Affirmations in our Distress

 

Read Jonah 2

 

From inside the fish and in his distress he prayed.  This whole drowning thing was not something that I looked forward to, but this belly of the fish gig isn’t all warm and fuzzy either.  Slick and slimy might describe my current lot.

I called out to you and you answered.

Lord, you let me dig my own hole, actually you let me run as far as I could and then be thrown into a raging sea.

The sea was winning this battle.  It was futile to fight against it.

I couldn’t run away from you but it seems that I have been banished from your sight.

Even in the belly of this fish, it was not possible to see the salvation of dry land, but I am looking towards your holy city and know that one day I will see it again.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I am adorned in seaweed and it’s not a spa treatment.

I think this new abode of mine is resting on the bottom of the ocean.

Woe to me.  I am ruined.  I am a person of unclean lips.

Even as I knew my life was demanded of me and my time was short, you brought me up from the deep.  You rescued me.

All of my efforts to resist your will and wisdom have been like worshiping false gods.  You are the one true God.  I am your servant.  I will proclaim the salvation that you placed upon my lips.

Not my will, but your will be done!

And the fish deposited Jonah upon the shore.  The text says vomited upon the shore.  Now that’s an answer to prayer—vomited upon the shore.

We all have prayed for those in the belly of the fish.  We pray for those in accidents, with life-threatening disease, who are on the front lines in areas where lawlessness prevails, who are forward deployed to hostile areas, and so many more circumstances.  We pray for them.

We also pray for ourselves in our belly of the fish lives.  We may not understand that being in the belly of the fish is a good thing compared to drowning in our seas of disruption, but that time granted us to pray in our distress is time to make our affirmations to God.

In our distress, affirmation of God’s promises is so powerful.  Our trust in the Lord over our own understanding is demanded of us.

Jonah’s own understanding got him into a raging storm, thrown overboard, and swallowed by a great fish.

His trust in the Lord brought him to cry out to the Lord from the depths and to know that his prayer was heard.  Hear David’s words in Psalm 3.

Lord, how many are my foes!

    How many rise up against me!

Many are saying of me,

    “God will not deliver him.”

But you, Lord, are a shield around me,

    my glory, the One who lifts my head high.

I call out to the Lord,

    and he answers me from his holy mountain.

We continue with David’s words in the Psalms.

David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.  He said:

 

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;

     my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,

    my shield and the horn of my salvation.

He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—

    from violent people you save me.

I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,

    and have been saved from my enemies.

The waves of death swirled about me;

    the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

 The cords of the grave coiled around me;

    the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called to the Lord;

    I called out to my God.

From his temple he heard my voice;

    my cry came to his ears.

Whether we are surrounded by our enemies or in the bondage of our own understanding, the Lord hears our prayers.  We should ask for what we need but not to the exclusion of the affirmation that the Lord of all the earth will do what is right.

We may not always understand the answer to our prayers.  God’s ways are higher than our ways.  His thinking is beyond our comprehension. 

He will answer our prayers.  Our prayers are powerful and effective. 

Jonah wasn’t just having a bad day or three.  He was rebelling against God; yet God heard his prayers and affirmations and delivered him.

He probably didn’t ask to be vomited from the fish, but that was his deliverance from the bondage of his own understanding.

All of God’s answers might not have been what we thought they should be, but for those who love God and are called according to his purpose, they are exactly what they need to be.

Jonah was called according to God’s purpose, not according to Jonah’s convenience.  When we understand that we too are on a mission from God, his answers to our prayers start to make better sense to us.

We don’t have to figure out the details of everything.  We just live according to the purpose that God gave us.  That might be proclaiming God’s call to salvation through repentance to the wicked people of Nineveh.  It might be something else.

When we pray and ask God to make all of the bad stuff go away, can we make an affirmation that we are living according to the purpose he gave us?  Are we doing what he called us to do?

Sometimes we can’t—we fall short time and time again—but we can always affirm the promises of God. When we affirm God’s promises in our distress, our chances of reconciling ourselves to God’s purpose for us go way up.

Can we who are commissioned to go into the world with good news say what Jonah said in his distress?

What I have vowed I will make good.

    I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’

In our times of distress, let us not pray as people who do not know the Lord and do not have hope.  Let us pray as people of hope and in affirmation.

I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’

Amen.