Following God’s Way
Maria is a Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean in Faculty of Health, Education and Life Sciences at Birmingham City University
Jonah 1: 1-3 (NLT)
The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: ‘Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.’ But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the Lord by sailing to Tarshish.
The book of Jonah is probably my favourite book in the bible, apart from the gospels. The story starts with God giving a message to Jonah, telling him exactly what he wants him to do (v.1-2). But then in v.3, we read that ‘Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the Lord’.
How many of us hear what God is saying he wants us to do in life and yet we go in the opposite direction. The passage gives some insight into why - he goes in the opposite direction to ‘get away from the Lord’. When we think about it, this seems madness. Why would we want to do that? The reason is probably that what God is asking us to do is challenging us in some way. We think that if we busy ourselves with other stuff, then we don’t need to face the thing God has given us. The problem with that is - it never works. It’s like the stone that gets caught in your shoe; it’s a nuisance to deal with, but it will not go away by itself. The nuisance of having the stone in the shoe will be more over time than if you took the stone out immediately.
Maybe the thing we need to do is to ask for God’s help in meeting the challenge. Sometimes it feels too hard, or we don’t know quite where to start. But we can ask God for wisdom, courage and strength to do what it is that he’s calling us to do. We also need to trust that God’s plan is a much better plan than our plan which we often think will be easier but is often not.
Prayer - God, help us to listen to what you are calling us to do. When the task seems too challenging, give us wisdom, courage and strength to fulfil our calling.