RTW June 20

What’s Causing My Unrest?

But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD.
Jonah 1:3

 

 

My Takeaways

Something Old

Sometimes my disaster will direct others to the Lord.

Something New

Jonah’s life in 4 chapters.

Sometimes unstable circumstances surrounding us are due to our wrong responses to God, and sometimes they are the result of living in a sinful world among the people who have responded wrong to God.

How do I know if what is going on around me is from God? We have to put ourselves to the test to identify our unrest.

  • Am I walking in obedience?
  • Am I holding onto unforgiveness?
  • Am I unwilling to confess and repent of sin?
  • Am I loving the Lord God with all my heart, will all my mind, will all my soul, and with all my strength, and loving my neighbor as myself?

Something to Do

Am I willing to take the unrest test?

 

 

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3 Comments

  1. I disagree that Jonah’s attitude was bad throughout the whole chapter. 🙂

    When I was reading, I was struck by his prayer and how he continued to love and praise God from the belly of the fish, which he did not know if he’d ever get out of:

    I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble,
    and he answered me.
    I called to you from the land of the dead,
    and Lord, you heard me!
    3 You threw me into the ocean depths,
    and I sank down to the heart of the sea.
    The mighty waters engulfed me;
    I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves.
    4 Then I said, ‘O Lord, you have driven me from your presence.
    Yet I will look once more toward your holy Temple.

    I like Jonah and maybe it’s just because I can identify that I don’t always like God’s ways but I hope I always praise God regardless of my circumstances.

    1. I hear what you are saying, but in his entire prayer he never had a repentant heart. You see his true heart when Jonah gets upset that the town repented. Check out https://bible.org/seriespage/5-jonah
      This helped me understand the book of Jonah and it gives great insights on the book. It mentions that this book shows that Jonah knew a lot about God. He presumed on God’s grace and assumed his deliverance while still in the fish. He knew God was compassionate and gracious and would not destroy the Assyrians if they repented. So, although Jonah knew about God, he did not want to obey him. It could even be said that Jonah disobeyed in the name of justice. (Chisholm, Interpreting The Minor Prophets, p. 130) The Assyrians certainly had committed enough atrocities that they deserved judgment, and Jonah wanted them to get their due. But he was ignoring the sovereignty of God and disobeying God. He also was displaying a double standard. He was forgetting that Israel had been forgiven many times for her sins and that he himself had just been forgiven for his disobedience. He was a walking contradiction. I think we need to be careful that we do not fall into the same trap.

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