Stanley, Charles - - How to Let God Solve Your Problems by Stanley Charles

Author:Stanley, Charles [Stanley, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Lessons Learned from a Rebel

God instructed Jonah to head east to Nineveh, but he headed west across the Mediterranean Sea toward Tarshish and straight into trouble. Many of us have done the same thing. God makes it clear that He wants us to go in a certain direction, and we take another route! Imagine disobeying God. Yet each one of us has done this at some point. When we do, we miss a tremendous blessing and end up in desperate circumstances. In fact, most of the problems we face come as a direct result of not obeying the Lord. God tells us to go east, and we turn and go west.

When We Say No

Jonah was commissioned by God to take His word of salvation to the city of Nineveh. However, he refused to do this because the people living in that city were dire enemies of the Jewish people. Jonah did not want God to save the city; he wanted the Lord to destroy it and all who lived within its walls. Perhaps you have had a certain mind-set about something that God wants you to do. He may want you to say yes to a certain job, build a relationship with a neighbor, or take a position at your work that seems less than attractive. Maybe He wants you to take a certain path because He plans to use you in the lives of a group of people, but you are fighting hard against Him. When God tells us to take a step in a certain direction, we always need to obey Him. He knows what He wants to accomplish in our lives. He uses the forces of adversity and the power of unrelenting problems to:

• train us to do His will,

• refocus our lives so our hearts are set on Him, and

• prepare us for tremendous blessing.

Turning Our Attention Back to God

Walking away from God was not as easy as Jonah thought it would be. “The LORD hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo, which was in the ship, into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep” (Jon. 1:4–5).

There are times when God has to get our attention, and many times He uses trials, difficulties, and disappointments to accomplish this. Jonah really had no intention of obeying God. In fact, once the winds picked up and the storm clouds gathered, he headed inside and down into the bottom of the ship so he did not have to witness what was taking place on deck. When the captain realized that the prophet was hiding out below, he wondered how a man of God could simply walk away knowing that danger was right before them (Jon. 1:6).

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