You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet.

Serious talk about the sacred book, I'm Pete Ends.

And I'm Jared Byas.

Well, welcome everyone to the podcast, the Bible for Normal People.

Today, it's going to be just me.

Last time, it was me, we talked about how we might want to take the Bible seriously,

but not literally, as well as giving a little background on myself.

But today, we're going to talk about a particular book of the Bible.

We're going to talk about the book of Jonah.

And there's a few reasons for that.

I think it highlights a lot of the challenges that we face when we read our Bibles,

especially if we were reading it given a particular background or tradition.

But it also holds a just a special place for me as a pastor.

I shared last time, you're going through my own wrestling and challenges with the Bible,

particularly, but also then, of course, it doesn't get contained there, but spreads out into faith

and general. And there's a particular challenge to going through crisis of faith and these dark

nights of the soul when you're a pastor and your paycheck depends on you, maybe not going through

some of these things. So it's a really difficult time. I have a real heart for people in ministry

who are torn and sometimes by very good motivations, not wanting to injure or harm or hurt the

faith of their congregation and others, while at the same time not being able to deny that they're

going through a lot of changes in their faith journey. So Jonah was particularly for whatever reason,

reassuring to me during that time. I learned to fall in love with the book and we'll see

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