A closer look at Jonah: Part 1

Here are some thoughts on the book of Jonah that I jotted down a few years ago...maybe you can relate -

I’m starting to think that I’m not so different from this reluctant prophet. In case you don’t know the story, Jonah was a prophet who was told by God to travel to Ninevah so that he could warn the city to repent of their wicked ways and turn to the one true God, but he decided to jump on a boat going in the opposite direction to get away from God instead. At first you might think that Jonah should have been more than willing to go, especially since he was a prophet by occupation, had seen God work in the past, plus you can't ignore the fact that God personally told him to go. If God is setting the plans and making the way clear for us to do something, why wouldn't someone wanna go...right? However, after I listened to a really clear message on the book of Jonah, I learned that Ninevah was even more wicked than I had ever imagined…These people would destroy cities along with men, women and children just to make themselves look great. The men of Ninevah even went so far as to showcase their evil work by hanging the skin of their victims on their city wall. These were indeed evil people. Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah because he was scared that these people would recognize and repent of their sin, then God wouldn’t inflict the destruction that he intended. To be honest, I’m like that a lot of times. When I see bad things going on around the world, I want to see people brought to justice and punished really badly, to the extent that it almost makes me feel a little better about the situation. The part that I’m not proud of is that many times I have no desire to see these people recognize and repent of their sins. I’ve read that Ninevah was located in modern-day Iraq…a country where we have seen plenty of evil come out of in recent years. God desires that evil people from this country repent of their sin and turn to Him. God is full of both justice and mercy and if people humble themselves by coming to Him, then He will forgive. The message that sticks out to me in the first chapter of Jonah is that as a person who already has a relationship with God, I need to ask Him to develop more of a heart of love towards sinners. Does anybody else ever feel this way?