Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests
to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.
In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk
** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of
The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn
** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
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. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the
currents swirled about me; all Your waves and breakers swept over me. I said,
‘I have been banished from Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy
temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed
was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the
earth beneath barred me in forever. But You, Lord my God, brought my life up
from the pit.”
“When my life was ebbing away, I remembered You, Lord, and
my prayer rose to You, to Your holy temple.”
“Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s
love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to You. What
I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”
And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah
onto dry land.
Jonah 1:17, 2:1-10
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks
be to God.
He was sinking deeper and deeper by the minute. The storm
above had subsided and the people on the ship Jonah boarded from Joppa were
safe but he was far from that as he descended into the deep, into the pit of
the sea.
It didn’t look good for Jonah after he told the crew to
throw him overboard, a move intended to spare others from the potentially fatal
storm even if it meant he would have to perish. After all, the reason the
dangerous storm was happening in the first place was because Jonah had
disobeyed God and the command to deliver a message of pending judgment to
Nineveh, the capitol city of Assyria. The Lord wasn’t about to have anyone run
away from Him and so He showed Jonah He knew exactly where he was and what he
was up to. To his credit, Jonah wasn’t willing to allow others to perish when
it was he that deserved the punishment and so now he continued to drop ever
deeper and deeper, thinking that his life was over and no doubt second guessing
his decision to cross God in the first place.
It would take a miracle for Jonah to be saved and a
miracle is exactly what happened. For a we look at the very last verse of
Chapter 1, we find God sending rescue in the way of a great fish who swallowed
up Jonah and provided a safe haven for three days and nights.
So what did Jonah do within the great fish? Did he sit
around and think about how drowning might be better than being fish food? Did
he spend the three days pondering what would happen next?
No, he didn’t do any of these things. We know because the
scriptures tell us that he “prayed to the Lord’ while “inside the fish”.
What did he pray?
As we see in our passage today, Jonah’s meditation
contained two main components: praise and commitment. Let’s first look at the
praise component:
“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. You hurled me into the depths, into
the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all Your waves
and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from Your sight; yet
I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the
mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But You, Lord my
God, brought my life up from the pit.”
“When my life was
ebbing away, I remembered You, Lord, and my prayer rose to You, to Your holy
temple.”
Maybe we can relate to the place where Jonah found
himself. I’m not saying that we have been thrown overboard and risked drowning
but we all have found ourselves in places of deep difficulty, places where we
found ourselves trying to find light in the midst of dark circumstances, awash
in the depths of our hardship. Surrounded and threatened by our troubles, we
often times cry out to the Lord, hoping He will hear our pleas and come to our
rescue.
What do we find out when we are in these places?
Like Jonah, we discover that the Lord hears our prayers
and brings our lives up out of the pit. It’s the very reason why we see God as
our great Redeemer and Deliverer, titles He has earned and maintained over the
history of mankind. He’s always been our refuge and help in times of trouble
(Psalm 46:1) and He always will be.
Yes, Jonah (and we as well) had lots of things to thank
God for as he raised up his prayer of praise but note how he shifts from this
component to the second one I mentioned, recommitting himself to the Lord in
order to make good on the mistakes he made in the past. Look again at these
words:
“Those who cling
to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of
grateful praise, will sacrifice to You. What I have vowed I will make good. I
will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”
Here we find a real turning in Jonah’s heart, a turning
from willful disobedience and following his ways toward a spirit of sacrifice,
committed to do whatever the Lord asked him to do. It was a commitment Jonah
vowed to make good, a commitment that would include a testimony about a salvation
only found in the Lord God Almighty.
Would Jonah truly make good on his promise?
We’ll find out tomorrow for as our scripture passage
conveys, the Lord commanded the fish to spew Jonah onto dry land, a place Jonah
probably never thought he would be before the Lord rescued him from the pit.
Tune in tomorrow to see what happens next.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
No comments:
Post a Comment