Most of us – especially mothers – lead chaotic lives. We forget to invest our time into prayer. So when disaster strikes in our personal lives, we can end up facing an additional hardship. After all, when you’re plunging deep under the waters of emotional distress, what is the first thing you go to do? You pray, because you know that only God can reassure you that everything is going to be okay. But what do you do when God doesn’t Immediately answer?
- An unexpected loss of income with no idea how to replace it
- A move coming up in your life without all the details finalized
- Waiting for a medical diagnosis for yourself or a loved one
- Feeling stuck between what you want to do and what you feel like you have to do
These are the kind of stressful situations that can cause your body to break down. So when we do the Christian thing that we’ve been taught by taking our worries to our Father in Heaven, it can be even worse to feel like He’s not comforting us. After all, isn’t that what God promised He would do?
The truth is, God hasn’t promised us that He would answer immediately. There are a lot of cases in the Bible where He doesn’t. Think about Noah and the flood in Genesis 5, the years of slavery the Israelites faced between Genesis and Exodus, or even the long gap between the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are gaps of time where God doesn’t talk.
And then there’s Jonah…
Read It
17 Now the LORD had appointed a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the fish three days and three nights. 1 Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish:
Jonah 1:17-2:1 (HCSB)
You’ve heard this story before, right? God is amazing! He rescued Jonah from the sea and gave him an all-expenses paid trip to Ninevah. Just stop right there. When was the last time that you really thought about what Jonah went through?
Nobody expected Jonah to live after being cast overboard. In fact, the crew members asked God not to count it as murder before they tossed him into ocean! There is no indication in the Scriptures that Jonah expected God to save him. I’m not going to say that Jonah thought he was going to die, but I do know that I would have been praying for a quick and painless death if I were in his position.
Instead of anything easy, Jonah won the lottery on uncomfortable sea deaths. He was:
- Swallowed alive by a sea creature!
- Trapped in darkness.
- Trapped in dampness
- Had nothing to drink, although he might have had the option of some sushi to eat.
- Had no realistic hope of escaping
- Had no idea of when death would come. From his viewpoint, he was left in a suspended state between life and death.
So what did Jonah do? The same thing we do; he turned to God:
2 I called to the Lord in my distress, and He answered me. I cried out for help in the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.
3 You threw me into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the current overcame me. All Your breakers and Your billows swept over me.
4 But I said: I have been banished from Your sight, yet I will look once more toward Your holy temple.
5 The waters engulfed me up to the neck; the watery depths overcame me; seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 I sank to the foundations of the mountains; the earth with its prison bars closed behind me forever! But You raised my life from the Pit, Lord my God!
7 As my life was fading away, I remembered Yahweh. My prayer came to You, to Your holy temple.
8 Those who cling to worthless idols forsake faithful love,
9 but as for me, I will sacrifice to You with a voice of thanksgiving. I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation is from the Lord!
10 Then the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Jonah 2:2-10 (HCSB)
Learn It
Jonah’s Reaction
I’m sure that when Jonah started his prayer, he would have preferred for God to rescue him immediately. We’re also not sure at what point during those three days that Jonah started to pray. What I do know is that Jonah was desperate.
Just look at some of the phrases in his prayer. He talks about:
- being in hell (vs. 2)
- being banished by God (vs. 4)
- his life fading away (vs. 7)
Jonah was experiencing everything we do and probably even more. So what can we learn from Jonah’s story when we’re having our own swallowed-by-a-whale moments?
Let’s take a look at this verse again:
2 I called to the Lord in my distress, and He answered me. I cried out for help in the belly of Sheol; You heard my voice.
Jonah 2:2 (HCSB)
Keep in mind that Jonah is still in the belly of the whale. He is still in distress. Yet he starts his prayer by saying that God has answered him. So why would he state this?
Option #1
Maybe Jonah is reflecting on a previous time of distress. After all, he had plenty of time to reflect over his entire life. So maybe he remembered how God had helped him through that other time. If so, Jonah opened his prayer with a statement on God’s past faithfulness.
Option #2
This is purely a statement of faith in God’s abilities to rescue him. If so, Jonah is saying, “God, I know this is a really bad situation, but I have faith in You to get me out of this.”
Option #3
Jonah is demonstrating repentance. Jonah is saying, “I know I didn’t do right. Please forgive me.” This is a bit of a stretch for me to make this conclusion, but you might disagree with me.
Option #4
Jonah already feels that God has rescued him from Spiritual death by placing him in the belly of the whale.
Each option has strong implications for how we need to react in our own situations, which we’ll cover in the ‘Apply It’ section. First, we need to talk about something else.
Jonah’s Humility
Jonah was a pretty proud person. After all, he was a man who knew God’s voice. He understood what God wanted him to do. Then he said, “No thanks. I don’t like Your plan of saving the people of Ninevah.”
After the people of Ninevah repented, Jonah still had an attitude issue. It didn’t matter to Jonah that he was part of saving an entire city. Instead, he went and sulked because God didn’t destroy the city.
But in this prayer, Jonah demonstrates some humility:
But I said: I have been banished from Your sight, yet I will look once more toward Your holy temple.
Jonah 2:4 (HCSB)
It’s very subtle, but Jonah acknowledges that he hasn’t been looking towards God. After all, he can’t “look once more” unless he has already looked away.
I sank to the foundations of the mountains; the earth with its prison bars closed behind me forever! But You raised my life from the Pit, Lord my God!
Jonah 2:6 (HCSB)
Here Jonah gives credit to God in the latter part of the verse. Jonah knows his place verses God’s place, and he knows that only God can truly guard his life. We see a similar theme in vs. 9.
Jonah’s Emotions
You threw me into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the current overcame me. All Your breakers and Your billows swept over me.
Jonah 2:3 (HCSB)
Even while showing humility, Jonah doesn’t try to hide his emotions. Did you notice what he’s doing? He is blaming God for being in the belly of the fish. We know perfectly well – and Jonah does, too – that it’s Jonah’s own fault that he’s in this mess. Yet Jonah is still angry, and he doesn’t try to hide it from God. Jonah also does this in Chapter 4.
A lot of times, I think people get so caught up in trying not to disrespect God that we forget these two things:
- God already knows what is in our heart.
- God chooses to have a relationship with us.
I wouldn’t advise you to pour your anger and/or disappointment into prayer every day (because if you’re that angry, then you need to do some soul-searching to find the roots!), but it’s okay to be honest about your emotions before God. After all, He gave us the ability to feel angry; I’m pretty sure He understands all of our emotions a whole lot better than we do.
And, if you need some extra encouragement that this is okay, check out my post on Hannah. We find that she, also, stays very honest with God.
Apply It
When we’re having a Belly of the Whale moment where God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers, we need to learn from Jonah. This means that we need to:
- examine our lives to see if we need to repent from anything
- recognize that God has already saved us, so what more do we really need?
- remember that God is guiding our lives, even in the troubled times
- remember how faithful that God has been in the past.
- show humility when praying
- be real with God
- Pray: “God, please help me to be content during this waiting period of my life. Amen.”
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