Jonah’s Prayer

"And the LORD commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land." Jonah 2:10 (NIV)

A friend of mine pointed me to these two verses before I got to them in chapter two of Jonah.

Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice for you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the LORD.
Jonah 2:8-9

Chapter two of Jonah is his prayer after he is swallowed by the fish. In it, he is thanking God for His mercy. That he would be swallowed by a fish and that God spared him from drowning.

Many of the parts of the prayer are strait out of the Psalms but his grasp that God was at the center of his situation is awesome. He realizes that he disobeyed and that God punished him to make a point but in His infinite wisdom and love He still wants to use Jonah.

He still wants Jonah to be His man.

A lot of times I struggle with thinking I’ve done too much bad stuff–or that one thing that takes me out of God’s plan. But Jonah literally heard a command from God, walked in the opposite direction, probably joked about it, and defied God to His face. And God still wanted to use him.

In the midst of his punishment he sees his dire situation not through his own eyes–mad that he is in a fish and not on a boat headed to Tarshish–but through the eyes of God. He realizes that God is working all things together for His glory. He thanks God for the fish. He dedicates himself to the LORD’s purpose. In verse six he says, “…but You brought my life up from the pit, O LORD, my God.” Jonah realizes that it is his fault that he is there but it is compeltely God’s hand working him out of that situation, shaping him along the way.

I looked ahead to chapter three and saw that God asks Jonah to go to Ninevah again. This is forgiveness by God and a second chance given to Jonah. It’s a chance He wants to give us but often we don’t accept. We need to start taking that chance so that God can use us in the Ninavahs in our world.

Going in the Opposite Direction

I started reading Jonah today. It’s always cool to read the actual text from stories we all know. You always find little things in the text you didn’t notice before–depth in the story beyond the basics. Today wasn’t any different.

So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.
Jonah 1:15-16 (ESV)

After Jonah runs away from God and the storm comes upon the sailors, Jonah tells them to him into the sea. Eventually they do. As soon as they do, the sea is calm. The men fear God exceedingly and then they offer a sacrifice and made vows. Essentially, they were converted.

I think it’s amazing that God was able to use not only Jonah’s unbelief but His punishmen of him to serve a purpose to bring glory. We question a lot when things don’t go well in our lives, but isn’t that still exactly where God wants us? We wonder why God would let us still mess up over and over again even under grace, but doesn’t God want to use that?

If God could do it with Jonah, he could do it with us. Maybe He wants to take all of our sin, shortcomings, and doubt–all of our humanity–and use it for His glory to bring others to Him and his glory. It’s amazing to think of a God who could do that, who is that powerful. I have to realize that I’m not even good enough at being bad to be unusable. That’s downright humbling

Not But By Grace

Something to enjoy while you read…

I have struggled recently with the idea of grace-motivated humility (how to actually do it, not necessarily what it is) and with the reality of how I should allow God to use me in the arena of evangelism. A friend of mine showed me this verse and after thinking about it it seems to tie the two ideas together.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
1 Corinthians 15:10-11 (ESV)

Paul understands that he is what he is solely because of grace–bringing humility. It is out of this that he is motivated to live a life that he calls “worthy of the Gospel” in Ephesians 4. Then he says something odd. At first glance it seems prideful. He says he worked harder than any of them, meaning the other apostles. But he clears it up saying that it was not him but ultimately the grace of God. He talks about sharing grace more in Ephesians 3 and why he works so hard. But then at the end he qualifies it all and offers the glory to God. Essentially he says, “but whether it was me or the other apostles, you now believe.” Essentially, I work hard out of grace. You believed. If it was me, sweet. Regardless, glory be to God.

There is so much contained in this passage. Tons to learn. Tons to apply. And lots of ways to take this and make it a part of my life and how I approach my life. I need to live and work as fully as possible for the right reasons, valueing humility nearly above all else. To this end, I need to use my life to glorify God and reach others. It’s easy to talk about all this. But examining how to do this (even though the two are tied together) is the hard part.

How Can I Argue?

I’m humbled by how great God is. He made that exceedingly clear today. He knows exactly how to push and pull us. How to bend us. How to break us. And exactly how to break us and keep us dependent on Him. Then, when we are humbled before Him, reliant on His glory and power to see us through, He builds us up through how great He is. Without fail. We will suffer, but we must suffer with purpose–realizing that ultimately God is greater than all of it and that Jesus has felt every pain I experience previously.

I need to suffer with purpose.

“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”
Jeremiah 32:27 (NIV)

Congratulations to the Phillies on winning the World Series tonight. It’s great to see a team with lots of young, franchise-level talent putting it together after a long, long period of futility.

This Little Light of Mine, Pt. 2

I’m a problem-leads-to-solution kind of guy. I guess that comes from being an engineer—or it’s what led to me being an engineer. I like to focus first on the problem; determine what’s wrong. From there, I like to try to derive the root causes. Then from there I work backwards or forwards (depending on how you look at it) to arrive at the solution to the problem.

The problem is pretty obvious here. We don’t talk to others about Christ as much as we probably should—that I don’t talk to others about Christ as much as I probably should. Why? I think there are a variety of factors. Most come from a warped, extremist view on our faith in the context of the world. Think politics for a second: we have extreme right and extreme left, but no middle? I think in evangelism it’s similar in that there are two warped extremes that individuals fall into. And sometimes it’s a little bit of both. But these extremities are generally opposites. And they lead to ineffective laborers for Christ and His kingdom.

1. We either think our opinion in irrelevant, or that we have it all figured out and everyone else doesn’t have a clue. We think others don’t want to hear about what we have to say, or that we have the perfect thing to say, not Christ.
2. We think God loves us and that he wants to be our buddy, or that God is going to destroy us and we must live in fear of Him.
3. We fear losing friendships over the subject of the gospel, or we don’t build genuine relationships with people in the first place.
4. We water down the gospel, or we make it harder than it has to be.
5. We think the gospel is all about us, or all about them.
6. We fear that we will misrepresent the gospel or Christ, or we think and act like we know everything about Christ.
7. We focus completely on conversions or number without raising up disciples, or we focus on the journey without first establishing the idea of the grace of God and our faith in Christ.

I’m not going to go through and individually refute each of these fears. Chances are, each of us identifies with one (or most) of these. For me personally numbers 2, 4, and 7 are areas where I struggle. I think all of these can be boiled down into a single root cause: disbelief. However cliché it may seem so blame it on that, isn’t there an ounce of truth in there? If I really believe in this—that I am a sinner (Romans 3:23), that God is holy (Isaiah 43:10-13), that He sent Christ to die for my sins (1 Peter 2:24), and that He rose again and that we have the Holy Spirit as a vehicle through which God works in and through us—and I’m doing my best in my life to ‘smoke what I sell’ then wouldn’t I want to sell what I’m smoking? If I really believe it’s working for me, why do I think it won’t work for others?

Why am I so afraid to tell other people about something that I know and believe and trust and live my life for?

Or is the problem in a lack of belief on my part? Wouldn’t I want to sell what I am proverbially smoking?

As I try to rationalize this I’m convicted in the hypocrisy of my life. It’s almost as if I’m declaring that Jesus is for me. But just me. As that one verse of that song says, I’m not supposed to hide it under a bushel. I’m gonna let it shine.

And if I really believe in the gospel, and that it’s about what God did and not what I did, then why do I fear misrepresentation? God is ultimately doing the work. All I need to do is make myself available for the purposes of His kingdom. I need to build relationships, intentionally. I need to have conversations, intentionally. I need to act, intentionally. In short, I need to live, intentionally.

Some of this stuff is no fun to wrestle with. I think this might be what Paul was talking about what he talked about working out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13).