Knowing the Will of God and doing the Will of God are two entirely separate things. It is like the difference between severely cutting your arm and nursing it properly.
The cut has an immediate impact. You are aware that the cut is reality. It needs to be attended to for your benefit. It will cost you something to do it and it will take you out of the way of what you thought you were going to do. You may eventually get back to what you were doing before but in order to live right you need and want to do what is right and necessary first. Often it will cause you to have to trust someone else. There may be some aspects of nursing it which are uncomfortable, embarrassing or foreign to your thinking. Yet if you want full use of your arm and you don’t want to bleed out, get over it and do it.
Jonah knew God’s will and mercy. Jonah would have rather just bled out. God knew what would make Jonah willing. He knows what will make you willing as well. Jonah’s plan (fostered, aided and encouraged by Satan) was to go to a beautiful rich place in the opposite direction of the hardship God had assigned him to. They were heathen, he was holy. They deserved God’s wrath and he wasn’t about to get in the way of that. Jonah had already judged them and found them guilty.
In Jonah chapter one verse three Jonah knew what He was supposed to do. This is where most of us stumble a bit. We claim not to know. If it is possible to be willingly or neglectfully ignorant then I will concede that assertion. Sometimes my relationship with the Lord is a bit country or Hill Billy. When either I say “what should I do” or He says “do this”, He almost always says “I already done told you that”. That’s hillbilly for “shut up and get going”.
Then He will remind me of the card I carry in my wallet and give to others often. It says:
John 3:30 He must increase, but I must decrease. Do you truly wish to be God’s servant? Then do that which will achieve the greatest good for the cause of Christ. In which you will receive the least glory for yourself. And you perceive will cost you personally the most you can imagine.
Your salvation cost Him something. You cannot pay it back. You can only be obedient. You know what His will is because you believe. You believe what you have been taught from faithful Spirit filled servants. You believe what you have read in His word. You believe what He has shown you in your life, except maybe that part about your sin filled attitude.
But back to Jonah.
3But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
Rebellious, self willed, bitter against those who had caused Him harm. Bitter against God’s grace toward them. Bitter about having his prideful reputation sullied by Nineveh’s repentance that he knew was going to come. Yet God allowed Jonah to freely choose to operate within his own will. And Jonah’s will was to be reluctantly obedient to the Lord. God took him to the point of death, where nothing else mattered. That’s what it took for Jonah. How about you?
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