Banished
I found this story in my notes today, and thought I would share it on the blog. Maybe if you find yourself in the same place of rebellion that I once did, it may encourage you. In Jonah 1:1 God told Jonah to get up, to go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, “because its wickedness has come up before Me.” And then I remembered that phrase from other places in the Bible, usually referring to extreme evil that God had previously been patient with, not because he was ok with it, but because He is so good that He gives us time to change. He said it to Abraham just before He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. “Then the Lord said, “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached Me. If not, I will know.”” (Genesis 18:20,21). So, I think that when if we have walked away from the LORD in a season of rebellion, eventually our sins will ‘come up before the Lord’: meaning it’s time to deal with it. But even then, in His grace, He woos us back to Him on an individual basis. He brings just what is needed in our lives to offer us another chance at life. That is what He did for me. But there was another time that something ‘came up before the Lord’ written about in the book of Acts. And it was when an unbeliever named Cornelius, who was a God-fearing man, but had not yet met Jesus, had an angel appear to him: “One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it Lord?” he asked. The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.” (Acts 10:3,4). Because he was earnestly seeking God, God let him find Him. I love that, because if our wickedness can come up before God, conversely, the way we PRAY and ARE KIND to the poor can also ‘come up before God’! I say this because after you’ve been treated so kindly by God as to have your sins removed as far as the ‘east is from the west’ you want to honor God with whatever life you have left. This is one way.
The next thing I noticed was that Jonah did not agree with God. He did not want to go to Nineveh, because they were bad people. Everyone knew that. To ‘flee from the Lord’, he ran the opposite way and got on a ship bound for Tarshish. I saw myself here too. When I walked away from what I knew to be right, it was because I felt like God had let me down. That things I was doing because I believed in God did not ‘work’. That because someone had let me down it was somehow God’s fault. And with scales on my eyes, I went my own way. Scales. I was blind to truth!! Tried to make myself happy. I write about this in other places too. I did not read my Bible at all. I did not know or want to know my Creator. I went for a few years with a nagging feeling that God was mad at me. That is a such a bad place to be…not happy with the things I had allowed to be in my life: (because sin for a Christian is not going to be a comfortable place), but also afraid to turn back to God because He ‘was too mad at me’. I think that is where Satan would love to have most Christians trapped. Living ineffective lives and completely bound in fear. Fear of God, fear of being truthful about who we had become, and fear of death. Trapped.
When a violent storm came up, the sailors all prayed to their own gods. And Jonah was in a deep sleep in the bottom of the boat. The sailors woke him up, and when Jonah told them to throw him overboard the sea became still. And those sailors feared the Lord of heaven and made vows to Him. They became believers! (This is just like the story of the storm the disciples went through when Jesus was sound asleep in the bottom of the boat. They woke him up too. And He calmed the storm with just these words: ‘Be still’. And his disciples asked themselves in fear: ‘Who is this that even the wind and sea obey Him?’) their faith in Him grew even stronger.
Now Jonah is dropped into the sea and swallowed by a great fish. He is at the bottom. In the pit. His life is ebbing away. Literally! I have been there too. It’s the place where you start to realize that God is right, and you are wrong. In desperation, Jonah prayed. It is what we like to call ‘hitting bottom’. When things literally cannot get any worse and you have tried to make yourself happy with any ridiculous way possible and it did not work. You are not happy, and you are separated from fellowship with God. You may belong to Him, but you broke fellowship. God did not move away…. you did. Jonah knew that he had been banished from God’s presence, but he prayed one more time! He says: “I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.” (Jonah 2:4). That is what they did in Bible times, before Jesus came. The temple and the presence of God was in Jerusalem. But today, because of Jesus, we worship Him in ‘spirit and the truth’. All we do is to turn to Him and be honest about our sin, and He promises to forgive us. He did that for me. When I turned back to God and knew that the only possibility for happiness was to get to know my Creator. And that is when my new life started. And God keeps showing me new things. Life has become an adventure with Him.
When Jonah said this: ‘When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you Lord, and MY PRAYER ROSE TO YOU, to your holy temple’. (Jonah 2:7). I love that. Pray! God loves it when we seek Him, no matter what we have done. Satan wants us to underestimate the power of prayer. Do not pray: just wallow. That will be the enemy’s line. But prayer honors God and He longs to be gracious to us!
And this is my favorite part: “those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. But I, with a song of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. Salvation comes from the Lord.” (Jonah 2:8,9). While we are trapped in sin, it seems impossible to separate ourselves from it. We are ‘clinging’ to it! To cling means to hold on tightly to something. I know I was doing that, because it caused me to compromise other areas of my life. I was no longer a truthful person! I had to become a liar to protect my sin. But sin is the lie! And when I pried my fingers loose from my sin, which was not easy at first, but I was so miserable that I did it: I found grace. And the scales fell off my eyes. I saw my sin for what it was… a worthless idol. And I am so thankful to God every single day for giving me another chance to live. My desire is to honor Him with whatever time I have left on this earth, and to encourage others to see that we have a future and a hope with God that will not disappoint. So, stop clinging to the thing that is keeping you from clinging to Jesus. Go the other way and watch your life change.
