Sessions Include:

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #1: Amos 2 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #2: Amos 4

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #3: Amos 5

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #4: Amos 9

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #5: Jonah 1 - 2 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #6: Jonah 3 - 4 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #7: Hosea 1, 3

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #8: Hosea 6 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #9: Hosea 10 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #10: Hosea 14 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #11: Micah 3

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #12: Micah 4, 5 

Amos, Hosea, Jonah, Micah
Lesson #13: Micah 7

GOD IS THE GOD OF OPEN DOORS. He opens doors all around, boundless opportunities to contribute to humanity in ways large and small, to make our lives count for eternity. Who could not want that?

I could not want that.

I long for open doors, yet I resist going through them. I shrink back on the threshold. I don’t see them. Or seeing them, I don’t walk through them.

Abraham Maslow called this strange tendency we have to run away from our destiny “the Jonah complex.” It is an evasion of growth, a defense against calling. “If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.”[46]

Because of this, he said, we also have a mixed response to others who actually do say a wholehearted yes to God’s call on their lives. “We surely love and admire all the persons who have incarnated the true, the good, the beautiful, the just, the perfect, the ultimately successful. And yet they also make us uneasy, anxious, confused, perhaps a little jealous or envious, a little inferior, clumsy.”[47]

Every time God opens a door for someone in Scripture, there is a little tug-of-war. He calls, the one called resists for one reason or another, and then there is a decision. Most often, since the Bible is God’s story, the one God calls eventually says yes. Sometimes, as with the Rich Young Ruler, the door is rejected.

In all the Bible’s stories, perhaps the tale of Jonah is the most famous and colorful example of someone running from his or her divine destiny. Phillip Cary, in a wonderful commentary on Jonah, says the narrative is laid out in such a way that it uniquely leaves each of us having to figure out our own response to God.[48] One of the problems with Jonah is that a lot of us think we know his story, but we don’t.

The average person usually associates Jonah with one other character; they will think of it as the story of Jonah and the whale. The whale’s name is Monstro, and Jonah is running away from Geppetto and wants to be a real boy, and . . . people get a little fuzzy at that point.

But Jonah is really “the patron saint of refused callings.”[49] His story remains unforgettable because it is the greatest picture in all biblical literature of saying no to God’s open door. In his story we see all our evasions of God’s calling mirrored back to us. In turning to Jonah now, we learn the reasons why we’re tempted to say no to God so that we might learn to say yes instead.

Fear Holds Us Back

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Go to the great’” —that word great will come up again —“‘city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me’” (Jonah 1:1-2).

Jonah was a prophet; he was not a priest. Priests served in the Temple. They offered sacrifices. They led worship. A prophet was different. A prophet was a reformer. A prophet was an activist —kind of a gadfly, kind of a troublemaker. Prophets were always pricking people’s consciences. Israel always had a lot of priests but generally just one prophet at a time because that was all Israel could stand.

One day the word of the Lord comes to this prophet Jonah. When you hear from God, and sometimes you will, it may be only a few words, but they can change your life.

Life isn’t easy when you’re a prophet. The word of the Lord comes to Jonah:

Could you, would you go to preach?
Could you, would you go to reach
The people in Assyria?
For you fit my criteria.

And Jonah says to the Lord:

I would not go there in a boat.
I would not go there in a float.

I would not go there in a gale.
I would not go there in a whale.

I do not like the people there.
If they all died, I would not care.

I will not go to that great town.
I’d rather choke. I’d rather drown.

I will not go by land or sea.
So stop this talk and let me be.

Ortberg, John. 2015. All the Places to Go . . . How Will You Know? God Has Placed before You an Open Door. What Will You Do?. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

Check out the new Bible Study, Amos, Jonah, Hosea, Micah It is available on Amazon, as well as part of the Good Questions Have Groups Talking subscription service. (Like Netflix for Bible lessons.)