Character Study #3 : Jonah

What do you think when you hear the name Jonah? Coward, whale, or selfish may come to mind. If you were raised in church, it's pretty likely that you have at least heard the story of Jonah. If not, then maybe you've seen the Veggie Tales movie. Regardless, the part of his story I want to focus on today is not that part that we've heard a hundred times. I want to look at the very first glimpse of Jonah we see: a man on the run.

Starts out plain and simple enough: God calls Jonah, a prophet, to preach to an extremely violent city. Jonah doesn't like this, doesn't want to do it, and decides to run in the opposite direction.

Jonah 1:1The Lord gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: 2“Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.”

3But 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 chapter heading in my Bible for Jonah 1 reads: Jonah runs from the Lord. I remember hearing this story as a kid and judging Jonah so harshly. I remember thinking "You get such an obvious calling from God and you not ONLY ignore it but you run the other way? You really think you can outrun God?!" I remember actually thinking it is laughable how cowardly Jonah acts!

 Through further study of the Word as an adult, my opinion of Jonah is different. Would some of us not be guilty of the very same thing? The job God called Jonah to do doesn't sound fun, does it? God calls us to do certain things and when we don't like them, what do we do? We run. We make excuses. Well, maybe that wasn't really God's call after all. Someone else will do the job. I'm not ready for this just yet. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's okay that Jonah chose to ignore God's call! We all know that he isn't able to outrun God. None of us are! God is with us when we do what we are called to do, but He is also present when we choose not to answer. He is with us when we remain quiet while others mock our beliefs. He is with us when we say "Someone else will help the sick and poor." He is with us when we think we aren't good enough to teach or preach. He is with us when we are too scared to go to the bad parts of the world or even our community. And He is with us in the belly of a fish.

 Jonah, the man who ran. How often do we run? I've certainly been guilty of running. But that doesn't mean that God still can't use us. Just remember that God is with you every single step of the journey...even when we disobey! God still used him to preach to more than 120,000 people of Ninevah.

If a book about you were to be included in the Bible, would you want it to be a book about how you ran from God's calling? Would the header be: "[Your name] runs from the Lord"? Would yours' be a book about ignoring, repenting, and then answering God's call? Would it be about answering without questioning? What I want you to think about is this: If God is calling you to do something outside of your comfort zone, how do you answer? Do you obey or do you run?