Jonah 1-4, Romans 2: 1-16, Psalm 106: 1-15
Jonah 2: 1-4 (ESV)
“Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the
fish, saying, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered
me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me
into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all
your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from
your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.”
Verses 1 through 3 from Jonah 2 moved me. God wanted Jonah
to go Nineveh and ask the people to repent, and Jonah ran away. Nineveh was a Gentile
city and Jonah did not want to do as God asked. Jonah ran away and boarded a
ship but God sent a storm, and the sailors threw Jonah into the sea and God had
a fish swallow him. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and
nights before he started to pray to God. These verses moved me because I know
what it is like to run away or avoid a task that God has given to me, and for
awhile in my life things in my life got worse. And for a while I know I thought
that God had abandoned me. I had to rely on my faith like Jonah to get me
through this period. My experience was nothing as fantastical as Jonah getting swallowed
by a fish, but the experience felt like I was in the “belly of the beast”.
When you have this kind of experience in your life that is
of your own making because of something you’ve done or not done, you have to
rely on your faith in God to get through this season of your life. It will feel
like God has abandoned you, and I can promise you that thought will cross your
mind. But let the thought go and renew your faith in God. Trust that God has your
best interests at heart, and that this experience will draw you closer to him and
you will look back at it and know that it has strengthened your faith.
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