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- Oct 26, 2007
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Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. Jonah 2:8 ESV
On his way down to the depths of the Mediterranean, Jonah’s prayer reveals an important personal discovery: when people love anything more than God, they miss God’s love in everything.
Jonah nearly missed the life-changing impact of God’s love in his everyday moments because he marginalized what God had asked him to do. He knew God’s love would transform a group of people he couldn’t tolerate (the citizens of Nineveh), so when God asked him to talk to them, he went the opposite direction.
But as he endured the depths of the sea, Jonah learned the suffocating truth that idolatry always intensifies isolation—isolation from the love of a God whose everyday interventions make life meaningful. Jonah’s self-love and respect for his own ideas led him into a boatload of panic. Clinging to worthless idols always does.
Enduring in the depths of your overpowering experiences can teach you too. It can help you refocus your thoughts and energies on loving the people God sends into your life, so that you don’t “turn away from God’s love.”
Prayer: Father, help me cling to Your words and to love people, so that I can turn toward, not away from, Your love.
On his way down to the depths of the Mediterranean, Jonah’s prayer reveals an important personal discovery: when people love anything more than God, they miss God’s love in everything.
Jonah nearly missed the life-changing impact of God’s love in his everyday moments because he marginalized what God had asked him to do. He knew God’s love would transform a group of people he couldn’t tolerate (the citizens of Nineveh), so when God asked him to talk to them, he went the opposite direction.
But as he endured the depths of the sea, Jonah learned the suffocating truth that idolatry always intensifies isolation—isolation from the love of a God whose everyday interventions make life meaningful. Jonah’s self-love and respect for his own ideas led him into a boatload of panic. Clinging to worthless idols always does.
Enduring in the depths of your overpowering experiences can teach you too. It can help you refocus your thoughts and energies on loving the people God sends into your life, so that you don’t “turn away from God’s love.”
Prayer: Father, help me cling to Your words and to love people, so that I can turn toward, not away from, Your love.
