“And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left – and also many animals?” ~ Jonah 4:11
Have you ever felt God urging you to do something that you were so defiant and totally set against doing that you did just the opposite of what it was He wanted you to do?
Back in the early 90’s, my wife and I were dealing with some fairly serious financial problems. But somehow we came into some money, a few thousand dollars or so. Being financially immature and fiscally irresponsible – instead of using the money to pay off some debt – I decided that we needed a nicer car than the totally reliable one we owned free and clear.
The evening before I was scheduled to go to the dealer to purchase the new car, I became incredibly restless in bed. When I did eventually fall asleep, I had a horrible dream. In the dream, this new car I was about to purchase ended up causing some major life problems. You see, my wife wasn’t completely onboard with purchasing this new car. To be truthful, she was totally against it, but I had talked her into going along with it (more aptly – begged and pleaded like a pathetically spoiled child).
I woke up several hours later and paid the dream no mind whatsoever. By the afternoon, this new car was mine, and man! Was it nice! It had a powerful engine, the sound system was great, the ride was smooth and it even had leather seats!
Not even a year later, I was forced to trade that car back in for a used car that was far worse than the one I owned and traded in to get the new one. Why? Because an unexpected bill arrived in the mail a few months later and we could no longer afford to pay our bills because of the expensive new car payment.
The prophet Jonah had a similar story. God told Jonah that He wanted him to travel to Nineveh and warn the people there that they had 40 days to make things right with God, or else He would destroy the city completely.
But Jonah wanted no part of this mission. You see – he despised the Ninevites. They had a long history of persecuting, murdering, and enslaving Israelites (Jonah’s people). Jonah felt that the Ninevites didn’t deserve God’s mercy whatsoever, and there was no way he was going to follow through with what God wanted him to do.
So Jonah does the exact opposite. He runs completely the opposite direction from Nineveh, running away from God. He pays a fare and boards a boat heading to a place where he can completely forget about God, Nineveh, and life in general. Eventually this huge storm causes issues, the sailors finally realize that they are experiencing God’s wrath toward Jonah, and they throw him overboard. That’s when the whale swallows Jonah, and he stays in the belly of the great fish for three days, before the whale regurgitates him back up on the very shore of the port where he initially embarked on his hasty retreat from God.
In the end, God got what He wanted. Jonah was still incredibly hesitant, but he traveled to Nineveh and did what God wanted him to do.
The thing about disobedience to God is this:
- Sin will always take us deeper than we are willing to go (the belly of a whale in the bottom of the sea).
- Sin will always keep us there longer than we want to stay (Jonah stayed in the whale’s belly for three days!).
- Sin will always cost us more than we are willing to spend (the fare to board the boat was most likely incredibly expensive, not to mention the near-death experience Jonah endured).
- God has this way of taking us back to the very origin of our disobedience (the whale spit Jonah back up right where he had made up his mind to run away).
Friend, God always gets His way in the end.
Today’s question: What is God calling me to do that I am unwilling to follow through with? Why do I not trust Him in this matter?
Former Blackout Artist 