Years ago, roughly 9 years ago, I started my first blog. I wrote for a number of years a faith-based socio-political commentary. I eventually gave it up as it required so much from me. Recently, 8 months ago, God inspired me to take up my blog again. This time, teaching from a far more indepth Christian faith-based perspective. In a world grossly saturated with lies, I hope that my blog touches some lives for Messiah King Jesus.
In my early days of blogging, God, so often, years on end, would wake me up to write something. In the beginning I tried to resist. I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, tossing and turning until I got up and wrote what He directed me to write and read.
I have learned since, like Jonah, the hard way, that there is really no point in resisting God. He wins. EVERY time.
I don’t know how God tugs on us until we surrender, but when I do obey that gnawing away at my conscience stops, I feel relief, and life goes on.
I now know that I was insecure which made me afraid to say what God tells me to say. As I have learned to obey God, letting God be God, the joy of knowing that I did my part and God does the rest makes my life less constricted by worries of being rejected.
After all, when God is for us, who can be against us. Amen.
The Holy Book of Jonah, short as it may be, 4 chapters, is a sensational lesson about disobedience, false worship, getting over ego, but MOST PROLIFICALLY God’s incredible mercy. So too, a glimpse into humanistic history of superstition creating mythological gods to appease our sin appetites.
Before jumping into the major lesson in Jonah- repentance and God’s Mercy painting historical context amps up the volume in our understanding of our AMAZING FATHER who wants to save us.
Niveveh was in the stronghold of Middle Eastern pagan ideology that practiced horrific sexual rape rituals, and spiritualised it by inventing a goddess Ishtar to normalize their sexual addiction. Can you imagine living in a place where rape is a constitutionalised rule of law in the land?
Nineveh was the town God was going to destroy to show up the foolishness of Middle Eastern paganism that fuelled human rights atrocities.
Ishtar, the mythological goddess of the toxic pagan culture was a superstition-fuelled ideology that reveals so much of the evil of the day. Sadly, people haven’t learned from history, and demonic behaviour today just has another name.
The culture and understanding of that day invented all sorts of oppressive ideas, by spiritualising demonically-inspired behaviour, hence coming up with a plethora of “gods” to psychologically indoctrinate people into these false beliefs.
WITH THE BACKGROUND HISTORY ESTABLISHED…..
Jonah 1 has so much to grapple with:
- Jonah’s disobedience
- Sailors praying to various invented “gods”
- God’s Power
- Jonah’s admition of guilt
- Sailors giving up false notions of gods and turning to THE ONLY LIVING GOD
In Jonah 2, Jonah is coming to his senses, realizing that he has nowhere to run from God, and then chooses to obey God to go to Nineveh. Verse 9 (b) is so beautiful as it opens our eyes to the ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD whose desire is salvation for humankind- “Salvation comes from the Lord.”
Have you ever wondered what life would be like if God’s Mission wasn’t salvation, and repentance not an option?
I know that I would be dead. I, literally, tried suicide multiple times, and each time God sent someone to come find me. They did, in the nick of time.
Like Jonah, not only did God have to teach me that resisting Him is futile, God also, like the sailors who threw Jonah overboard had to teach me to give up my conditioned notions of god. I had to learn to separate fact from fiction letting God define Himself regardless of my feelings, understanding, or preference birthed out of lived experience and learned ideologies.
There is a valuable lesson for us as Believers that pagans teach us in Jonah 3. The pagans were quicker to repent and turn to THE LIVING GOD than Jonah’s attitude of surrendering to God’s Will was as we soon see in Jonah 4.
Even the king in Nineveh, the biggest benefactor of pagan idolatry repented, issuing a decree for the nation to repent. It didn’t last and Nineveh was later destroyed, but, nonetheless Jonah’s obedience to God served the purpose of God’s Will to save others.
How many times have we felt God tell us to reach out to someone, make amends, give them a Word from God, or love on them, and we haven’t?
In Jonah 4, God deals with Jonah’s ego by reminding Jonah that His Purpose is not to glorify His Messengers for our validation, but that God’s Purpose is to save lives. Us being part of the story is the validation, not our need for acclaim or recognition.
REPENTANCE IS CRITICAL TO LIFE WITH JESUS!!!
So often, our insecurities, unhealed history, need for approval, and people-pleasing to be popular, when not pampered by God leads us to anger. That’s all ego. Left unchecked and unsurrendered to God, and repentant, we, like Jonah can sulk that our acclaim was never for us, but exclusively for God’s Will to be accomplished.
Jonah 4 shows us the depth of egoic attitude that can lead us to suicidation when what we want leads us to idolatry over God and His Salvation Plan. Kinda like wishing that murderers, pedophiles, rapists don’t get saved through repentance in Jesus because our preferential sin bias leads us to think we are better than others.
Like Nineveh, we might be steeped in learned ideologies that God calls evil, or like the sailors praying to anything for some answer, or like Jonah caught up in ego, God wants to save us all. To do so, Messiah King Jesus has issued a decree, Mark 16 vs 15, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.”
THERE IS A CRITICAL REASON WHY….
ROMANS 10 VS 17, “So faith comes from hearing [what is told], and what is heard comes by the [preaching of the] message concerning Christ.”
If we say that we want what God wants, let’s not let ego rule us, like Jonah, and joyfully do what God calls to do, so that others may have the chance to repent and fall in love with Jesus.
AMEN
#Hayibo 