Saturday 8 December 2012

Why why Jonah why?

Quite a while ago now (this post has got lost to the back of my drafts and I have only just spotted it...) my youth group went on a weekend away where we looked at Jonah.  It is a book of the bible that I thought I knew everything there was to know about it - its one of those Sunday School stories.  I couldn't have been more wrong though!  There was so much I had never even thought about before and it was brilliant.  I learnt so much and came away feeling challenged, encouraged and uplifted.

The theme of the weekend was God is Gracious, slow to anger and quick in mercy.  What a big and great theme it was!

It was amazing to see how God used Jonah and how God did not let a stubborn, scared man thwart His perfect plan.  It was also amazing to see God's faithfulness even though Jonah had outright turned away and ran away from God, God was still merciful enough to save him from death and God still wanted to not only save him from death but still use Jonah to take His word to the Ninevites.

I found such encouragement in this - the fact that whatever I do, however much I muck up, however far I flee from God I am unable to thwart his plan - what a comfort to have a God with an untwartable plan (might have made that word up!)  What a relief to know that it does not depend on me, but wholly and solely depends on our wonderful creator. Phew!

It was also at this weekend that I first noticed the lines of Amazing Grace - 'When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun.  We've no less days to sing God's praise than the hour we first begun!'  Wow what a great view of Heaven and eternity of Heaven - I want to go there so much - I want to praise God for 10,000 years and have not a single day less left to praise Him.  I actually wrote about this in a different blog post which you can find here.

I am hoping to post very soon about the main encouragement I got from Jonah... Keep your eyes peeled!