Not Your Average ’Jonah In The Belly Of The Fish’ Study

We have all heard the famous Jonah in the belly of the fish story. While we are going to talk about the book of Jonah here, we will be focusing in on a bit of Scripture that is most likely over looked by a lot of people.

Here we will study Jonah 1:13-14 in further detail. Some background: Jonah had already made the deal with the sailors who would take him to Tarshish in his ridiculous attempt to escape an Omnipresent God. A great storm had just kicked up out of the blue, and Jonah had not yet been thrown into the sea to be gobbled up by a huge fish—but he did tell the sailors to throw him in. At first they did not listen, instead they tried to fight the storm by trying to row the best they could to get back to land. Unfortunately for them—and especially Jonah—the harder they tried, the worse the storm got. Until, at long last they prayed to God and threw Jonah into the sea to be gobbled up by the fish.

Where does that fit into our everyday lives? Well there are a couple different directions I could go with this.

First, how often do we act first then pray? Jonah, being a prophet of the Most High knew what it took in order to save the ship. They did not listen, and instead went right into fighting the storm. Then, after they realized it was the wrong idea, they prayed. It is arguable that we should pray to God before every major decision that we make in our lives.

Second, how often do we think we know what is best for our lives only to find out that God has a different idea? The men on the boat thought it brilliant to try to row back to land for safety. They realized it was not going to happen, and they went to plan B—God’s plan. Before we find out what God’s plan might be we fight the storm, all too often wasting a great deal of time. And if we had just listened in the first place, and relinquished all of our power to Him there would be fewer storms in our lives. As usual, the Bible comes through with the utmost relevance for today’s life. This post is meant to get the reader to pray first then take action, and to relinquish control to God in all of life’s endeavors.