Jonah 4 - Heart and Mind in Conflict

 

Read Jonah 4

I told you so!  I told you so while I was still back home.

This is why I was on my way to Spain.  I knew this would happen.

I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

I knew it and sure enough, you forgave these unworthy people.

Jonah knows that God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, and who does not desire to send calamity.  He is a God who desires none to perish.

That’s God’s heart and Jonah knew it.  He knew.

But Jonah still disagreed with God and Jonah was angry and depressed and wanted to die.

If I can’t live my way, then I don’t want to live at all.  Who made you King anyway?

Do we ever have dissonance?  We wrestle with two opposing thoughts.  Our mind wrestles with our heart?

Jonah knew that he had to do what God said.  He thought it was better than drowning or better than his accommodations in the belly of the fish.

He did what God said but he didn’t like it.

Have we ever made an offering to God but at the same time thought that money would be better spent on the electric bill or piano lessons?

Did you ever go help someone clean up their yard but were thinking the whole time that you needed to cut the grass at your house sometime this week too?

Did you ever take a basket of food to someone and thought it was a wasted trip?  We’re feeding the stomach and not reaching their very soul.

If God has called you to do something, your mission is complete when you do what he told you.  How people respond is in their hands.

Just know God's heart and do your part.

We must understand that God knows exactly what he is doing when he gives us a mission or a calling or a simple task. 

We have no right to be upset with God and God’s choices. Jonah wasn’t alone in questioning God’s choices and Jonah—a prophet—should have know of this other man known a Job.

Listen to the Lord’s response to Job.

 

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

 

“Who is this that obscures my plans

    with words without knowledge?

Brace yourself like a man;

    I will question you,

    and you shall answer me.

 

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

    Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

    Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,

    or who laid its cornerstone—

while the morning stars sang together

    and all the angels shouted for joy?

 

“Who shut up the sea behind doors

    when it burst forth from the womb,

when I made the clouds its garment

    and wrapped it in thick darkness,

 when I fixed limits for it

    and set its doors and bars in place,

when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;

    here is where your proud waves halt’?

 

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,

    or shown the dawn its place,

that it might take the earth by the edges

    and shake the wicked out of it?

The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;

    its features stand out like those of a garment.

God had much more to say to Job, but we will stop here for now and see how it applies to Jonah.

God made us in his image; yet we try to fit him into our own understanding.  God knows best.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

We need to accept this with our minds and our hearts.

Amen.