🌿BREATHE TRUTH🌿
The mighty waters engulfed me; I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. —Jonah 2:3
🌿LIVE THE REAL TRUTH🌿
In utter darkness, Jonah crawls around in the belly of a giant fish. Nowhere to go, nothing to see. In the depth of darkness, the one thing we crave the most is light. Jonah, on his hands and knees, inside the beast, comes to the table of God. He brings with him his overwhelming wild and stormy waves. Jonah comes to exchange his darkness for deliverance, his confusion for clarity, his crisis for connection.
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We create confusion.
Jonah encounters spiritual confusion because God is leading him to do the right thing in Christ, but he doesn’t want to do it. He vacillates in different directions and veers off course. Like Jonah, we’ve undergone similar experiences. We hesitate to follow God because where we want to go is not where God is. Relationships we relish and want, but in Christ, cannot be realized. Aspirations we aspire to and wish, but not approved by God. Plans we pour ourselves into and wait, but are not included in God’s plans for us. When we desire not to do the right thing, we run amuck in confusion that we create for ourselves. Disobedience leads to spiritual confusion.
In reality, to defy God’s call to minister to the Assyrians, Jonah doesn’t have to flee to Tarshish. Disobedience doesn’t not require distance from God. But in a state of spiritual confusion, an internal maelstrom brews. Ironically, the extrinsic storm raging outside Jonah’s ship is not as disturbing as the one roaring inside Jonah’s soul. Perhaps this is why Jonah is easily slumbering through the tempest tearing against the ship he’s aboard. No wind and waves can match the pandemonium that wrecks our peace like turbulence within.
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God creates bigness.
Never let it be said, however, that our God is not a big God. He creates bigness for us. Inside of a bigger than life Leviathan, God converts Jonah’s confusion into character. In complete darkness, Jonah is led to the table of God to do business with God. After three days at God’s altar: “I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise, and I will fulfill all my vows. For my salvation comes from the Lord alone.” (Jonah 2:9). God transforms our wandering into worship. God carves three days inside the intestine of a marine behemoth where void of light, Jonah finally comes to see the light of day. Paradoxically, our faith may require a darkness encounter for us to truly value light. Until we are seated at the table with darkness do we comprehend the bigness of God’s Light.
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Beloved, there are priorities we devote, places we dream, preparations we decide that may never materialize because they are outside the will of God. Jonah’s disobedience in running from God leads to tumultuous spiritual confusion. The antidote to spiritual confusion: surrender of self. Our will has to surrender to God first.
Don’t let the wind and waves bury you. Instead, bring them to the table of God and let Him have them. God can blaze the darkness with His Light and bury your wind and waves.
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©️2019 Jordan Su