“Step out in obedience and watch God step in with breakthrough”
So far in chapter three of our journey through Jonah, we find God speaking a second time with the same message to our man Jonah. Having disobeyed once to dire consequences, Jonah figures he has no choice; so off he trots, eastward over the desert until he arrives in Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire (now in Iraq). In verse three, we see both contrast and repetition: instead of a raging sea, Jonah finds a huge urban center. The city is so large it takes three days to walk across it, paralleling the three days Jonah had spent inside the fish. Jonah speaks boldly the message he has been given from God and lo and behold, his words meet with a favourable response!
Nineveh’s king is presumably the brutal leader of the Assyrian armies. Unimaginably, he has suddenly recognized Israel’s God as supreme over the Assyrian gods. He believes Jonah’s threats of destruction and seems to understand that Israel’s God can be persuaded with an extravagant show of repentance. “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish” (verse nine).
Sure enough, it works! “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that God had said he would bring upon them; and God did not do it” (verse ten)
Jonah’s short little step of obedience was nothing spectacular on it’s own. By no means would we even call it a good sermon. No, but the truth of the matter is that God will take your obedience (no matter how small or simple it may seem at first) and will multiply it’s power. Too often we want to control the outcome of our obedience, but God always has bigger things in mind. Step out in obedience and watch God step in.
READ: Exodus.14:15-31 and Jonah.3:1-10
ASK: Who in my life do I think will never turn to God? How can I step out in a small way and trust God to do the impossible in their lives?
PRAY: Father, thank you for taking my small obedience and turning it into great fruit! Today I choose to trust and obey and allow You to be God in and through my life. I let go of trying to work out the outcomes on my own. Amen