Brown's Daily Word: Brown's Daily Word 2-1-13

Friday, February 1, 2013

Brown's Daily Word 2-1-13

Praise the Lord for this first day of February, the shortest month of the year. We are getting closer to Spring. We will enter the season of Lent later this month. Praise the Lord for the seasons that the Lord appoints for our lives on Earth. Praise the Lord for the seasons in the Church calendar.
I love to reflect on the reluctant prophet, Jonah. We all are reluctant and hesitant in following Christ whole-heartedly. Jonah, as he attempted to be a "Runaway prophet", found himself in the belly of the great fish. He was in a dire situation. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, “Nothing clears the mind like the certain knowledge that you will be shot in the morning." Jonah was in the darkest, bleakest, situation of his life, and that kind of hopeless future has a way of clearing the mind of trivial details.

Faced with such a desperate future, we would not worry about washing the car - someone else can do it. Faced with your last day of life on earth you would have got bigger things to worry about. So it was for Jonah, but first he had to come to his senses. Jonah 2:1 says, “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God." While he was inside the fish, he composed a beautiful prayer that takes the form of a psalm. He cried out to God for help. “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From the depths of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry” (v. 2). Jonah did no boasting here. He knew that God alone could save him, and that if God does not, he would never get out of the great fish alive.

He confessed that God put him where into that great fish. “You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas" (v. 3). Notice that Jonah did not blame the sailors for throwing him into the deep nor did he blame the storm or the great fish. Jonah clearly saw that behind the ship, the storm, the casting of lots, the raging sea, and the great fish, stood the Lord of the Universe. Jonah bowed before God and said, “I’m here because you put me here." It is a great advance spiritually to stop blaming others for your problems. Jonah made great spiritual strides when he acknowledged that he must answer to the Lord alone.

Though Jonah faced certain death in the belly of the great fish, he came to the heart of his own sin and disobedience. He remembered that the Lord was his only hope. “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord” (v. 7). Finally Jonah began acting like a true believer. After all Jonah's running away, disobedience, prodigality, and self-centered living, God had Jonah’s undivided attention. God will do whatever it takes to bring us to the place where we remember Him, whatever it takes to get us to turn our hearts towards HOME.

From the depths of the sea and the stinky belly of the fish, Jonah vowed to serve the Lord. “But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good" (v. 9). We can observe the spiritual progress Jonah was making in this psalm. First, he acknowledged that God put him where he was. Second, he accepted God’s discipline. Third, he thought he was going to die. Fourth, he finally remembered the Lord. Then and only then did he vow to serve the Lord. He came to the great conclusion in verse 10: “Salvation is of the Lord."

This is the hardest lesson for any of us to learn. Salvation starts with God and it ends with God. Some of us struggle a lifetime to learn this and, once learned, most of us have learn it over and over again. Some people never learn it at all. There is no salvation, no deliverance, and no getting better until we realize that if God doesn’t save us, we will never be saved. That’s the advantage of being in the belly of a great fish. It clears the mind so you can think about what really matters most. In the terrifying darkness inside the fish, Jonah realized the folly of fighting against God. Salvation starts with God and it ends with God. It is all about GRACE.