Thursday, September 11, 2008

Have you ever noticed how beautiful the sky is on a crisp, clear autumn morning? My husband and I go outside about the same time each morning, I, to walk and him, to play with the puppies. We both have been awestruck by the beauty of the sky - the massive amounts of perfectly positioned stars and then the colors of a sunrise. I love waking up and being reminded of how great our God is. His creation is a connection point between Him and I. I hope you take the time to soak in the blessings of this earth we've been given. It's a gift from our Lord - don't take it for granted.

At the end of the first chapter of Jonah, Jonah is thrown from the ship and then a God appointed fish, swallows him, whole. As we move into chapter 2, Jonah is praying from the belly of the fish.

He recaps his experience in the water as he thought he was going to die. How he thought that he had been driven from God's sight. Vs. 7 says, "When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your Holy temple."

Vs. 9 "But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord."

God had not rejected Jonah, He just knew what it would take to get his attention. It takes coming through a near-death experience and then sitting in the belly of a fish to get Jonah to realize that He should obey what the Lord has asked him to do.

You may be thinking that this is pretty harsh, but coming from a very stubborn, hard-headed girl, I totally understand. God knows what it will take to wake me up and I have found myself in some places that I wondered how I ever got there. Today, I realize that it was the only way in which I would totally give myself to God. I am thankful now, for those times of total brokenness, because those are the times that my faith and trust has grown to new levels.

Vs. 10 completes chapter 2 "And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land." This verse always gets me - God spoke to the fish. How cool is that!!?? For those of you who may say that you don't hear God speaking to you, if He speaks to fish, how much more would he desire to speak to you! The question is, are you listening?

We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what Jonah decides to do with himself after being vomited from the belly of a fish, so stay tuned!

Living fearlessly
Christie

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