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October 15, 2026 | Ben Mandrell teaches on the discipline of prayer through Jonah chapter 2, focusing on three points for those in deep trouble: face your situation as allowed by God, own your part in it, and surrender to God's sovereignty. The message encourages believers to embrace trials, release bitterness, and trust God’s timing and purposes.
Men's morning bible study led by Pastor Ben Mandrell
Good morning, guys. Well based on my weather app, today is the end of summer, I think. It's the last day I see with a nine at the beginning of it at least. I think God forgot to notice that it's not fall yet, so we might want to bring that to his attention. But hey, good morning. I just want to say a couple things as we get started. We're going to be in Jonah chapter 2 today if you want to open there in your Bibles. As you're getting there, I just want to say thank you to some of you who showed up at Legacy Thrift last week. They had one of the best turnouts of men to help unload trucks. I just want to say it again, every Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon, Legacy Thrift, I found out this out yesterday, right now Legacy Thrift is bringing in $600,000 a year for missions for Bellevue. Isn't that incredible? $600,000 in secondhand materials. And just a couple things. Number one, if you have stuff that you'd like to get rid of in your house, they will come to your house and pick it up and bring it back to Legacy Thrift. So keep that in mind as you guys have nice pieces of furniture, other things that you just don't have a place for. But also, if you have a chance to serve, it's a great opportunity, it's a great place of ministry. There's a banquet tonight that I'm speaking at and I'm looking forward to that. I also just want to say, Phillip Hardy leads a ministry called Car Care that Lindley and I got to go this last Saturday. If you don't know about that, it's an awesome ministry. We have widows and single moms sign up. And I think we had 36 this last Saturday, but they come in, they check in their car, they get their oil changed, and they can do little things on the car, a little maintenance. But the women come in and they sit and they have fellowship with one another. It's just one of the neatest ministries. And if you have any interest in knowing more about car care and how you can be involved, how you can support that, Phillip Hardy, I think I saw you, Phillip, are you here? Phillip's right here. Just talk to Phillip and that's another great opportunity for you to serve. Man, we like to see men serving. I love teaching Bible study, but I'll just be honest with you, sometimes Baptist men, we like to come and sit and drink coffee and listen to Bible study, but we don't have to go and apply it. So if you're not serving somewhere, if you're not using your hands to help people, you're really missing out on a big part of the Christian life. So I just want to challenge you, what's your ministry right now? How are you using your hands to help? How are you using your time to help? You got to use your spiritual gifts in the life of the body of Christ if you really want to experience the spiritual growth the New Testament talks about. So Jonah chapter two today, I want to talk about the discipline of prayer today, but I want to do it a little differently. I don't want to do a how-to message on prayer. Those are important and I've done them before, but I want to show you a prayer that doesn't get preached a lot and it's a man who's in a really tough spot inside a whale under the water. I've titled this message, When You Are In Deep Trouble, because sooner or later, every one of us finds ourselves in deep trouble. What did Jesus say? In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart for I have overcome the world. In Jonah chapter two, this moment in Jonah's life, he is lodged inside the belly of a great fish. He is beneath the surface of the water. He is literally in over his head. In moments of crisis like this, in his desperation, Jonah prays, which is a universal reflex. Did you know, I think I saw a percentage, it was 25% of atheists pray in times of trouble. We can't help but cry out to God. It is a universal reflex of the human heart. What comes pouring out of Jonah's mouth is almost like a psalm. He calls out in his distress and in his prayer, he gives us, I think, three deep truths when we're in deep trouble. I found this passage inspiring as we think about prayer and the different elements of prayer. Now, I don't know everything going on in the lives of men in this room, but I can only assume that some of you are in deep trouble right now. Maybe you're overwhelmed by the responsibilities you're carrying. You're trying to lead your family, you're trying to provide financially, you're trying to keep your marriage healthy, you're trying to raise your children. Somehow you feel in over your head, or maybe you feel like your head is below the water. Or maybe you're facing a problem at work that seems to get more complicated every time you try to solve it. Or maybe there's a tension in your marriage or a child that's going off the rails, something that keeps you lying awake at night. And all of us experience times like that when we feel distraught. And so if you feel like you're drowning, I think this passage and what it has to say about prayer is really good for us today. You know, one of the most interesting parts about Jonah's story is that he didn't end up in deep water by accident. Some of this trouble will be brought on by his own choices, but God was also at work in the middle of it all. And that's one of the great mysteries of life. How do we understand God's sovereignty and our own responsibility when things go wrong? Jonah doesn't answer every question about that mystery, but his prayer here teaches us some important truths. And there's three things we're going to see when we're in deep trouble. He's going to show us three things. Number one, we got to face it, we got to own it, and we got to surrender it. And I want to show you that in the passage, and I'm going to break it down for you today. So let me read to you from Jonah chapter two. It says this, Jonah prayed, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish. I called to the Lord in my distress, and he answered me. I cried out for help from deep inside of Sheol. You heard my voice when you threw me into the depths, into the heart of the seas. The current overcame me. You catch what I just said there? Did the uncomfortable truth about the sovereignty of God go unnoticed there? The first thing Jonah does in his desperate prayer is to establish who is ultimately in charge of his life. All right, so here's the first thing when we're in deep trouble. We have to face that God allowed this thing to happen. God has allowed this thing to happen to me. Now I'm referring to verse three when he says, you threw me into the heart of the sea. Do you see that in your Bible? You threw me into the depths. God, you did this. It's funny that he puts it on God, because in chapter one, verse 15, we read this, and then they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging. Well, how can it be that those other sailors on the ship threw him into the ocean, but Jonah says to God, we both know you did this? It's an uncomfortable truth, isn't it? And it's something we have to wrestle with as Christians, that God could have stopped this trouble that I'm facing. God could have prevented it, this situation I'm in, but he allowed it to happen to me. When I served at Lifeway Christian Resources, I had the joy of getting to know a blind woman named Jennifer Rothschild, who's become a well-known author, and I've shared this illustration one other time in church, but I want to share it again, because it really applies to this room too. She wrote in one of her books that she'd been wrestling with God because he allowed her to become blind in high school, and the weakness of blindness had forced her to rely on God and accept his sovereignty, that this was her assignment in life, to live as a blind woman. And one day, she heard the testimony of another blind woman named Marilyn, who had been miraculously healed with no medical explanation. And she couldn't get herself to listen to Marilyn's testimony, and finally, she sat down, she put it in her ears, and she listened, and this was her response. She said, Facing the hard reality that God had healed Marilyn Ford's eyes and not mine exposed such tender wounds and conflicting feelings toward God. It was so hard to admit that I loved God, but was disappointed in his ways. God could heal Marilyn and me, but healed Marilyn and not me. I appreciate her authenticity, because I think I would feel that same way. Why do other people get miracles when I didn't get that same miracle? This goes back to the Apostle Paul, the suffering that he had, this thorn in his flesh. God could have prevented that thorn from ever appearing, and the Apostle Paul, as great as he was, he could not get God to end his suffering. Three times he pleaded with the Lord, take this thorn from me, and the Lord responded, no, I'm allowing this to happen for a purpose. Paul with pain was more usable in God's hands than Paul with pride. And so that trouble that God allowed into Paul's life was, in the long run, very good for Paul, though in the short run, it didn't feel good for Paul at all. This is the part of God's sovereignty that's hard for all of us to swallow. I have my days with it, too, is that God has allowed all of us to endure certain thorns in our flesh, certain painful situations that other men don't have. But he uses that pain, that struggle, that difficulty to bring us into a place where we say, God, you're in charge. I have to face it.
You allowed this to happen to me. You must have a good purpose for it. I have to believe that you have my ultimate good in mind. And somewhere deep inside, you're thinking, God, why does life seem so much easier for the guy next to me than for me? Why does he have a marriage where they never fight? Why does he have a career that seems to provide nice vacations for his family? Why does he have children that seem to be more compliant than mine? Why does he get a good report from the doctor when I have to live with diabetes or whatever struggle you have? God, you could have changed this. You could have fixed this. You could have made this go away. So why didn't you? And sometimes the Lord in his wisdom chooses not to remove a difficulty in our lives. And I just want to encourage you guys today, whatever cross you've been called to carry, you can either resent it or you can just embrace it. That God gave me this assignment. He gave me, if you're married, he gave me this woman to marry till death do I part. He gave me these children. He gave me this body. And when I get to the end of my life, all I want to hear is, well done, my good and faithful servant. You took what I gave you and you did the very best you could with it. Even the pain, even the struggle. And that whale wasn't the only one dealing with hard things to swallow. All right? Jonah had to swallow the truth of God's sovereignty. God, I accept it. You've allowed this to happen to me. What do you want me to do? How do you want me to grow through this? How do you want me to handle this? Now, the second thing Jonah had to do in his prayer is he had to own it. He had to realize that he played a part in it. So we're gonna see this in verse eight. So we're gonna see this in verse eight. But yeah, we see God's sovereignty. Now we see human responsibility. I played a part in this. Notice how Jonah begins to recognize his own error, his own sin. He's not yet at a place of full repentance. The next two chapters of Jonah, if you read them, you're gonna see he's still wrestling with the will of God about his call to Nineveh. He still hates the Ninevites. He still doesn't want what God wants for them. But something is beginning to soften in his heart. Jonah's starting to see that he had a part in the mess. And so in the next few verses, he recognizes God's kindness in rescuing him from the pits. Notice in verse eight, he makes this confession. Verse eight, those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love. He says that out loud. God, those who cherish worthless idols abandon their faithful love. And an idol is anything you love more than God. That's the best definition of idol I've ever heard. It's anything in your life that you love it more than you love God. Anything we cling to so tightly that it stands between us and what God is calling us to do is an idol. And Jonah is beginning to see his idol. What has been reluctant, why has he been reluctant to release it? It's his own bitterness. And so if you don't know much about the story of Jonah, God said, go to Jonah, go to Nineveh. And Jonah said, I'd rather run with my bitter heart than tend to my heart. I don't wanna go to those people. I hate those people. And so God sends the storm and God allows the sailors to throw him overboard and God appoints this fish in his sovereignty. But God's sovereignty doesn't erase Jonah's responsibility. And when we find ourselves in deep water, one of the most important prayers we can pray is this, God, show me what part I have played in this. Now, I wanna make a quick distinction. Not every ounce of suffering that comes into your life is a result of sin. There are moments when you experience tragedy or crisis and it has nothing to do with sin. But I think you and I both recognize a lot of the pain that we experienced, we brought some of that on ourselves. And I think it takes a lot of humility for a man to come clean before God and say, God, I don't like what I'm going through right now, but I have to confess, I chose this. This is my choice. This is a path I chose to walk. And Jonah had so much bitterness toward those Ninevites that God had to deal with his attitude and his hatred. This is one of my favorite illustrations to use with bitterness. You know what this is? These are barnacles. They're pesky little crustaceans that collect secretly on the underside of a boat. And when they are allowed to grow and spread, they become quite a nuisance. A boat left alone in the water for six months can become so encrusted with barnacles that it will use up to 50% more fuel to travel at the same speed. Barnacles burden a boat. And barnacles are notoriously difficult to remove once they find a stronghold. They secrete like a cement-like substance that adheres to the surface and once it hardens, it only comes off by strong force. And this is how it is with forgiveness, brothers. This is how it is when we harbor hatred toward another person or toward another group of people. The longer we allow it to sit there like Jonah was allowing it to sit there, the harder it is to come off. And so because God loves you and because God loves me, if I'm forming bitterness in my heart toward people and I'm not dealing with it, what does God do? He starts to come again. He starts to come against me. He starts to make life uncomfortable to me until I wake up and smell the coffee that I've got this thing growing on the underside of the boat, and before long, it's gonna take 50% more fuel to travel at the same speed. If God allows you to store up bitterness toward another person, you're gonna need a lot more fuel to travel at the same speed. It's gonna be a burden to you. This is why Ephesians 4.32 says this. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another just as God also forgave you. So could it be that one of the reasons God lets us land in the deep is to force us to release unforgiveness to other people? When I became a pastor in 2007, I got a picture. The sitting senior pastor, Phil, gave me this baton. It was a Bible. That was the baton. Steve Gaines gave me an actual baton. But Brother Phil gave me this Bible, and it was a special day that day. It was my first day as a pastor. I was brand new, and my track record was perfection. I had not yet made a single mistake. No one could question my judgment. There I am. That was the height of my career, 29 years old. And when he handed me that Bible, I felt like I was the most blessed man on the earth to get to lead these people in Jackson, Tennessee. And then I got home the next day, and I opened that Bible, and I saw on the front cover that he had typed out seven things that the Holy Spirit had put on his heart, seven things he challenged me to put into practice throughout the ministry. There they are. But there's this one, I wanna zoom in on it, if you'll zoom in on the next picture. He wrote this down. He said, love the people, all the people, all the time. All the time. How unrealistic is that? You want me to love the guy who says, don't take this personally, then proceeds to tell me something deeply personally, criticizing me personally? You want me to love that guy? You want me to love the person who has an opinion about everything, including things that they know nothing about? You want me to love the person, you want me to love the family member who turns Thanksgiving dinner into a hostage situation with one political jab? You want me to love the guy who asks for my honest opinion and then gets offended when I give it to him? You want me to love the guy who hurt me, never apologized for it, and somehow managed to convince himself that he's the victim? You want me to love the guy who criticizes everything I do, and if I ever offer him one tiny suggestion, suddenly I'm the most judgmental person in the world? You want me to love those kinds of people? And the Bible says, Phil's right. It's a simple assignment as a Christian. We are called to love the people, all the people, all the time. Ephesians 4.32, I swear Phil had to get this. I'm gonna just show it to you. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgive one another. Just as God also forgave you in Christ. You know, I like that verse until that last phrase because I know how Christ has forgiven me. Jesus Christ, once and for all, canceled all of my past. The Bible says he's never gonna bring it up with me. The Bible says that he takes our sins and he puts them behind his back. And so we don't fear judgment as Christians because we know it's not a time for Jesus to say, look at all this bad stuff you did. No, that's a time of reward for Christians because he already paid the price for all those sins. I love that. I say hallelujah, too, until he wants me to do the same thing with other people I don't like. Now he wants me to forgive hurtful people. Forgive one another just as God also forgave you in Christ.
It takes a lifetime to learn how to do that. You know, we as Christians, we tend to have certain scorecards that we use to gauge how spiritual somebody is, and I think Bible knowledge is one of them. If you're ever around somebody and they just spit the Bible out, they speak the language of Scripture. When they pray, it's a King James prayer. You know what I'm talking about? You always admire people like that. But biblically speaking, the ones in this room that are most intimate with Christ, the way you know it, is they've gotten really, really good at canceling people's sins. They've gotten really, really good at forgiveness. Jesus said, blessed is the man who hears these words of mine and then goes and puts them into practice. And there is no practice that he has called us to that's greater than the ministry of reconciliation, the ministry of grace. And the reason that Jonah was in the belly of that whale was God's sovereignty, yes, but he had responsibility in it because he was not dealing with bitterness in his heart. And I don't know who this message is for this morning, but there's got to be some of you in this room that there's a lot of barnacles under that boat. Somebody hurt you and you're ignoring the fact that underneath there, there's all this weight that's holding you down of unforgiveness. And it'll eat you up if you don't take care of it. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgive one another just as God also forgave you in Christ. So Jonah had to face it. God did this to me. He had to own it. I had a part in it. And then the last part, and here's the best part, he had to surrender it. He had to receive what happened to him next. As you read through this psalm that Jonah offers in his prayer, the culmination is worth waiting for because as he wrestles with the sovereignty of God and comes clean about his part in the mess, he does come to the place of acceptance in verse 9. He accepts what has to happen now because of what he's done. So Jonah 2.9, look at this. But as for me, I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving, I will fulfill what I have vowed, salvation belongs to the Lord. Let me just translate that in modern vernacular. God, my life is in your hands. I now have to believe that you're in charge. It's not about what I want anymore, it's about what you want. Whatever you tell me to do, it's what I've got to do. And he had to get to this place where he would surrender. Jeremiah would say, I am the potter, you are the potter, I am the clay. Isaiah would say, here am I, send me. Stephen the martyr would say, into your hands, I commit my spirit. All these Christians throughout history have had to come to the same place we have to come to and that is, Lord, I can't control my life. I have to accept it as you give it and my salvation, my rescue belongs with you. In his famous book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer says that God had to bring Abraham to a place where he possessed nothing. Abraham had to release his need for control and then his greatest treasures would finally feel safe if he would just give them to God, remember? Abraham had to give his son back to God. Only when we give our greatest dreams to God, says Tozer, can we find rest in them. And Tozer writes this, our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Nothing is safe which we commit to him and nothing is really safe which is not so committed. You catch that? There's a kind of happiness, Tozer says, there's a kind of blessedness that comes in letting God decide what he wants to do with me. And letting God decide what he wants to do with my children. And letting God decide what he wants to do with my church. God's in control. Even our successes in life are entirely in God's hands. So we got to give everything to God. And Tozer goes on to say this, this is the best part, listen, our gifts and talents should also be turned over to him. They should be recognized for what they are, God's loan to us and should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit for special abilities than for blue eyes. For who maketh thee to differ from one another and what hast thou that thou didst receive? Our dreams are only safe when we let them rest in the hands of God. And Jonah says, as for me, I will sacrifice to you. My salvation comes from the Lord and it is no accident that once he truly surrenders all this to God, verse 10 shows up, and then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. Isn't it interesting that the whale was told, don't throw him up until he gives up? I just find that fascinating. I wonder how many times God is saying that about me on earth. We're going to hold him right there until he finally, make him squirm until he realizes that he's not in charge and he's not in control. And then his salvation will belong with the Lord. I heard Paul Tripp say once that the best sermons are the ones in which the preacher has obviously been rescued by his own preparation. And so I try to model that anytime I teach scripture. I want to make it clear that what I'm teaching to you, it's run in and through me. I'm not talking at you, I'm talking to you because God has used this truth in my own life. And I think that's the best way to teach the Bible. And so I've sat with this text the past couple of weeks as I've been preparing it. And I just want to share you from my journal, three ways this text really challenged me. Number one, here's how this text challenged me. I am learning to number my days. Jonah suddenly becomes very aware of the fragility of his life inside that whale. When you're sinking beneath the waves, you stop thinking about stuff that doesn't matter. You get prioritized. That's one of the things that crisis does for us. It brings our life into focus on what's really important. Samuel Johnson said this, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. And the older I get, the more I'm beginning to understand that. When I went to seminary, I had a picture in my mind of how my life would unfold. I had plans for ministry, plans for my family, plans for the years ahead. But I'm beginning to see more clearly how little control I have over the length of my life and the effectiveness of my ministry. I really have so little control over it. My predecessor, Steve Gaines, who many of you knew and loved, was perhaps the biggest lover of small churches I had ever met in my life. It was ironic that Steve pastored a large church because what he really loved was small churches. Nothing made Steve happier than to travel around Tennessee and preach in smaller churches. And when I arrived here, he told me what big plans he had to become an itinerant preacher just as soon as I would take the burden of this church away from him. And just a few months later, I was installed at Bellevue. Right after I was installed at Bellevue, Steve went to be with the Lord, and those plans never happened. The minister of music here, Mark Blair, when I arrived was an incredible brother who had battled a rare cancer for almost 12 years when I arrived. Mark and I worked great together, and then we became like fast friends. But one week, he told me of his plans. He said, Ben, I'm going to give you two to three more years. And the next week, he went into the hospital and died. His plans didn't play out. Our two to three-year run didn't happen. And here I am now at 50 years old, and I know I'm not an old man compared to some of you. It's all relative, right? My kids think I'm old. I'm just finally getting to the point in my life where I understand. I have my plans. I have my dreams. There's things I want to do. It's entirely up to God whether any of those happen. I have to just accept that in my heart, I plan my course, but the Lord determines the steps. And I'll just be honest with you, I could wake up tomorrow with a twitch in my finger like Michael J. Fox and deal with Parkinson's for the rest of my life. The fragility of our lives should motivate us to make the most of every single day. James says this, come now you who say today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit, yet you do not know what will happen tomorrow, what tomorrow will bring, what your life will be, for you are like a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes. So all we have is today. God decides how many days we get. And we decide if we're going to walk in bitterness or unforgiveness, but all we have is today. So here's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to learn how to make that phone call the minute the Holy Spirit tells me and don't put it off. I'm trying to learn how to write that note the Holy Spirit tells me and don't put it
at all. I'm trying to have that conversation that's needed to be had and not put it off. Forgive that person. Take that trip with my wife. Spend time with my children. Enjoy the good people God has put around me. Preach the sermon God has given me for that week and let the future be held in his hands because salvation belongs to the Lord. Jonah teaches that. Second thing I'm learning through Jonah too is I'm learning very slowly how to stay calm inside the fish. When life gets hard like you, I want out. I want God to fix it. I want him to resolve it. I want him to change it. I want him to remove it. I want to get back to the surface of the water where I can breathe again. But we see in this passage that God is doing his deepest work in Jonah while he's still in the deep. And I'm now in my fourth tour of duty and ministry, to use military terminology. My first church was in Jackson, Tennessee. My second was a church plant in Denver. And my third post was at LifeWay Christian Resources. And now here I am at Bellevue. And in each season of ministry, there have been unbelievable blessings of being in ministry, unexpected joys and friendships, but also certain kinds of suffering. In each place I've served, I've been equally tempted to say, God, how could you let this happen? This thing I'm dealing with, whatever it is at the time. And somehow the arrogance of that statement doesn't register. For I hear all the time trouble other ministers face. I hear trouble other churches have. And somehow I think God loves me so much that I need to pray for that person and he's going to make my life really easy. When it says that God threw Jonah into the deep sea, we the readers know why. He had an attitude problem that needed to get fixed. And God uses trials and troubles to cut us down to size. A staff member shared this quote with me that I thought was really good. Spurgeon said this way, brother, if any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him for you are worse than he thinks you to be. If he charges you falsely on some point, yet be satisfied for if he knew you better, he might change the accusation and you would be no gainer by the correction. If you have your moral portrait painted and it is ugly, be satisfied for it only needs a few blacker touches and it would be still nearer the truth. Thank you, Charles, for that encouraging word. I'm trying to change my prayer life from God, when are you going to get me out of this? To God, what are you trying to get out of me in this? What are you trying to change in me inside this fish? And the most loving thing God can do is keep me uncomfortable until I realize what that is. And what did Jesus say to his disciples? How slow you are to learn. How many times did he tell that to those disciples? How slow you are to learn. We all are. It takes a lifetime to learn how to live. So I'm learning to stay calm inside the fish. Last thing, number three, then we'll have some conversation. I'm learning to continue to return to my salvation. The older I get, the more I take for granted my own testimony that I was just a small town boy in a no-name place from a family tree so full of dysfunction. Nothing in me that would attract a royal king. I came from a very poor family who walked to City Hall on Saturday to get government cheese. I ate the free and reduced lunch. No person in the history of my family had ever gone to college until I went off to college. When the Bible says that the disciples were just ordinary unschooled men, it means that people were blown away that God could use goofballs like them. Why would God in his infinite wisdom choose those 12 people? And that's the way that we should all feel when God uses us. That any good in me, any good that comes from me is a result of the touch of his hand. Some years ago, I was able to take my kids back to my hometown. I grew up in a tiny town, population 950. We had one police officer. If you passed him, you could go as fast as you want. There wasn't another one. That's the kind of town I grew up in. No McDonald's, no stoplights. We went to a tiny little church. My two brothers and I were the youth group. All right, think rural. And I took my kids back to this little one-room, looked like a one-room schoolhouse. It's the church where I heard the gospel, where I heard a guy named Pastor Pete every Sunday bring a very unpolished message. And I grew to love the Bible and love Jesus Christ. I was nothing special until I met Jesus Christ. And even today, I'm nothing special without him. And I think what Jonah had to learn is a lesson we have to relearn throughout our lives. When we start to get too big for our britches, we got to go back to that moment where God saved us and remember, what were we before we were saved? And what are we now? We're sinners saved by grace. And I'm learning more and more when trouble comes to keep going back to the moment of my salvation and remember, God has given me way more than I ever thought I would have. He's given me way more than I ever thought I'd deserve. And I want to walk with a spirit of gratitude and unforgiveness, not a spirit of entitlement and bitterness. And Jonah, it took him too long to learn it, and I don't want to take a lifetime to learn that. I want to keep coming back to my salvation. So today, as you guys have a little talk at your tables, which we like to do, I want to encourage you guys to have some conversation. Here's the question that I want you to bat around for a few minutes before we sing. What's one area of your life where you find yourself trying to maintain control rather than trusting God with the outcome? Got the assignment? All right, turn to somebody next to you and talk about that question for a few minutes. Go.