Dharius Daniels - How to Get the Next Level of Your Assignment

Purpose is the reason for the creation or existence of a thing. Role is a set of responsibilities that God assigns to you for a certain season. Calling is God’s invitation for your participation in the reason for your creation. He calls you to certain roles in specific seasons, and your willingness to continually say yes to the roles He calls you to is how you comprehensively accomplish your purpose. We need backside management. We have front-side prophecies, front-side sermons, front-side words of knowledge, and front-side words of encouragement, but we need more teaching and training that anchors us to handle what comes with stepping into all that God has for you. You’re gifted, but people’s opinions still matter too much. Yes, you’re gifted, but you still tend to have a Messianic complex and try to save people who don’t want to be saved. You’re gifted, but you still need to reach a place where you’re truly okay living with a degree and dimension of isolation. You’ve got to give, but you must understand that operating in the fullness of it means you’re inevitably going to be misunderstood. If you’re still addicted to offering explanations, you’re not ready for this next level of your assignments. Our text tonight introduces us to an individual who powerfully illustrates what I’m attempting to articulate: a gentleman named Jonah. We read Jonah chapter 4, but I believe we cannot fully understand its content without a little context. Let’s introduce Jonah in chapter 1, where he receives instruction from the Father to go to a place called Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. The Bible recounts the story: Jonah rises, goes down to Joppa, and boards a boat heading to Tarshish. Here’s what I want us to focus on; I think it’s important and needs emphasis. Jonah’s disobedience was not in the area of ethics; his disobedience was in the area of his assignment. He’s not avoiding the entirety of his assignment because he’s not a novice prophet; this isn’t his first prophetic assignment. He has been used in the past, but now he encounters an aspect of his assignment that he avoids because it feels unsafe. See, he had legitimate reasons to not want to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. The Assyrians held a history of hostility toward Israel. They beat them, battered them, and bruised them. Some historians suggest that they would decapitate them and display their heads on fences as a sign of what they would do to others. Yet, God tells Jonah, «I want you to go to them.» You aren’t talking to me tonight. This is important: Jonah made assumptions about what his assignment should look like and, like many of us, assumed Assyria shouldn’t be part of his assignment. Assyria represents a season in your life where God calls you into something that feels unsafe. Are you going to talk back to me tonight? It feels like a disruption in the linear nature of your calling. As soon as you feel comfortable, as soon as you feel competent, and as soon as you’re finding your stride with a degree of mastery over what God has called you to steward, God suddenly interrupts the linear nature of your assignment and says, «You need to go to Assyria.» Oh, you’ve hit your stride in the background; you’ve mastered the background; you teach others in the background, and here comes God saying, «Go to Assyria, the forefront.» It seems unsafe. Am I making sense here? This is so important, and I think it clarifies a conversation that confuses many people in contemporary Christianity. It helps us break down and understand the concepts of purpose, role, and calling. Purpose is the reason for the creation or existence of a thing. Role is a set of responsibilities that God assigns to you in a certain season that He expects you to steward properly. Calling is God’s invitation for your participation in the reason for your creation. So, He calls you to certain roles in certain seasons, and your willingness to keep saying yes to the roles He calls you to is what matters.