Life + Faith – joncoombs.com

Tag: Obedience

  • More Than A Prayer

    I suspect most of us know what it’s like to pray when we’re in a panic.

    That crisis moment when we receive a phone call with bad news, the family member requiring urgent help, the conflict and crisis at work. In these moments prayer comes quickly and easily. We reach for God because we know we can’t reach for anything else.

    Jonah is in one of these moments, praying on the inside of a big fish, like clutching for a wall in the dark.

    In Jonah 2:1-2, we read:

    From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.”

    What follows is a poem, a psalm, a prayer of help and hope.

    Jonah uses the language of the Psalms to describe being cast into the deep. He even talks of the literal currents swirling and the seaweed wrapped around his head. It might not be the valley of the shadow of death, but it’s certain the belly of the shadow of darkness. He’s as low as a person can go.

    And it is in this event that God hears.

    Notice that Jonah’s prayer is not confession. Nor is it total repentance. He doesn’t say, “I’m sorry I ran”. He doesn’t repent of the disobedience to the call of God. He thanks God for saving his life, but there is still some deep work of the heart to come.

    When we need rescuing it’s easy to call on God. It’s hard to come to Him when things are calm, settled, and stable; when there’s no crisis to drive us to our knees.

    In v9 we read the heart of the chapter: “Salvation comes from the LORD.” 

    This is a declaration of faith. Jonah is aware of where his rescue comes from. The question is whether he will allow that same salvation to transform his heart that first ran away from the Lord.

    Prayer, in any moment, is a good place to start. But God wants more than crisis prayers. He wants ongoing conversation, connection, and worship. He loves for us to come to Him, to daily turn to Him in all things. Are we honest enough of where we are and how we are react to be open to God’s work in us?

    In the end the Lord sets Jonah’s feet back on solid ground, which He also does for us when we call on Him.

    For Reflection:

    1.     Do you tend to pray more in crisis than in calm? What might it look like to foster a more consistent conversation with God?

    2.     Is there something in your heart that you have not yet brought honestly before God?

  • More Than Running Away

    Jonah is full of humour if we’re on the lookout for it. And in the first chapter we find one of those funny moments being when Jonah thinks he can run from God.

    It’s funny.

    Jonah legitimately thinks he can flee from God, that he can outrun God. God tells him to go east to Ninevah, but instead Jonah heads west to Tarshish. He finds a ship, he pays that fare, he goes below deck. Jonah is so committed to running away that he falls asleep while a storm threatens to break up the ship.

    In Jonah 1:3, we read:

    But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.

    What is of particular interest here in chapter 1 is the contrast between Jonah and the sailors. These are pagan men, they worship various gods, and they begin crying out to them the moment the storm hits. These men are terrified, but they are also sincere. They recognise the spiritual while God’s own prophet is asleep!

    The sailors end up throwing Jonah overboard; after discovering he is the source of their trouble, but very reluctantly. They evidently fear the Lord as they make sacrifices and vows to him. It’s quite amazing really, their pagan sailors become worshippers of Yahweh despite the sleepy reluctant prophet. Jonah was running away from sharing the message God wanted him to share to heathens in Ninevah but ends up drawing these sailors toward Him.

    God has a way of working around our resistance and defiance.

    There is something to reflect on here. How often do we resemble Jonah more than the sailors? These sailors had no scripture, no tradition, and no covenant with God. Yet, when that moment came for them, they cried out, paid attention to the Lord, and responded. Jonah had all these things, but he ran.

    Running from God isn’t just blatant disobedience. It can occur in quiet ways; that prayer we put off, the conversation we avoid, that step of obedience we keep meaning to take. We find ourselves running in all sorts of directions.

    The good news in this chapter is not that the storm is stilled, it is that God is sovereign over all of it. He is sovereign over the storm, the sailors, and the fish that is in the water.

    God doesn’t abandon His mission because the messenger runs from it, nor does he abandon us when we run too.

    For Reflection:

    1.     In what area of your life have you been sleeping through the storm rather than responding to what God might be saying?

    2.     What might it look like to take one step back toward God this week, rather than continuing to head in the opposite direction?

  • More Than A Mission You Can Refuse

    There is something rather Mission Impossible about the book of Jonah. You can vibe God saying, “Your mission, Jonah, should you choose to accept it, is to go and share my message with the Ninevites.”

    In Jonah 1:2, God calls Jonah to share what all prophets of God are to share, the message of God:

    “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

    For those of us who know the rest of the story, or can catch up by reading the rest of chapter 1, we know that this is not what Jonah does. Instead, Jonah flees. He wants to get as far away from Nineveh as he can, and away from the Lord’s presence, by running away in the opposite direction.

    When we sense danger around us we tend to stop, turn around, and flee from whatever that danger might be. Here Jonah is doing the same thing. He is turning and fleeing in the opposite direction to what God wants him to be doing. He doesn’t want anything to do with the mission that God has for him.

    There’s something understandable for us in this. We don’t always follow God’s instruction, nor take the steps forward into the calling God has for us. This can be as simple as avoiding taking the step to follow him completely, to ignoring the explicit truth and teaching of his Word, to turning back to sin that we enjoy.

    Now, the time in which Jonah receives this call is when Assyria is one of Israel’s most hated opponents. Assyria are the superpower of the day, and there is no love lost between them and God’s people the Israelites. One reason Jonah is no doubt reluctant to even go to Nineveh is because he hates the people. His nationalism for God’s people is so ingrained in who he is as a prophet and person of God. Yet here is the Lord calling him to go to people who are his enemies, to go and give them a message and see if they will repent and believe.

    This mission that the Lord gives Jonah is quite extraordinary. It highlights just how much God has concern for all people, not just his own chosen people. God’s care and compassion isn’t for a select few, it’s not for a holy enclave of people who keep to themselves, but it is for all. As 1 Timothy 2:4 reminds us, we worship a God who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

    God’s heart is for all to come to know him.

    This call of Jonah to the Ninevites foreshadows the commission and promise Jesus gives his disciples in Acts 1:8, that they would receive power from the Holy Spirit and be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The mission that made Jonah run is the same mission Jesus gives to his people.

    Unfortunately, we can be so taken up by what we are doing ourselves, among our own Christian cohort, that we forget the mission of God is to others. It takes effort, intentionality, and compassion for others to go and share the message of Jesus. But it’s not about us, it’s about God and his love, grace, and concern for all.

    Let’s not forget the mission of God, which each of us are called to as his disciples.

    For Reflection:

    1.     Where in your life are you currently running away from something God might be calling you toward?

    2.     What would it look like for you to take one intentional step toward someone outside your usual Christian circle this week?