Belly of a Whale

I slept beautifully last night and was back at it at 5:30 am. I’m into the book of Jonah in the Bible and I read through it three times today and some thoughts really hit me along with the readings of today’s “Streams in the Desert.” A lot of times in life we forget that our mountains and our storms are created by God and He will do with them as He pleases. He brings them into our lives to get our attention, and when His purpose is achieved He turns “His mountains” into flat roads. “I will make each of My mountains a road…” Isaiah 49:11 We are so like Jonah with our disobedience, our reluctance, and our complaining; yet God’s purpose, deliverance, and compassion never fail.
Basically, God commanded Jonah to do something, in return, he disobeyed and fled. In response to Jonah running away, God sent a storm, His storm, to get his attention. Instead of taking notice to the storm, Jonah slept. Jonah awakes and admits to the mariners that God sent the storm and he is the reason for it. He tells the sailors to throw him overboard and it will cease. They do and the storm stopped. The Lord then prepared (His fish), a fish to swallow Jonah, where Jonah prayed for deliverance and God answered him. The story goes on and Jonah completes the original task God asked of him and then complains when God decides not to bring his wrath upon a town called Nineveh. Jonah believes he has the right to be angry with God’s decision.
Now here is us in several sentences:
God presents us with something: an opportunity, a circumstance, a command, and we run from it. When we run from God, He sends a “storm” to get our attention. But instead of taking notice of God’s storm, we sleep right through it, ignoring its existence and God’s sovereignty. Now many around us will feel the effects of this storm, even though they had nothing to do with it. And still in an attempt to get away, we remove ourselves from those people. Here is the mercy and grace of God, after we flee from His instruction and sleep through His storms, He still places us in a place (the belly of a fish) for our own protection. He is just waiting for us to ask for help or as Jonah said:”I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and He answered me.” Jonah 2:2 Out of the belly of a fish, out of a circumstance we can’t control, through a storm, or on a mountain, when we ask for deliverance, He answers.
The rest of Jonah is a whole other lesson in itself about questioning God. Jonah was a complainer—and the moral of the story is-- Who are we to question and hide from God?
Some storms raining in our lives are from God, placed only in our way to get our attention. We forget that He holds these storms in His very hands and paves a road in our mountains, they are His and He places them there for a reason.
Jonah 2:10 “So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”
When we ask, the Lord will deliver us for the Lord is sovereign over His creation to bring about His purpose.
Thankful for His storms, His mountains, and His fish.
~~~CONTENT TO BE IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE~~~~