The story begins with a man minding his own business, and then one day, God asks the man to go and take the people of a great city, the message of His love, forgiveness and their need for repentance. The man's name was Jonah. Jonah turned the opposite direction that God had asked him to go and ran away.
At first, Jonah responded to God’s request by going in the opposite direction, but keep in mind that God foreknew what Jonah’s response was going to be before He even asked Jonah to go. I am sure that while Jonah knew enough about God to know that he should not disobey Him, he stubbornly set aside what he knew to be truth and went with his feelings. Jonah's focus was in the wrong place.
His focus was on having it his way and not God’s way, and he was willing to make a run for it. I would argue that Jonah did not disobey God when he got on the boat to run from what he knew God wanted him to do, but at the moment God had asked him and said in his heart, "I will not go". You see God had asked Jonah to do something that He knew Jonah did not want to do. Jonah despised the people of Nineveh; they were not descended from Abraham and in fact had a history of treating the Israelites cruelly. The last thing he wanted to do was to take the love of God to a people that he despised. He even stated to God, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity” and even in his knowing this, he did not want them to share in the same love and forgiveness that God’s people received.
Jonah’s disobedient choice ended him up in a whirlwind of disappointment and despair, slap dab in the middle of the belly of an enormous fish. God had placed Jonah in a situation (a time out chair so-to-speak) that was going to make or break his will so that God’s will would rise up and surface in the life of Jonah and accomplish what God had meant for good, to change Jonah and save a people from destruction. But even though Jonah ended up exactly where God wanted him to go, Nineveh, and did exactly what God asked him to do, become the instrument God would use in saving an alien people, Jonah was still angry at God.
You see, just because Jonah was doing God's will, did not mean that he was happy about it. Jonah prayed and told God exactly how he felt. However, because God loved Jonah and was compassionate to his frustrations, and slow to anger, God really did not want to send calamity into Jonah's life. He instead showed compassion to Jonah by making a vine to grow over Jonah’s head to provide shelter from the hot sun where Jonah had camped out at. Instead of sending fire and brimstone on Jonah for his lack of love and concern for others, in which he probably deserved, God showed favor.
This is why in the middle of our own disobedience; God continues to show us favor. Not because we may be doing everything right or wrong, but because He loves us in-spite of how we treat Him or others and God uses His kindness towards us as object lessons for us to learn from. Jonah's selfish heart was revealed when he became angry as the vine that gave him shelter from the sun withered up and died. God had sent a worm that chewed it and caused it to die. Upon Jonah's complaint concerning the dead vine, God asked Jonah if he thought he had a right to be angry, and Jonah actually said yes, he sure did. Jonah said that he was so angry, enough to "even die".
You see Jonah really believed in his heart that he was in the right. He thought he had every right to be angry and felt like God was being unfair by everything happening to him. This is a prime example of how God tells us as well, that His ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts, and ours not His! Some important lessons that we can learn from Jonah are that when we focus on disappointment and not truth, love and compassion we will in fact become angry, disappointed and many times spiritually walk away from the Lord in certain areas of our lives. It is at that point that we begin a roller coaster ride of emotions and questions as to why we feel so disconnected from God. It almost always has something to do with us either denying what the truth is, or an unwillingness to accept the fact that we may not be able to change the situation. And in our struggle for control, we simply choose to be angry and have a disconnect from God.
You see, God knows the source of our anger and the inner workings of our mind and spirits, and He knows our limitations even when we don’t. He knows the events and experiences that make us angry. He knows our emotions and feelings of helplessness, fear, confusion, and dismay that lead to our anger. He knows all about our situation. Just as Jonah owned up to God about how he felt, we too need to express our anger to God when we are going through trials and tribulations that seem to push us over the edge and be repentful. He will hold our hand and walk through the anger with us, providing light. It is up to us however, whether we open our minds/eyes to what He is saying. Be sure not to turn away from His truth because it is not what you want to hear. Otherwise, you too may stay in “the whale’s belly” of sorts, as long as it takes to get you to see what God wants you to see or learn what He wants you to learn. And while God does not necessarily send all pain into our lives, He does allow it and He wants to use everything that touches us to grow us and make us more like Him.
If your struggle is in loving someone or having compassion, God will most certainly send a wind your way to cause you discomfort in order to change your attitude. He wants you to learn that while going through the storm if you will keep your focus on Him and not your frustrations as Jonah did while He is working on you, then the process will not be as bad, nor will it take as long to get through it. He wants you to see yourself as He sees you, or maybe I should say He wants you to see your sin as He sees it.
In the first chapter of Jonah, Jonah states that he knew that he was in that storm because of his disobedience and because the storm that God sent for Jonah’s sake was having an effect on the people around him in the boat. When Jonah requested, they throw him overboard, that too was Jonah's choice. Once we see it as God sees it, then we can deal with it and overcome it.
Hold Fast,
-Bren
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