Pursued by Mercy | What Happens When You Stop Trying to Outrun God’s Love
When was the last time you experienced a messy situation? (literal or figurative)
What stood out to you most from the message?
How can stubbornness be a positive thing? How can it be negative?
When was the last time you felt disconnected from God? What was going on at the time?
Read Jonah 2:7. When have you felt like you were trapped and then cried out to God? What did it look like?
Like Jonah, when was a time you experienced God’s mercy, but it showed up in an unexpected way?
What is something you might be reckoning with right now? What has that looked like for you so far?
What’s one step you can take this week to either: 1) stop running from God and accept him, or 2) reckon with a situation he has placed before you?
Let’s end our time praying together. You can say something like, “God, thank you for chasing after us and wanting to show us mercy. Help us to recognize when you are trying to show us a sign and surrender to your compassion. Give us strength to follow you even when it looks different than we thought. Amen.”
Clips
We have a way God’s love looks in our heads: rainbows, puppies, and maybe even a gallon bucket of that one frappe from Starbucks. Yeah...that’s not quite what Jonah felt when he found himself stuck in the digestive track of a giant sea beast. But what if that’s the exact thing that Jonah needed to come back to God at that time? This week Alli Patterson shows us how God’s mercy is always chasing us, and God can and will use whatever it takes to bring us back to Him—even if it means becoming fish food.