LEARNING TO DO THE WILL OF GOD

What comes to your mind when you think of the Prophet Jonah? Like King David I think he was more heavily criticised than he deserved. Jonah was the very first Jewish Missionary sent to a heathen nation. Yes, Jonah was a typical Jewish isolationist believing that salvation was for the Jews only, and this was the general thinking of the day in Judaism. Seekers of truth were to come to Jerusalem not people go out to them. It is in the New Testament under the New Covenant are we told to go out into the whole world and reach out to the sinner in every ethnic group in the world..
So with that isolationist mindset Jonah is told by God to go to Nineveh, and he “freaked out” and went the other way to Tarshish, and  he paid his own fare v.3, there is always a cost when you don’t do the will of God. Jonah like I guess millions of Believers over the years,find out their is a cost because they had refused to do the will of God, and consequently lost the blessing of God from their lives. The cost of the fare quickly increased when Jonah had to make the decision to ask the boat’s crew to throw him overboard, thus thinking he would also lose his life for disobeying the Lord.
Our Sovereign God had bigger plans for Jonah than he ever realised, and God had prepared a big fish to encompass Jonah.  Let us remember that Jonah was in the big fish for 3 days and 3 nights (72 hours) so he had plenty of time to think through his situation and pray and repent, chapter 2:1-8, then in verse 9 David offered a prayer of thanksgiving, that immediately caused God to speak to the big fish and it spewed Jonah out onto dry land. What an example of the power of THANKSGIVING
Jonah had repented and embraced the will of God,  he may not have known the principle Paul preached but he sure practiced it as we see in 1 Thess. 5:18 NKJV in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Jonah was literally inside a horrible situation, and like Jonah we must learn, that And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NKJV Our Sovereign God is in control, ands we must maintain an attitude of gratitude at all times.
It is believed the big fish’s stomach acids would have terribly disfigured Jonah’s body, this plus his revival preaching caused a whole city of 120.000 to repent and embrace Jehovah the God of the Jews. Because of Jonah’s isolationist mentally he did not want to see these “unclean people” embrace the truth. So the Book of Jonah ends with Jonah’s bigotry robbing him of the joy of being obedient to God.
If you have rejected the will of God in the past, I trust you have repented, and are now walking in the Lord’s will. Remember the Lord has forgiven and forgotten your wandering away, do not listen to the accusing words of the evil one, , do not let regrets rob you of your joy. Be convinced in your heart the Lord is in control and he only wants your very best, so the only place to be is in the centre of God’s will. We experience this, by re-affirming His Lordship over our life constantly every day, and make this our daily prayer:

I WILL GO WHERE YOU WANT ME TO GO

I WILL DO WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO

I WILL SAY  WHAT YOU WANT ME TO SAY

I WILL BE WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE

AMEN