Being Jonah

On Saturday evening, I had two great friends share how they enjoyed listening to the story of Jonah as it was read from Eugene Peterson's The Message. The occasion was my preaching at The Lighthouse and the focus of the lesson was on our seemingly inexhaustible way of running in the opposite direction whenever God calls us to do His will - His way.

We often feel called by God to do what we claim He has disclosed to us to do. Most of us would say that there is a sense of collective agreement in that. I'm sure there are those who would disagree, but I confess that I do hear that kind of talk often and without much reservation. We get into the dicey stuff when we start to "count the costs" to doing whatever God intends for us to do. Here is where rationalization comes in. Here is where we may start crumbling a piece of paper during our prayer time and tell God that we seem to be having a bad connection and we'll just have to call back. In my heritage, sometimes the wrong, but popular thing to do was to claim limited to no language proficiency (Spanish) and say "no English" and hang up the phone. We can do that to with the language of angels, too.

So, back to Jonah. . .

Jonah was a prophet that continues to brazenly exhibit the quintessential weakness of most, if not all, of God's servants: Pride. Pride gets in the way of our doing what is genuinely God's will & pleasure. Jonah was angry at God because God was merciful to a people that had caused Jonah's people great pain and hardship. It was brutal. Jonah was adamant about the promises God had made to His chosen people, but he would have nothing to do with God's unfathomable grace and mercy, which surpasses our understanding and ability to love - if we are ever truly capable of love - but that's for another day.

We hear so many brothers and sisters talking about their ministry. In light of that, I suggest we rethink the ownership of ministry. If all that I have is God's, including the blessings and privilege of doing ministry on God's behalf, then how is it possible that any ministry I'm involved is in all actuality - mine? It's not you see, that's the problem. Pride convinces otherwise. At the moment that we claim ownership over God's ministry, then we take on a distorted sense of ownership that brings along with it all manner of wrong conclusions, controls and worldly concerns that are actually antichrist. All these things seek to weaken, undermine and misdirect the purposes of the Kingdom of God. I'm not saying we always do this wittingly. I figure that most of us are shocked at the very thought! But, my friends, that's what we do - and this is what Jonah did. Jonah wanted to tell God - and He did - who He needs to save, how He needs to do it and who He shouldn't save. We often tell God how we are going to run His ministry, when and who should benefit from it and why we're subject matter experts on His character, universe, plan and purpose. Pretty arrogant, eh?

May we pray for God's mercy on each of us. May we pray for God to divest us of all pride and to infuse each of us with His Spirit. For only in the Spirit can we be moved toward a greater sense of humility and holiness in our lives. It is through holiness that we begin to see ourselves as Jonah and strive to live in the reality of our reluctant and rebellious attitudes toward God.