Jonas is buried alive inside a great fish. Inside the fish, Jonah prays and repents. He reconsiders his decision and he's thrown up on a shore.
What lesson can we draw from this? If God has a purpose to fulfill in your life, if He needs to use you, and you're not listening, He being God can handle your character. He can create a situation that you get close to him. He is Father and fathers are teachers!
Then we read in verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 3: "Then came the word of the Lord Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, and go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it the message that I tell you."
Notice that God would not let Jonah preach what "was in his heart" - no doubt a sermon in which he would ask that God have mercy and not to destroy them all. God gives explicit instructions to preach exactly the message He will give you - not the review of a book or your own opinion, not what your mother or the deacons asked you to preach. Sometimes we have to tell someone something that can annoy...
Those who fail to declare the whole counsel of God are on the road to Joppa, realize it or not, and are making a big mistake. It is much easier to preach about the love of God and the fruit of the spirit of that "shear sheep", talking about the sins of the flesh, but sometimes God insists that we do our work for reproof, rebuke, and exhort! (2 Timothy 4;2)
If there was a time in history when people needed repentance and revival desperately, that time is now! We are a decadent civilization and paganized, despite all assertions to the contrary, and any fool can discern the rapid deterioration of our moral in all levels.
What lesson can we draw from this? If God has a purpose to fulfill in your life, if He needs to use you, and you're not listening, He being God can handle your character. He can create a situation that you get close to him. He is Father and fathers are teachers!
Then we read in verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 3: "Then came the word of the Lord Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, and go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it the message that I tell you."
Notice that God would not let Jonah preach what "was in his heart" - no doubt a sermon in which he would ask that God have mercy and not to destroy them all. God gives explicit instructions to preach exactly the message He will give you - not the review of a book or your own opinion, not what your mother or the deacons asked you to preach. Sometimes we have to tell someone something that can annoy...
Those who fail to declare the whole counsel of God are on the road to Joppa, realize it or not, and are making a big mistake. It is much easier to preach about the love of God and the fruit of the spirit of that "shear sheep", talking about the sins of the flesh, but sometimes God insists that we do our work for reproof, rebuke, and exhort! (2 Timothy 4;2)
If there was a time in history when people needed repentance and revival desperately, that time is now! We are a decadent civilization and paganized, despite all assertions to the contrary, and any fool can discern the rapid deterioration of our moral in all levels.
To meditate:
- God wishes to use you.
- How good God gives us a second chance!
- The Lord´s mercies are new every morning. (Lamentatios 3:22-23)
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