How many times have you wished that you could hear the audible voice of God?

How many times have you said my faith would be enormous

if God would somehow communicate with me directly?

Would it?

Perhaps it might depend on what he said when he spoke to you,

because here we have an occasion where the word of the Lord came to a man.

And the word of the Lord that came to this man was a word of commandment

by which God gave a mission to Jonah.

But he rose up to run away from his duty.

If God were to speak directly to us, as he did to Jonah, surely many of us would like to believe that we'd listen. But what if God's Word commands us to do something we don't want to do?

Welcome to this Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

Today we joined Dr. R. C. Sproll for a brief study of the book of Jonah.

Jonah, of course, is a familiar figure in biblical history

and a man who was spoken to directly by God, but disobeyed. Why did he try to flee from God's

voice? And what can we learn from his experience? Let's join Dr. Sproll now.

When I was a little boy, my mother made me sing in the children's choir in the church.

And how they would laugh and fuss when on Sunday mornings I had to dress up for the occasion

with the black cassock and the white surplus and this big black satin bow tie, this huge big tie and the

starch collar. And my uncle would look at me and say, oh, there's little Lord Fauntleroy.

And I was so embarrassed to have to go outside wearing this outfit. And we sang in the children's choir.

And once a year, we would sing the same anthem called Seeky the Lord while he may be found.

And the highlight of our experience as choir boys was the singing of that anthem because the solo was sung by the lead soloist of

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