When Jonah Is You, and Not Just Some Bible Story

“Arise, go!”

As a child, I was terrified of the wale-eating story of a man who didn’t obey God. Storms, disobedience, thrown into the sea, eaten by a whale, sent to demand repentence from a city of violent, raping thieves?

I mean, what five-year-old, wouldn’t think that’s their worst nightmare?

As an adult, it became easier to find comfort in catagorizing Jonah, labeing him with the “bad people”, like Saul, and Goliath, King Nebuchadnezzar, and Judas who sold Jesus.

Yet, why is it, anyone who rubbed us the wrong way, doesn’t fit into our small thinking, anyone who is different or doesn’t appear blessed or perfect, we can label, catagorize, or distance…just like we might do with Biblical villians?

I had him all tagged out. The message loud and clear. The story…at least in my mind…was almost fantastical, like Pinocchio I had read about from Disney.

Yet, I am an adult now. Decades have passed, those years as a child, laughing about whales-eating, threatened with fear about any disobedience…questioinng if I just might get eaten by a wale too…

They are over. And truth is…I can’t just discard Jonah from my mind.

Are we sold out…I mean really?

God has been teaching me about being “sold out” lately, exclusive abandoned to following Him.

Undivided, I feel Him calling His church. Completely surrendered, living an all-or-nothing Christianity.

It was His mandate previously…and it is still the call to His church today.

And I know, it can be easy to pinpoint areas where we still have strongholds, things that have become ‘gods’ above the Lord…

Areas where we place ourselves on pedastals, exhalting man, approval, money, or our own will above the Lord Most High…

But surely I wasn’t Jonah, was I? And you couldn’t be Jonah…could you?

I write in my notes, after reading “Arise, go!”…“Be ALL IN! If you are going to serve the Lord, do it 100%, without doubt or wavering. If you are going to serve the world, or yourself…with people pleasing, public approval, worldly interests…leave the church, don’t profess God, and commit fully to a life of selfishness you desire.”

“Choose today who you are going to serve.” ~ Joshua 24:14-15

Because friends, let’s face it…we each can be like Jonah, running from darkness, loving comfort, ease, and predictability…

We love cities we can get lost in, crowds we can feel approved in, our own small circles of safety where we can rest in unruffled contentment.

We like predictability, safety, a “sure thing”, and all of us, at least on some level, tend to run furiously from the RISK associated with the advancement of the gospel, that takes light into the darkness.

We build castls of sand, live in church cultures where we don’t let anyone in.

We set up psuedo worlds where we feel safe, and are content simply calling ourselves blessed…

But friends, the truth is, nothing about the Biblical disciples of Jesus days felt “safe” or as we might perceive as modern-day “blessed”.

• True disciples take risks.
• True disciples are calles outside walls of comfort and into the darkness.
• True disciples don’t have ease, but aren’t afraid of unpredictability and hardship.
• True disciples will 100% suffer for the gospel.
• True disciples (at least according to the Bible) ended up becoming marytrys, suffering for their faith, dying for the cause, excerising visible proof that Jesus is greater than man’s approval.

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend years, caught up in a plastic shell of a sterile Christian world, excluding those that don’t look, think or act like me.

I want to press in, love fully, and step into those places and people most needing the message of Jesus.

I don’t want to be like Jonah, running to a city that I can get lost in, “blend in”, so that my future is predictable and all control in MY hands…and not His.

In Jonah 1:10, it says, the men on the boat with Jonah, as He fled and went in the opposite direction of Ninevah…the city He was meant to preach in…were “exceedingly afraid”…

“What have you done?” They ask him. (Jonah 1:10) Scripture goes on to share, “The men knew that he (Jonah) fled from being in the presence of the Lord.”

And oh, friends…doesn’t it start there?

Isn’t the reason why we resist the presence of the Lord, because we don’t want to go or do what He has asked of us?

Like a spoiled child, refusing to obey their parents, we plug our ears, refuse to be with him, cover our ears from the Father’s heart, just in case He calls us to Africa, or some remote region where their might be bugs or no luxury hotels..

Or worse yet, to some terrible work associate or distainful family member.

No, we will do anything to escape discomfort…As a result, we live by a gospel that tells us what we want to hear, promises riches, and takes us to places guaranteeing us comfort, prosperity ease or health.

My heart dropped this morning as I saw the real Jonah INSIDE ME! No, He wasn’t some distant flannel-board story as a child I related to Disney.

That heart…

The One that dispises the ways of the Lord, the one that runs to comfort and ease, the one that wants to just live my days peacefully without any ruffled feathers, without any pain or hardships or suffering…

Well, that Jonah is in ME!!

Thankfully, Jonah concluded, “When my soul fainted upon me [crushing me], I earnestly and seriously rememebered the Lord; and my prayer came to you in the Holy Temple.” (Jonah 2:7)

Let’s not wait for our soul’s to faint friends. Let’s reside in the land of the Living, press our ear to His heart, and walk in obedience and faith that if He calls us, He WILL equip us…

And any suffering or hardship on this earth will be nothing compared to His glory riches.

Let’s run to the finishline, with the tenacity of David…or even the humility of Jonah after being eaten by a whale…

For even the Jonah in us can turn to obedience, or better yet, not even wait to be eaten by a whale, because our ear remains listening, our hearts eager for obedience to Him.

I am done with my own selfishness…but most of all, I am done with judging others…especially people like Jonah, who I am really not that different from.