This week we are looking at how spiritual transformation takes place. With Jonah as our picture, we see that a person can know all about the grace of God. They can even be a professional at explaining and preaching the grace of God. But it can still need to penetrate certain areas of their heart that have been missed.

This week we are looking at spiritual transformation. How does it happen? And why does it seem to come in fits and starts - even for people who love and follow Jesus?

Most religious people - and certainly those who regularly attend church - understand that salvation is of the Lord. That’s not really news to us. But then, Jonah knew that too. And yet it still hadn’t penetrated deeply into his heart. The Apostle Paul talks about how the gospel is an ongoing fruit that is born in our hearts. And it means that the depth of the gospel - the extent of the gospel - the beauty and majesty of the gospel need to sink in deeper and deeper over time. And that’s how spiritual transformation works.

Last week we saw how Jonah was reluctant to go to Nineveh because of the deep self-righteousness of his own heart. He hated the Ninevites and wanted to see them destroyed, not saved. And so God began a deep work in Jonah’s heart to teach him that he needed the grace of God as much as the Ninevites. He stripped him of his pride and started him on his own path toward spiritual transformation. So how did this spiritual transformation take place? And how can this kind of spiritual transformation take place in our own lives? This is what we will be looking at this week in chapter 2.

This week we are in Jonah 1 looking at how to deal with our fears. Deep down, we are all driven by fears. What if I don’t get the things in life I most want? What if things that are precious and valuable to me are taken away? What if I’m not good enough to keep up. What if I fail? What if people see how weak and broken I really am inside?

This week we are looking at the issue of fear from Jonah 1. Jonah was afraid of God’s mercy. The sailors were afraid of his wrath. But they were even more afraid of his power over this storm.

We all know what it feels like to face the storms of life. Something comes along and messes with our orderly little world, and everything begins to fall apart. And the more precious and crucial that thing is to our life, the greater the trauma that ensues.

This week we will continue in our series in the book of Jonah. And we will be looking at the rest of chapter 1 on dealing with our fears. Like Jonah, we can often be crippled by the fears of life - and we can run away and try to hide.

One of the key details of this account in the opening chapter is how Jonah fell into a deep sleep…in the midst of a terrible, life-threatening storm! How in the world was that possible? It’s interesting that the word that’s used here to describe his sleep is not the normal word for “sleep”. But it’s the word that was used of Adam when he fell into a deep sleep when God removed a rib from him to create Eve. It’s almost like a trance. So what was happening?

Today we see that sin is even more than trying to create an identity apart from God. But we see the frightening reality that this is something we can do underneath all sorts of morality and religiosity. We can serve God and seek to obey him in our lives, and still be using that very morality as an identity apart from him.