Episode 4 with James Chipwete

Elim MPower

On this episode, we are in conversation with James Chipwete about the book of Jonah. James is a doctor, and he is one the elders at Birmingham City Church.

We are also running a free prize draw with Episode 4, with the chance to win a £50 Amazon UK voucher to spend, just ahead of Christmas!

To enter, you need to contact us via the voice message facility on the Anchor app, or at https://anchor.fm/elim-mpower leaving three things on the message: (i) your name and contact number – for us to get hold of you if you are the winner, (ii) the prize draw code word which is mentioned in the podcast; and also (iii) suggestions for things you would like to hear us discuss in the future on the ‘Discipleship For Busy Blokes’ podcast.

The closing date for entering the competition is Sunday 8th December 2019 at midnight, and full terms and conditions have been issued via the Elim_MPower mailing list. The prize will be drawn on Monday 9th December, and the winner announced that day.

We talk about why Jonah runs away, and why blokes in general can sometimes run away from responsibility or equally from fear of failure. James suggests that Jonah may not have received the best role modelling, and that this could be why he disappears off towards Tarshish to begin with.

Role modelling is such a help for men when it is available, and equally destructive when absent. We also explore what the captain says to Jonah when he is asleep – to wake up and call on his God.

Jesus could sleep despite a storm because He was within the centre of God’s will, whereas Jonah was perhaps asleep in a rebellious place and the cause of a storm.

Jonah seems to represent those men who have to get to the very end of themselves before turning to God, where all other options have been taken off the table. This in turn leads to a turnaround moment for Jonah – and listening and acting more quickly in response to God next time around.

We look at how receptive the Ninevites are to Jonah’s rather terse outreach message, because God has been doing work on them in the background – and deeper than this that Jonah’s outreach work perhaps lays the foundation for the later exile of Judah to Babylon.

If blokes have blown it with things, the message of Jonah is that we worship a God of second-chances.

We unpack whether blokes sulk, like Jonah, and our tendency not to share our feelings, and how narrow Jonah’s perspectives really are, and its lack compared with the other people in his world. The Ninevites also seem to be so much quicker in their spiritual turnaround than Jonah is in his geographical about-face.

We round up with this thought: that God sees us as men where we are, and if we need someone to walk alongside us, God can do this; and James closes by praying for everyone listening.