MY TWO CENTS WORTH
By Myrtle Poor (c)
Hello from the Sooner State Once again it is a cold crisp morning. You can hear the little birds singing so I know spring is out there somewhere hiding behind this 36 degree weather. It'll burst through one of these days like a bull in a china closet.
I would like to start this with a little funny. OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES. A little boy came breezing in the house after Sunday School on Easter and his mother ask him what he had studied in Sunday School. He told her all about Jesus dying on the cross and arising from the dead. His mother told him that was a good story and she was proud of him for listening well.
He stood so solemn and looked at her for a minute then shook his head and said, "But I don't think I believe it though. It is harder to believe than the story about the big fish swallowing the man called Jonah."
The Lord laid this topic in my heart several days ago but it is just now time for it to go out. I don't know what other writers do but when the Lord gives me something to write about, I write it and save it, then when the Lord says it is time to send this one today then I finish what I have started and sent it the day I'm lead to send it.
The Lord spoke to Jonah and told him he must go at once to Nineveh and there, on the spot, cry against the wickedness of it. Jonah would not go. Probably there are few among us who would not have tried to decline such a mission, but Jonah did. He disobeyed the Lord and ran like a scared rabbit.
The is one thing we need to learn here from Jonah is when we disobey the Lord we wind up in big trouble. Jonah saw an escape route and he took it. He jumped aboard the first ship that left the dock and oh myyyyyyyy he ended up in more trouble than he had ever known in his life.
God sent a pursuer after Jonah, even a mighty tempest. We need to understand that sin brings storms and tempests into the soul, into the family, into churches and nations. It is a disquieting, disturbing thing. DISOBEDIENCE IS SIN!
God allows us to be tested so we will grow, but Jonah had brought this on himself because of his disobedience. When the mighty tempest became so bad the ship was about to be broken up Jonah's shipmates begin to pray to their gods. Having called upon their gods for help, the sailors did what they could to help themselves. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh their gods could not help for Jonah's "GOD" was in control.
Jonah was fast asleep in the bowels of the ship, his heart hardened by his sin of disobedience. Sin is stupefying, and we are to take heed lest at any time our hearts are hardened by the deceitfulness of it as Jonah's was. When the sailors had done all they could to save the ship and it didn't help they decided the storm was a messenger of Divine justice sent to some one in that ship.
They cast lots and when the lot fell on Jonah they awoke him and that backslidden preacher confessed. Jonah gave an account of his religion, for that was his business. When we have sinned and it has raised a storm, and we are caught under God's hot displeasure, we must consider what is to be done to the sin that raised the storm. You see the sailors were in double trouble here for they were rowing against God's hot displeasure and the physical storm. No wonder they didn't do so well. Even though Jonah was not in God's good graces at this time,
God still made a way for Jonah to escape, but...he allowed Jonah to wallow in the slime pit for three days and three nights. Just as Christ was in the center of the earth for three days and three nights. Can't you just imagine how mad Jonah was and see him beating on the sides of the fish's belly screaming for God to get him out of there and God did, but he left him in the slime pit until he (God) was ready for him to come out.
It was of the Lord's mercies that Jonah was not consumed for when the sailors found out about Jonah they tossed him overboard. God had sent a big fish that was waiting to gobble Jonah up. Jonah went right over the side of that boat into the mouth of that fish and landed in a slime pit in that fish's stomach.
Jonah was alive in the fish three days and nights then the fish threw him up on land. To the nature of man that was impossible, but to God all things are possible. Jonah, by this miraculous preservation, was made a type of Christ; as our blessed Lord himself declared, read Matthew 12:40.
I would like to leave with you this thought. Are you in the slime pit, because of disobedience or sin? Are you in a mighty storm because of disobeying God. When we sin it doesn't just affect us, but it is like a ripple in the water, it touches anyone you have anything to do with. So if you are in the slime pit confess it all to God and make him Lord of your life.
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