God hears our cries from the darkest depths
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
Faith Fitness
Bro. Sam Kaufman
The Biblical account of Jonah is an interesting one.
God had mercy on Ninevah through Jonah’s eventual cry to the wicked city and its response of repentance, but God perhaps displayed even more grace on Jonah.
That’s because the prophet wholeheartedly disobeyed God’s initial directive to go to Ninevah. Jonah should have known better. He went the opposite direction, but he never made it to Tarshish.
God extended His grace to Jonah – the man of God who drifted from God – through a very unusual circumstance. God also revealed his longsuffering and compassion by extending great grace to the wicked sinners of Ninevah when they repented.
Jonah had few options inside the whale’s belly.
But to those who stray away – or for those who perhaps are facing trying challenges and have never known God – the account of Jonah reveals God’s availability and help in life’s dire situations.
Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances that require us to look up – or seek God’s help from above.
The Prodigal Son comes to mind. By God’s grace, he eventually ended up in the pig muck – even eating pig’s food.
Thank God for that scenario in his life. It was the sobering period that drew him back to his father.
He didn’t have to go back, but it was really, really easy to do so, considering the conditions he found himself in.
Jonah found himself in a similar situation. He chose to cry out to God from the deep.
Not only was Jonah in the sea depths, but inside the whale’s belly, as well. It was double trouble for Jonah. That scenario is hard to fathom. Fish move fast. So, Jonah was likely facing constant motion in a dark and incredibly unfathomable location.
Jonah described it as the “belly of hell.”
He was in fear, darkness and surrounded by whatever whales ingest – school taught me it was plankton. I also learned in school that whales are mammals. They have hair somewhere on their bodies and the mommas nurse their young. That’s just what I was told in school. It seemed strange when I heard it.
Anyhow, Jonah was in a precarious position. While contemplating what to do, he chose to call on God – the only one who could really hear him and save him from his circumstance, which seemed way insurmountable.
This is what he said in Jonah 2:1-2: “Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly. And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.”
In our deepest, darkest places, we can call out to God. At times, we hit depths that seem as low as Jonah’s, but God gave us an example here that He hears cries from those locations.
The Lord put Jonah in that place so the prophet would hopefully seek God for a way out.
“For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet will I look again toward thy holy temple.” (Jonah 2:3-4)
In Jonah’s mind, he felt God didn’t know his whereabouts, but that was a lie from the pits of hell. Satan uses those same tactics on us today by trying to trick us into thinking God doesn’t see our situation and won’t hear our cry.
What a lie that is. Jonah pushed through that and “looked again toward thy holy temple.”
Jonah further describes his harrowing situation, which happened quickly. Sometimes we are caught off guard in an instant with various happenstances.
But the key is to do what Jonah did while in that place. He remembered God in the depths of it all. We must do the same.
“The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.” (Jonah 2:5-7)
When there was no hope, Jonah remembered that all things are possible with God – even deliverance from his current situation.
His prayer to the Lord went through the whale, through the depths of the sea, through the atmosphere and space, and all the way into God’s holy temple. What a distance that cry traveled – all the way into God’s presence.
God heard the cry and acted upon it. God had the solution for Jonah’s dilemma. God created the whale for a purpose and God spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.
