Friday, July 2: Who is your Nineveh?

Even when we are following the Lord, He puts us in places where we are not following our hearts. That shouldn’t surprise us as the heart is suspect, at best. Jeremiah described it as deceitful and desperately wicked. When we decide to walk away from the cares of the world and put our trust in Jesus Christ, He gives us a new heart. Yet the old memories and the problematic sin nature still can rear their ugly heads and lead us down paths of unrighteousness for our own name’s sake.


When God called Jonah to go to the people of Nineveh, Jonah made a beeline in the opposite direction.


Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” 3 But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
Jonah 1:1-3


Having been to Joppa, a quaint city on the Mediterranean Sea just south of Tel Aviv, it is easy to picture Jonah’s point of departure. Nineveh was not a port city, and therefore, could not be reached by ship. It was a three-day journey from the coast, and Jonah chose to evade the Lord. That’s hard to do with an omnipresent God! What was it about this request from God that sent Jonah spiraling in the opposite direction? Jonah didn’t want the people of Nineveh to find the Lord’s grace and salvation. It was the equivalent of the Lord asking a USC grad to share His love with a UCLA supporter. If this analogy does not explain the situation to you, place any rivals in those two spots!


Jonah gives us a great example of the lengths that God will go to if He wants to get us back on His path, the path of righteousness for His name’s sake. You know the rest of the story: Jonah boarded a ship and it seems to have been more than a three-hour tour; the weather started getting rough and the tiny ship was tossed; if not for the intelligence of the fearless crew who figured that Jonah was the cause of the storm, the ship would have been lost; they threw him overboard; Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish; Jonah prayed for three days; the fish vomited Jonah onto the shore. After much thought, Jonah decided to make the trip to Nineveh. When he told the people that the Lord was going to destroy the city and the people in 40 days, they decided to follow the Lord, much to Jonah’s dismay!

Do you have any Nineveh’s in your life? Any person in your life is not there by chance or coincidence, but is there because the Lord placed them there. Do you have rivals or enemies that make fun of your faith? Are there people who at every step seem to be trying to trip you? All of us have people we meet who are very difficult to love. Often, we choose the slow boat to China rather than the long walk of a servant in dealing with them! Learn a lesson from Jonah. Would you rather be blanched white from the stomach acid of a giant fish, or make the journey the Lord requests? We have the gift of free choice, but God’s will overrules any choice we can make! When we venture from the path of His righteousness, He has the power, creativity and ability to put us right where He wants us. It is much easier to just do what He says!


Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
 Romans 12:14