Our Jonah mentality
JONAH 1
2 "Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me."
3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish.
Jonah is called by God to confront the wickedness of the city of Nineveh with His support and His direction. Jonah disobeys God and chooses to run away. Does this sound familiar? Every Christian that commits to a personal relationship with the Father through Jesus' sacrifice has a calling on their lives. God has assigned us with a role that we can choose to accept and go for it or run away from it.
Either through apathy or rebellion, we can avoid the call God has for us. Jonah did, but he was still called to give that message to Nineveh. God still loves us when we disobey Him and "all things work together for the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28). He has expertly knitted a plan together for our lives.
JONAH 2
1From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God.
2 He said:
"In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave [a] I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
When we cry out in distress, God listens. The shame in Jonah's case is that it took having to deal with tough consequences for him to turn around, repent and follow. God delights in faith - where we don't need to have a Jonah moment in order to fulfil His will.
JONAH 3
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
Jonah obeyed and the city turned from their evil ways. God is a God of justice, but also compassion. If we turn from our own plan and follow God's, we give Him access to work through us and restore what has broken.
JONAH 4
1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home?
This is the conundrum. Sometimes, even when we follow God and do what is good in His eyes, we are displeased with the outcome. The outcome didn't suit us. We wanted God to do something different that we think would have made us 'happier'; how we thought justice should have been fulfilled. Sometimes we can't understand why certain things happen the way they do; but we must rid ourselves of this Jonah mentality in order to grow in our faith.
The book of Jonah shows us that there is hope when we turn away from God's plan for us but the hope is also that we don't have to hit rock bottom in order to turn around and learn from our mistakes.
Created almost 2 years ago
