Ohhh Jonahhhh...

Sorry guys, but I'm going deep on you today...

      In Buddy Time (Bible study) the past two weeks, we have been studying the book of Jonah. My first thought when I heard we were going to be studying this book was that I had already studied it so many times at camp this past summer, what else could I learn? And boy, has God been proving me wrong there. This is so encouraging. It's like, the Word is there, the same words, there forever. And we can read them and read them and think there's nothing else to learn, then God surprises us! I have studied Jonah many times in just the past year, and this time the message has hit me hard, in a different way than it has any time before. The part of the story that gets me now is this:

"I called out to the LORD, out of my distress,
   and he answered me;
 out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
   and you heard my voice.   

³ For you cast me into the deep,
   into the heart of the seas,
   and the flood surrounded me;
 all your waves and your billows
   passed over me.

⁴ Then I said, 'I am driven away
   from your sight;
yet I shall again look
   upon your holy temple.'

⁵ The waters closed in over me to take my life;
   the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head

 ⁶at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
   whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
   O LORD my God.    

⁷When my life was fainting away,
   I remembered the LORD,
 and my prayer came to you,
   into your holy temple.

⁸Those who pay regard to vain idols
   forsake their hope of steadfast love.

⁹ But I with the voice of thanksgiving
   will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
    Salvation belongs to the LORD!"

I relate this passage to my life- my life from the past. My broken life, where I was in the depths, away from the Lord, where the waters closed over me to take my life and the deep surrounded me. In a place where it was dark, and the Lord was not there. The Lord hit me hard with this passage, for I was once Jonah, my life was literally fainting away. BUT THEN, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer reached Him in His holy temple. He reached with His own hand into the pit where I put myself, and He pulled me out. He loved me so much to save me, because ALL SALVATION BELONGS TO THE LORD. I was reading in a book called Radical by David Platt (most of you have probably heard of it) and he says something that came to mind when I was reading Jonah: "He (God) intentionally puts his people in situations where they come face to face with their need for him. In the process, he powerfully demonstrates his ability to provide everything his people need in ways they could never have mustered up or imagined. And in the end, he makes much of his own name."

          All the glory goes to Him. He doesn't need us, yet He loves us and provides everything for us- so much that he sent His son to die for us, to come down and sit in the punishment chair for us, and through all of this, He demonstrates his love for us.