So, there's this guy, a prophet of God. I could buy a commentary or do an in-depth study to learn more about him, and maybe I will, but the important thing is that we don't necessarily know a whole lot. Maybe he had just begun the ministry, maybe he had been at it a long time. Whatever the case, God told Jonah:
Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me
...but Jonah ran away from the Lord.
What I love about this story is that it pretty much is a basis for the Christian life. Our God is a God of second chances, to quote VeggieTales. Jonah ran away, not to do something horrible, maybe he was going to Tarshish to preach, hoping he could ignore God. Maybe he had big plans there before he was supposed to go to Nineveh. It doesn't matter. God knows best. I find this really hard to completely understand in my life. I always thought that I knew best....and now I am supposed to trust God? What?!? So, Jonah runs away, and the boat he is on begins to sink. What is this boat in our life? The Church? A Relationship? It doesn't matter whether or not what WE want to do is good or not, judging by human standards, it matters whether or not we LISTEN to God. Jonah was on a boat. He wasn't murdering, being sexually immoral, disrespecting his mother and father, he was on a boat. I think that whatever our "boat" is, that when we don't do what God wants us to, we are sinning, A LOT. And figuratively we ARE sinking the boat ourselves. Maybe we struggle in a relationship and God calls us to apologize...yet our pride is too big, so we don't apologize, but try and act really nice to this person. The boat of this relationship is SINKING. 1. We aren't trying to restore the relationship and 2. We are only trying to pretend so that we don't feel bad for not apologizing or guilty for whatever we did in the first place. What if the boat is the Church? Maybe God calls us to pursue (hah) a ministry, confess our sins to someone, be a better friend...whatever. When we don't do what God calls us to do, we sink the boat. We are holding everyone back from TRULY experiencing God's power and work in our lives, including our own. Think how far along our church or the American church, our relationships with friends, or with people we don't like, COULD BE if we followed God's plan? How full of the spirit or dependent on God would we be? And yet we don't do it, we run away, maybe not to the opposite end of the world, but maybe somewhere very close.
God had a plan for Jonah in Nineveh, He wanted Jonah to learn to trust Him, but also He wanted Jonah to be in a closer relationship with Him. But Jonah was too uncomfortable, or scared and said he would like to do it his way. Too bad our way is not the best way....
When we don't do what God wants, we fail to move onto that next step of faith and we also fail to do what God commands us to do....I just can't get over how important God's will truly is...
