Jonah was a prophet and received a word from God to go to Nineveh and tell them they were going to be judged for their wickedness. Nineveh is 500 miles from Jonah\u2019s home and he runs the opposite direction 4 times further away through Joppa to Tarshish. He says NO to God and travels far and wide to escape a task given by God as a command to meet with these people that he detested and probably feared. Have you ever felt like Jonah of a person(s) like Nineveh and said to yourself this is one that God can handle without me directly?<\/p>\n
Through Jonah\u2019s\u2019 disobedience he finds himself on a ship to Tarshish in a raging storm. The sailors are seasoned veterans with storm experience, but this one is beyond all others. They have it figured out that someone on the ship has angered a god and they cast lots. (note: casting lots is like rolling dice, flipping a coin today. We now have the Word and Holy Spirit to guide and direct<\/em>) Quickly it turns to the guy, Jonah, who is snoozing in the bottom of the ship during the storm. In a confrontation with Jonah he discloses the fact that he is the one who has disobeyed his Lord and God of the universe. Further to say that they must throw him overboard to calm the sea and spare their lives.<\/p>\n So Jonah gets tossed overboard, but guess what\u2026\u2026God provides a BIG FISH such as a WHALE to welcome him inside. Two awesome things happen: One, the men on the ship see the mighty power of Jonah\u2019s God and fall to the deck to worship the Lord and vow to serve only Him. Two, Jonah is probably sitting on the whale\u2019s guts and in prayer he acknowledges that it was God who put him in the fish. He says, \u201cI\u2019ll give you what you want. I\u2019ll thank you for your will, and do what you want me to do.\u201d REPENTANCE.<\/p>\n Tell someone how you found God\u2019s mercy in a time where you ran from Him and knew He was calling you to a command. Think about it\u2026. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jonah was a prophet and received a word from God to go to Nineveh and tell them they were going to be judged for their wickedness. Nineveh is 500 miles from Jonah\u2019s home and he runs the opposite direction 4 times further away through Joppa to Tarshish. He says NO to God and travels far and wide to escape a… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons","category-wrapup","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/menslifebloomington.org\/bloomenlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}