Jonah's Decision

Jonah’s Decision

4/25/18

How many of us immediately turn from the direction we were headed in when God calls us to do something for Him?  Some say it was an easy process while others mention a struggle that lasted for quite some time, whatever the response may be it is a glorious experience when the person being called of God agrees with the Almighty Creator of everything.  It can be tough responding to God and many times the human population will not heed or accept what the person has chosen to do, but if those people listen and in turn follow God not only will they learn so much about true life but also their lives too shall be changed forever during the restoration process that they proclaim to others.

When a person rejects the call of God or questions their ability to complete such a task, God does not slap them to the ground in an angry fashion nor does He ban them from any other blessings that come from His heart.  If that was the case then many people who have heard the call of God would not be in the state that they are in today, because we must remember that when God sets forth His hand against something that “something” usually falls hard but God is not quick to anger but wants His child to understand and to choose freely instead.  When I was a baby, I was dedicated to the Lord and the evangelist who dedicated me said over me that I was going to do a great work for the Kingdom of God.  It took almost 44 years for that to occur, but I finally listened to what God was saying to me and asking me to do.  Did I have trials and troubles during those years that I resisted?  Oh yeah, I had my share and some others’ share as well but all through that timeframe God did not give up on me nor did He kill me off either, but continued to gently call me and train my heart at the same time.

When I moved to Colorado after my career in the USAF was over, my mother wrote a letter to many of our family friends saying that I was returning home and that I was like the prophet Jonah coming out of a tumultuous journey and ready to be a part of God’s Kingdom.  She was correct, my life had ventured far enough away from God and I was ready to correct my path and change my heart back to God.  This process did not occur overnight and I still followed my selfishness for quite some time but each day I continued to fight for my spiritual freedom, but many times I found myself continuing the selfish end of things and not God’s change which made the transition harder and longer a process in which I learned a lot of things but wish I had skipped.  I must admit it was rocky at times but God never let me go or gave up on my call that He placed on my heart when I was a baby.  God protected me so many times while I was growing up, and not always from stupid teenager stuff either.  I would have never guessed the path that God saw fit for me to take and as I have stated so many times in the articles that God has given us I utterly hated to write when I was a kid and in my younger years but today I find that if I do not listen and obey God’s voice what to say my life just feels sick.  It is easy for me to relate to Jonah, for I understand what he went through while running from God and all I can say is that when we stop playing around with God and run back to Him He is faithful and just to heal our land and allows us to complete our purpose in life.

In the first part of this series, we learned that God was concise and pinpoint with the direction and purpose of the mission He gave to Jonah.  There could be no question about where, when, and how Jonah was to speak to the people of Nineveh, for God had a specific reason why He wanted the message to be given to them and He had a specific person in mind to complete this message and warning.  However, as we continue this series we find that the person that God wanted to complete this task was not initially willing to do what was asked of him, a process not unheard of coming from the human standpoint of things.  God takes two short verses to explain His mission to Jonah and immediately Jonah gives his initial response in the next verse, Jonah 1:3: “But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”

I have always looked at settings like this and shook my head upon learning from them, for there is usually a great story that precedes the current picture being played out.  One can easily ascertain that Jonah had already made up his mind that he was not going to follow God’s instructions by the time the last letter of verse 2 was spoken.  While the choice of Jonah was made pretty quickly, there had to be a process of thought that went into action before Jonah made the decision that God had made a mistake to ask him to complete such a mission and to make sure that he was not going to be around, so Jonah sought the first boat out to anywhere.  I also find it quite funny that when people run from God they have a tendency to move or to go away from the area believing that if they leave then God will not know where they are at, or at least take some time to locate where you are at and then by the time He finds you will have changed His mind about sending you someplace.  We also have a tendency to forget that God cannot forget what His plans are for your life, even though we try desperately to force His hand in this area.

So, Jonah makes this quick decision to leave the area and go to Tarshish and he goes down and buys a ticket to Tarshish via the port of Joppa.  From the introduction of this verse, it sounds like Jonah’s mind is already made up of what he is going to do concerning what God has told him to do, I can almost hear him say, not me Lord, you did not tell me to go there, God.  Now, it does not matter where Jonah would have wanted to go, God would have known where he was at and it was just a matter of time before God made His presence felt.  Jonah had a temporary lapse in remembering that it would not have mattered where he fled to because God would have found him at that place if he had reached that specific destination.  But God understood that (human) time was of the essence and that something had to be done soon in order for Nineveh to be saved, so God decided to follow Jonah to the sea and shake his world up a bit.

Do you notice something about Jonah here in this verse and how his attitude is towards God?  I have a perfect example to give in this article that gives the demonstration of how Jonah acted when God told him to go to Nineveh and this example, of course, deals with me.  While this example does not directly designate God as who is directing the conversation with me but it does represent the authority I was under with my parents and thus the same.  When I came out of the USAF, I was divorced and reeling from such destruction in my personal life and I really did not take too kindly to the female persuasion at first either.  But after a period of time, my ill feelings towards dating changed and I began to “look” around again.  It was not too long until I began talking with a person and she and I decided to go out.  She came over and met mom and dad and almost from the moment she walked in the door they had serious concerns with this lady.  At that moment they did not say one word to me about her but when the date was over and I returned home later that night their words were pointed and sure.

The lady and I continued to see each other and most days my parents did not say much but through their silent communication, it was clear that they were still very uncomfortable with the situation.  It came to a head one evening and the dreaded conversation began with their confession that they really did not like the situation that I was in and how it had changed my attitude towards many things in my life.  My responses to them were not of a yelling manner but one of a calm encounter but while calm in stature they were very demeaning and defiant.  They made their point very clear to me and in turn I made my position clear to them as well, and at that point, it was a stalemate and no one was going to budge from the lines both sides had drawn.  I had made up my mind to date this lady no matter how much my parents did not like the fact that she and I were seeing each other.  It came to the point where I would not even listen to their pleas any longer and would immediately tune them out when they began speaking about the conversation.  What is so striking to me today is that there were sometimes that I up and left the area when they began to talk and ask the question about this particular situation, an arrow to the heart of this article and the attitude of Jonah concerning the command of God.

Jonah had no intentions of listening and then obeying God’s command, it is obvious that this was the case for the timing of what we can gather is just too concise.  Jonah was so against doing what God wanted him to do that he left the area, he actually bought a ticket for a boat journey and left the area.  You cannot get a more perfect example of a person running from something or someone.  Jonah did not fear God nor did he believe in the message that God had given him to tell the people of Nineveh and it was through this blatant disregard for God and His command that Jonah responded and in response to Jonah’s actions God made the holy and pure warnings to Jonah, then after a short amount of time the preparation of his judgment commenced.

It cannot be denied that God had a plan and a purpose for Jonah to complete.  It is also true that at some point in Jonah’s life he had known God quite well and was a servant of God for God knew Jonah’s heart and he had the ability to complete what God needed for the people of Nineveh.  But like most humans, Jonah ran from God and what his responsibility was, thus placing Jonah in a very recognizable position by most of us today.  We do not have too much information about Jonah before his entire story is told but we do know that he was a man of record and that his story is one of familiarity for many of us.  We also can relate to Jonah through the decision he made to ignore God and to go on his own without having any time to think things through, an impulse decision and convinced one that we all make each day.

But do we realize what actually transpires when we make such a decision about God and the things He wants us to do?  God’s main purpose for us is to tell others about Him and how much He loves us and that we need to be changed from the world and return to His Ways and if God directs us to complete this mission in a specific manner, we best not argue with Him for He will find a way to make us understand that His Ways are higher than ours.  What many of us do not understand is that when God gives us a mission to complete it will teach us so much more about God at the same time and what we learn about God will be relevant to how we are to portray Him to those who He has sent us to tell about Him.  The only way we can know this truth is to have the desire to study His Word and to hear His voice when He directs.  It is this process of recognition of God and His importance of eternal love that all of us fail to recognize on many levels, yet we have the way to understand this perfection and restoration plan of God right at our fingertips.  After I allowed God to return to my heart I began to understand more about Him through studying His Word.  This wisdom of Him did not come overnight but little at a time and I must be honest that I continue to learn about Him as He shows me what to write.

Hillsong group has a new song out called “So Will I” and if you have not heard it yet I highly recommend you do.  I know that their style will not meet everyone’s expectations but this song defines what God wants us to believe about Him and then, in turn, reflect this nature of Him onto others.  It beats the true mission of what God wants from His children through the obedience of His truth through His Word.  God wants us to understand His magnificent characteristics through His Word instead of personal devastation; He loves us with all of His heart, a measure that we finite creatures cannot fully comprehend.  “And as You speak A hundred billions failures disappear” is exactly what Jonah was to tell the people of Nineveh and that is what we are supposed to teach the lost today.

Later in this series, we will see that Jonah eventually comes to his senses and completes what God had told him to do, and we will look at the turmoil that he had to face while running from God.  It is this process of deliberately running from God that has direct implications on our lives and our nation today.  We have lost the focus concerning the mission that God gave this country so many centuries ago, even though we constantly use the benefits and resources that God gave us to accomplish this specific mission of His.  We have run so far away from God that we no longer recognize the benefactor of such wonders and to whom we are to distribute these blessings too.  How vain we have become in our own measures that we believe we are beyond the confines of God and His Ways.  Our decisions against God’s mission for this nation come at rampant speed with a harsh tone of defiance as we demand the laws to be followed.  How much harder and faster can we turn our backs on God and how much longer will God allow us to believe we can hide from Him through His blessings?

We do not have to follow the patterns of Jonah and we do not have to snub our noses at the provided authority as I did for a long time either.  God is here to direct us through His Word and if we adhere to His Ways He will shower us with His blessing that will be hard to comprehend.  God wants no one, not one of His children to die and be eternally separated from Him and this nation was established to achieve this wish from God.  We have squandered many things that God has given us to give to others but there is still time to turn things around and to make things right again with Him.  It is God’s desire that when He gives us instructions to complete a need for His children that our decisions are quick and sure in complete obedience, not defiance of His Word.  Let us turn around and once again allow God to be glorified in our decisions so that He will be pleased with the salvation and restoration of His people.  God does not want to prepare a judgment for any living human being but if He must do such an act it can be directed through our disobedience alone, but the good news is that none of us have to witness such a devastation.

DLB