jonah

For my time in the Word one morning, I was on my way to Colossians and somehow got stuck in the little book of Jonah.  Reading it through, I noticed an interesting fact:  after they finally chucked Jonah overboard (at Jonah’s insistence), everyone on the ship became a follower of the One True God!  The hour of Jonah’s greatest distress – being dumped into a violent sea with no hope of ever seeing daylight again – was also the hour of salvation for the whole ship!  “So they took Jonah up and cast him into the sea, and the sea ceased its raging.  Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.”  As Jonah finally gave over his will to God’s will, the hearts of those watching the drama also turned to God.

What really struck me was that God actually took Jonah’s SIN (fleeing in the opposite direction instead of preaching to Ninevah as commanded) and used it for Kingdom glory!  In the same way, He uses not only our troubles and trials and tribulations for His glory, but He also uses even our mistakes and, unbelievably, our sins.  THAT is how big and awesome God is and how perfect and interconnected and all-knowing His plans are!

While I was reading Jonah, I got a call about a signature-required delivery coming in a few minutes, with a replacement for a leaky kitchen faucet.  So I prayed that God (as He used Jonah’s disobedience to save a shipful of people) would use the hassle of a leaky faucet for a Holy Spirit work in the heart of the deliveryman.  When he came, I told him how the timing of his delivery was an answer to prayer for me.  He answered with, “Yes, it’s a wonderful world, isn’t it?”  - not the answer I was expecting.  I couldn’t think how to pull the conversation into sharing the Gospel from there.  So I signed the paper, and he went down the steps.  The Lord, however, kept him at the back of the truck for a good 5 minutes rearranging packages, and then gave me a swift kick out the door.  I went tearing down the steps calling out, “One more thing…..it’s a wonderful world if you have Jesus as your Savior!”  That opened the door for a “divine appointment” with the deliveryman, whom God had already brought from being an atheist to believing there probably was a God – but a God Who only deserved his anger and contempt.  Quite a bit later, he left with a “Why Me, God” brochure in his hand and a new understanding.  But you see, the awesome opportunity to meet this man at his point of need in his journey toward God would not have come to me if not for the leaky faucet (a small tribulation).

When Jonah was in the belly of that big fish, He prayed:
…“For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me;
all Your waves and Your billows passed over me….
the waters compassed me about….even to the extinction of life,
the abyss surrounded me, the seaweed was wrapped about my head…”

The last 3 years of my life have sometimes felt like that, with one calamity after another after another.  And the 18 years before, dealing with Steven’s TBI, often brought both of us close to despair.  I imagine many of you have felt and still do feel that same way – sometimes every day, day after day.

But listen to the end of that same prayer of Jonah’s – before deliverance - still spoken from the terrifying, stinking belly of the big fish:
“But as for me, I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving!
I will pay that which I have vowed.  Salvation and deliverance belong to the Lord!”

As we proceed into 2015, we can go with the assurance that (1) no matter what circumstances God brings into our life or allows to stay in our life, (2) no matter how many times we fail, and (3) even in spite of our sin failures that will come in 2015......... God is still big enough and great enough to not only carry us through each circumstance, but to also use each of those circumstances for our good and His glory.  Like Jonah, we need to remember to give the sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise, right in the middle of those hard times to come.  And we need to try to walk with an air of excited expectancy for how He is going to use those tough situations.

Have a new year daily filled with His peace and the sense of His presence.