One of my favorite books of the Bible is Jonah. Not just because of the miracle of Jonah being swallowed by the great fish or the comparison of Jonah being in the fish for three days to the time between the death of Jesus and his resurrection. If you will read closely, everyone and everything in the story of Jonah obeyed God. The crew of the ship, the wind, the sea, the great fish, the people of Nineveh, the plant, even down to the little worm. They all did what God wanted done.
All except, that is, the one who should have been obedient: Jonah. The man of God -- Jonah, who knew what God wanted him to do and tried hard to avoid doing God's will. Even after he was forced by God to go to Nineveh and preach to the people, he resented God for having mercy on the city. He believed that God could have saved the city of Nineveh without putting him through all the trials. Which, of course, God could have easily done.
Sometimes in our lives we face the same problem Jonah had. We know what we should do. We know the right thing to do. But we don't want to have to do it, because we feel it will be too hard. We may even pray for God to handle it without our help. "God please fix this problem but don't involve me in the solution."
As Christians, we have that annoying little voice in our head that nags at us because we know the right thing to do even though we don't want to do it. The problem is if we fight that voice and we don't get involved, we feel even worse. If we listen and do what we feel is the right thing to do, God may or may not take care of the matter; we don't always get what WE want as a result, but either way we will feel better for knowing that we did what we felt God wanted us to do.
So when things come up in life, pray for God to show you the right way to handle it, and when you are sure it is God's will, act on it because no matter how it turns out, the peace we get is far better than hearing that voice nag at us because we have not acted. The danger is if we fight against God's will too often it may become easier to ignore that voice and we risk losing that peace of God in our hearts.
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Editor's note: Charlie Newman is pastor of Avoca Christian Church. To contact him, e-mail [email protected], or write in care of The Times at [email protected] or P.O. Box 25, Pea Ridge, AR 72751.
Religion on 03/18/2015