When God Sends Us to People and Places We Don’t want to Go
God sent Jonah to Nineveh. Jonah held a great prejudice against the people of Nineveh and did not want to go. Jonah’s story confronts us with an uncomfortable truth: Sometimes the greatest resistance to God’s mission is not fear, it is contempt. Not inability but unwillingness. Before we pray for cities to turn, we let God turn us.
Move One: Naming Our Nineveh
Where resistance lives in us.
“But Jonah ran away from the Lord…” — Jonah 1:3
Begin with Silence
Sit quietly for 2–3 minutes. Let your breathing slow. Become aware of God’s nearness.
Prayer Invitation
Pray slowly and honestly: “Lord, show me who You are sending me to that I do not want to go to.”
Do not rush this. Let names, faces, groups, neighborhoods, or memories surface. These may be people whose behavior offends you, whose history angers you, whose politics trouble you, whose wounds intersect painfully with your own, or whose sin feels especially unjust.
Nineveh is not abstract. It is specific.
Reflection Questions
Hold these before God, not as analysis:
Who do I secretly hope does not experience mercy?
Where have I justified my distance with spiritual language?
Where have I confused discernment with avoidance?
Prayer of Repentance
Pray aloud if possible:
“Jesus, I confess that my heart is not like Yours.
I have withheld love, presence, and hope.
I have protected myself instead of trusting You.
I repent of hard-heartedness, superiority, and fear disguised as wisdom.”
Pause. Now fix your attention on Jesus.
“Jesus, You did not refuse our Nineveh.
You left Your throne and entered our violence, blindness, and rebellion. You brought good news not from a distance, but by Your presence.”
Ask:
What would it look like for my heart to be shaped like Yours?
What needs to soften in me before anything can change around me?
Sit quietly. Let the Spirit do His work. Make note of anything He highlights.
Move Two: Trusting the God Who Goes Before Us
When the message is weak, but God is strong
“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Jonah 3:4
And the people of Nineveh believed God…Jonah 3:5
Jonah’s message is astonishingly thin. Eight words. No explanation of what God sent him to say. No clarity on what to turn from or turn to. And yet the city turns.
Scripture does not say they believed Jonah. It says simply: “The people of Nineveh believed God.”
Prayer of Release
Let this truth settle in you.
“God, forgive me for believing that everything depends on me: my clarity, my courage, my words, my timing.”
Notice how often pressure replaces peace in mission.
Gospel Assurance
The same God who stirred Nineveh prepares hearts ahead of time, speaks through dreams and visions, and reveals Himself in ways we never can. Across the Muslim world, many testify of Jesus appearing to them in dreams, calling them to Himself long before any Christian arrives.
Let this truth bring joy, not passivity.
Prayer of Trust
Pray slowly:
“Lord, You are already at work.
You go before me.
You carry the weight of transformation.
I offer You my availability, not my anxiety.”
Rest here. Let confidence replace striving.
Move Three: Holy Imagination and City-Wide Awakening
Daring to hope as big as God’s mercy
Nineveh was not a village. It was a vast urban center, more like a regional metro than a single city, surrounded by walls, population density, and imperial power. A real city. And God turned it together.
Guided Imagination
Close your eyes if that helps. Imagine:
an entire city pausing
violence ceasing
injustice confronted
humility spreading
fasting, prayer, and repentance rising from every level of society
Now bring it closer to home. Imagine:
Shawnee turning to the Lord
Raytown marked by repentance and joy
Belton, Overland Park, Independence, and Kansas City, MO awakening together
Imagine schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and families responding to God.
Then widen the lens:
the entire metro stirred
the Church unified
Jesus exalted
righteousness and mercy flowing through civic life
Let your sacred imagination be expanded, not restrained.
Intercessory Prayer
Pray boldly:
“God of mercy, do it again. What You have done before, You can do here in Kansas City.
We ask not for comfort, but for awakening.
Not for control, but for transformation.”
Pray for repentance, Jesus-centered spiritual awakening, Spirit-fueled conviction, healing, justice, and joy.
Closing Prayer: A Jonah-Shaped Benediction
“Lord, make me willing.
Where I have resisted, soften me.
Where I have feared, steady me.
Where I have judged, teach me mercy.
Send me not as the hero of the story, but as a witness to the God who saves. Salvation belongs to You.
We trust You with our network, our city,
and Kansas City.
We trust You with our Nineveh.
Amen.”