Hopeless to hope…

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Oct 21, 2022
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#1
“Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. He said, “I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!”

‭‭Jonah‬ ‭2:1-2‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Jonah was a man who ran and yet God never gave up on him. Jonah was on board a ship in a fierce storm and was thrown overboard. A large fish swallowed him and he lived inside the fish (or whale) for three days and three nights. And inside this fish, Jonah prayed. His despair became the stage for God’s miraculous power.

Look at the facts –
1.he had denied the call of God,
2.run from God, been discovered by God,
3.been thrown overboard,
4.been swallowed by a fish,
5.and had survived.

It looked pretty hopeless. Yet, it was at this late moment that Jonah began to pray,

“Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish. He said, “I cried out to the Lord in my great trouble, and he answered me. I called to you from the land of the dead, and Lord, you heard me!”

‭‭Jonah‬ ‭2:1-2‬ ‭NLT‬‬


and the Lord commanded the fish to vomit up Jonah onto the shore – and it did.

The cure for hopelessness does not lie in the circumstances that surround you, but in you surrounding the circumstances with hope. The cure for hopelessness does not come from the problem but from the promise.

With faith in God, anything is possible.

Jonah ran from the call of God straight into a crisis. How can anyone run from the omnipresent God?

If the call of God is on your life, you will never be happy doing anything else. We learn the hard way that we can’t run away from the everlasting God. When we procrastinate with spiritual things, we often give in to the lie that it’s too late when we do eventually want to do right. No matter how great the distance between God and you seems, there is always a way to come back – even if we learn the hard way just as Jonah did.
 

Magenta

Senior Member
Jul 3, 2015
61,166
30,312
113
#2

Matthew 19:26b
:)
 

Lynx

Folksy yet erudite
Aug 13, 2014
27,734
9,660
113
#3
If the call of God is on your life, you will never be happy doing anything else. We learn the hard way that we can’t run away from the everlasting God. When we procrastinate with spiritual things, we often give in to the lie that it’s too late when we do eventually want to do right. No matter how great the distance between God and you seems, there is always a way to come back – even if we learn the hard way just as Jonah did.
Hmm... Someone should mention here that it's not a matter of God following you and messing up everything you do. God doesn't say, "Oh yeah? Well if you won't do what I want, I'll wreck everything you try to do."

Thing is, the older you get the older you realize how pointless most stuff is. No matter what we try to do, we're going to lose it all when we die. Kinda makes you wonder why you bother getting out of bed.

Also when God's not in something, it has a tendency to go south anyway. God doesn't have to wreck it.

But if God wants you to do something, you can bet it's something that you can look back on when you're old and be glad you spent your time on it. It will be something you won't regret having put your life into.