.

Some of us worry more than others.

The other day I was talking to someone, and he told me, “But I’m anxious. I was born this way. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

As we talked, he had a lot of anxiety. Much of it was about real things, but some of it was about imagined things, things that had not happened.

Most of our anxiety is about imagined things. Yes, we worry about things that are happening, but the conversation we’re worrying about having we haven’t had yet. Our kids haven’t walked through all of life that we have imagined for them yet, but we still worry.

As my friend and I talked, I asked him about some of the promises of God, like Jesus telling us in Matthew 6:25 to not worry about your life.

He shook his head and said, “But this is how I am. What am I supposed to do?”

What is so beautiful in Matthew 6 is that Jesus doesn’t berate us, guilt us, or scold us.

He simply asks, “Why do you worry?” What does worry add to your life? Does worry add to your joy?

Jesus wants us to evaluate our worries. This is incredibly important and powerful. It helps us to see what we focus on, and what gets our hearts and attention.

Think for a moment about what you worry about. If it helps, list it out on a piece of paper. Here are some questions to ask about those things:

• What is worry adding to your life?
• Are you fully trusting God with those things? Those relationships?
• What is your worry revealing about your focus?

The reality is, my friend (like many of us) is a worrier about everything. That is his tendency.

So I asked him, “What is a sin, something in the Bible that we’re told not to do, that you don’t struggle with?”

Once he told me, I asked, “What if I told you people think they are just that way in the same way you think you are worrier, and that’s who you are?”

All of us have some tendency.

Some of us are more prone to struggle with sexual sin, greed, being a workaholic, or co-dependent in relationships. We don’t struggle with all those things.

I know that some of you read that last sentence and thought, “I don’t struggle with that.”

Just because you struggle with something doesn’t mean you get a pass, or you can disregard a verse about that or think that you can’t change that in your life. Jesus can.

Worrying, like many other sins, is a matter of focus. That is why Jesus points us to focus on the things of God, the kingdom of God and then, all that we need, will be added to us.

Do you have anything you wish you could undo or redo?

We all do.

Some moments stand out in our lives, moments we wonder, “what if I would’ve done this instead of that? What if I had said yes to that date or job? What if I went to that school instead of working after high school?”

We also wonder about things we didn’t have anything to do with: How would my life be different if I grew up in another city? How would my life be different if my parents stayed together?

Regret and memories of things done and left undone are incredibly powerful.

Daniel Pink, a researcher that I love, recently did the most extensive research project on regret and wrote a book called the Power of Regret. 

Because regret is powerful. 

Some regrets we carry are huge ones, and others are small moments of regret, but they still impact us.

He said there are 4 core regrets that many of us carry:

1. Foundation regrets. This is the “too much” or “too little” regret as you look back on your life and think about having too much alcohol or partying in college, too much time playing video games, or spending money to get into debt.

Or the flip side, too little saving or studying, too little time spent with family and friends. 

This can also be found in the failure to plan, work hard, and follow through on something.

2. Boldness regrets. These are the moments in the life of taking a chance, going big, or going home. Starting that business, going back to school, going on that date. The moments when we stood at the fork in the road and could, in the words of Pink, “take a chance or play it safe.” The moments of “if only.”

According to many studies, we regret our inactions more than our actions. 

We lay in bed wondering what if, what would have happened.

3. Moral regrets. These are the choices of integrity and keeping our word.

Regrets abound here: Giving ourselves away to a partner in high school or college, cheating on a spouse, cheating on a test, lying to someone, taking the low road, and compromising. 

These could also be when you should’ve spoken up but stayed silent. When everyone made fun of someone, but we did nothing. 

Pink says that “moral regret is the if only I’d done the right thing.”

4. Connection regrets. These are the fractured and unrealized relationships in our lives.

They might be broken because of divorce, frayed because of words spoken, or broken because they weren’t what you hoped or what they should be—the moments when that person comes to mind, but we don’t call or text. 

Pink says, “a connection regret sounds like if only I’d reached out.”

Before moving on, do any of these regrets resonate with you? Do you see any of them in your story? Take a moment to write them down or list them out in your head. 

For us to move forward from regret, we must know what we are hoping to move forward from. 

We all have regrets, but what we do with them makes all the difference. We are told of one of the biggest regrets someone carried around in the gospels: when Peter denied knowing Jesus. This actually appears in all four gospels (Matthew 26:33 – 35; Mark 14:29 – 31; Luke 22:33- 34; John 18:15 – 18).

Peter denies knowing Jesus 3 times, just like Jesus predicted he would.

In an incredible turn of events, in John 21, Peter encounters Jesus, and three times Jesus asks him, “Peter, do you love me?”

Now, leading up to this moment in John 21, Jesus recreates many of the moments in Peter’s life (the calling to be a disciple, the feeding of the 5,000, walking on water, etc.) to remind Peter, no matter how high or low the moment was, Jesus was with him, Jesus knows.

This is incredibly powerful as we think about regret.

We often think regret is the end of the story, the point of no return. And while it is excruciating and difficult to come back from, regret is not the end of the story, and Jesus wants Peter (and us) to know that.

In John 21, Jesus is reminding him: Peter, I was with you in all those moments, and all moments can be redeemed.

I think it is telling that when Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” the first two times, Jesus uses the word agape, and Peter responds by saying, “You know I love [phileo] you.”

The third time, Jesus asks, “Do you love [phileo] me?” and Peter says, “Yes, I love [phileo] you.”

This is a powerful exchange. Jesus says, “I’ll take it.”

What grace.

We often think we need to have this incredible passion for Jesus, but we can’t muster that on our own.

I love how Jesus tells Peter, “I’ll take what you have and multiply it.” And Jesus does, throughout the rest of Peter’s life.

A man who denied knowing Jesus goes on, through the power of the Spirit, to launch the church in Acts 2 and through one sermon see thousands begin to follow Jesus, all the way to the end of his life when he was crucified for his faith.

All because one (or many) regrets weren’t the story’s end.

At some point, we all reach a point of frustration in any relationship where we don’t want to talk to the other person. Our spouse, friend or child, or co-worker disappoints us, or doesn’t meet our expectations. We feel like they aren’t listening or don’t do what we want them to do.

Frustration, anger, disappointment are a part of every relationship we have.

We will experience the same thing in our relationship with God.

He will frustrate us by not doing what we want. Disappoint us by not moving on our timetable or giving us the life we think we deserve.

This is where Jonah finds himself at the end of chapter 1.

One thing has always fascinated me about Jonah. We often get caught up in the big fish. Was it real? Could that happen? Is the impossible possible?

While those are valid questions we have to wrestle with, they can cause us to miss some of what is going on.

Jonah 1:17 says Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Then Jonah prayed.

Jonah sat in silence, brooding in his anger and frustration.

Have you ever been so angry with God that you didn’t talk to him? Have you ever been so frustrated with God that you left him alone?

I have. Jonah has. And many other people in Scripture have as well.

To pray to God in our frustration, hurt, and anger, we must admit that we have frustration, hurt, and anger towards God. For some, this feels like a sin. But I don’t think it is. I believe it is the natural processing of our emotions and what is going on in our hearts. Some of us don’t think God cares about those things, that we are only supposed to feel joy or happiness with God.

Yet, here is what is amazing about Jonah’s prayer found in chapter 2. He says that he prayed five times, and five times it says that God answered.

Jonah was angry, Jonah was silent with God, and God waited patiently in his grace, waiting for Jonah to be ready to talk.

What grace.

When Jonah prays, he prays the Psalms. This is a practice used throughout church history. When we don’t know what to say when we pray, using Scripture is a powerful practice. Using a psalm as a launching point for my prayers, even utilizing a psalm as prayer, has been a balm for my soul in these last few years when we’ve all experienced so much loss and disappointment.

Finally, in verse 9 of chapter 2, Jonah says, Salvation belongs to the Lord. Salvation can also mean deliverance or rescue. 

Pray for the rescue; pray for deliverance. Deliverance and rescue may not look like we expect. For Jonah, he experienced deliverance and rescue in the great fish, but then God sent him to Nineveh, which isn’t necessarily what Jonah wanted to do.

But I think, as we bring God the deepest places of ourselves in prayer, we learn to trust God in more profound ways so that in His rescue, while not what we might expect or want at the moment, we begin to see how that is God’s grace to us and good for us. 

Is there something in your life right now that you know God has called you to, but you aren’t doing? Is there a relationship you know you should do something about, but you aren’t?

Many of us often get frustrated when God isn’t as clear as we want him to be, but I wonder if the reason he isn’t clear on the things we are asking about is that we haven’t done the other things he’s called us to do. 

So, if you’re like me in those situations, we run, we hide, and we complain.

We run and hide for all sorts of reasons in our lives and relationships.

We are afraid of love or of loving someone else and opening ourselves up to hurt. We are afraid of being loved and opening ourselves up to be left. We are afraid of stepping out onto limbs that might break. 

We do the same things with God.

We run one way when He tells us to run another way. We try to take his role as God in our lives because we have a better strategy, a plan this time that will make everything work.

We hide from God because we aren’t sure how to be known, how to be in a relationship. We aren’t sure if God is safe because the family we grew up in wasn’t safe.

All of this leaves us in a miserable spot. It leaves us alone and afraid many times.

There’s a book of the Bible that is so familiar, and the reason it is so familiar is that we so easily see ourselves in it.

Jonah.

In Jonah, we see someone that is very much like us.

A man who is scared, who doesn’t want to do what God calls him to do (in fact, it’s the last thing he wants to do), and so he runs.

He doesn’t just run, he buys a boat and a crew and sails in the opposite direction.

I always thought that Jonah ran because he didn’t want to go to Nineveh, which is partly true, but not for the reason I always believed.

Jonah went to Tarshish, an exotic port city. A place with pools, beaches, hip restaurants, while relaxing with umbrellas in your drink kind of place. He went after the life he wanted. He went after the life he felt he deserved.

This to me is one of the main reasons we get angry at God, one of the main reasons we run from God: someone else got our life. That person got my marriage, my family, my career. My life was supposed to go that way, but it didn’t. My family picture was supposed to have three kids in it, but it has none. My bank account was supposed to have another zero or two, but it doesn’t.

So we run. We hide. We get mad.

The other reason we run from God is we aren’t sure God will chase us.

Many of us have feelings of unworthiness and abandonment. We wonder if anyone cares, if anyone loves us. So we run.

We hide our sin, our desire, our pain, because we don’t know if God will care. We despise what God tells us to do because we know better. We run from God because we don’t want to go to Nineveh, what seems dull, boring or difficult in our life. We want Tarshish. We want the beach and drinks with umbrellas in them while we prop up our feet. We want to run from our marriage instead of doing the hard work. We want to bail on integrity because sin is more fun. We want to spend more money than we make because we deserve it.

We want Tarshish because we deserve Tarshish. That is my life, and God, you won’t take it from me.

But here’s what we see in Jonah 1:

You can’t outrun the face of God, the presence of God. This sounds like a threat, but it isn’t. It is God’s grace to us. We need his face, his presence. We long for it, but we also fear it because in God’s presence we are known. We also see that the further we run, as far as our sin goes, God’s grace and his presence always find us there. His grace always goes one step further than our sin.

In the storm, God spared no expense to show his mercy to Jonah. He didn’t leave Jonah or let Jonah go. He went after Jonah to show his grace.

Let me say this to you if you find yourself in a storm or you see one coming. I don’t know if God allowed your storm to come or sent your storm, but your storm is an invitation of God’s grace to stop running from him. To stop hiding from him. To rest in him. To fall into him.

God will use whatever means necessary to grab our hearts. God will use health issues, marital issues, relational wounds, financial troubles, troubled kids and teenagers, friends who leave us. He will use it all to get a hold of our hearts, to get our allegiance.

God uses all situations for his glory and redemption. Verse 16 is incredible. All the men feared the Lord and offered a sacrifice to the Lord. All the men began following God because of Jonah’s stupidity, selfishness, and the power and grace of God.

Nothing and no one is out of the reach of God’s grace.

Os Guiness said, We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God – which is another way of saying that all our seeking will fall short unless God starts and finishes the search. The decisive part of our seeking is not our human ascent to God, but his descent to us. Without God’s descent, there is no human ascent. The secret of the quest lies not in our brilliance but in his grace.

So, why are you running from God? What is it that God has called you to? What things in your life are you doing that you know God has so much more for you?

Why are you hiding from God? What thing or person are you trying to keep from God?

Here’s a good way to test this. What is your prayer life like?

The reason I ask is, often when we are running and hiding we want nothing to do with praying. It is our way of trying to take hold, take control of the situation.

And yet, the life God has for us, the life God is calling us to, we have to stop running and we have to stop hiding to live it.