Are you in a difficult place at the moment and could really do with a breakthrough from God?
The Bible doesn’t promise us a life free from conflict or difficulty, but it does promise that God will be with us! Sometimes God sends us into places full of opportunity, challenge, and even resistance. However, God, having sent us, never leaves or forsakes us but instead walks alongside us. Our challenges are not ours alone – we work together with God.
Someone who found grace and hope in difficult places is Jonah. His adventure has long been viewed as a tale full of surprises: a prophet who runs from God, a city as wicked as Nineveh finding mercy, and a man surviving inside a fish. All of these elements make Jonah’s narrative one of the most peculiar but spectacular in Scripture. Yet, when we take a closer look, we realise Jonah’s story is far more familiar than it first appears. In fact, it’s deeply human. The surprise lies not in God’s actions but in how often we fail to understand His grace and purposes. Jonah’s journey isn’t just the story of one reluctant prophet; it’s a mirror of our own struggles with grace, hope, and the uncomfortable places God calls us into. We don’t need to look hard to see ourselves in the narrative – we won’t encounter the large fish, but we do encounter God’s provision, grace, and kindness.
Who will go for me? Not Jonah!
Jonah is perhaps one of the most relatable prophets in Scripture, not because of his courage or zeal, but because of his resistance. When God says, “Who will go for us?” Isaiah replies, “Here I am!” But when God calls Jonah to speak to Nineveh, Jonah does what many of us might do—he runs. He turns in the opposite direction, boarding a ship to Tarshish, fleeing from the uncomfortable mission God has placed before him.
This act of rebellion isn’t surprising. For our purposes here, Jonah’s story exposes something deeply embedded in the human heart: our instinct to avoid what we find hard or undesirable. How often do we shrink back from the promptings of the Spirit when they lead us into difficult situations? Whether it’s stepping out in evangelism, addressing deep wounds in relationships, or confronting our own sin, we, like Jonah, often resist God’s call. It may sound simplistic, but our call is a call to obedience. Yet the busyness of life can easily distract us or navigate us in a different direction than we intended.
Jonah runs – and God chases him with a storm
Happily, Jonah’s rebellion isn’t the end of his story, and it needn’t be the end of ours. God doesn’t abandon Jonah, nor does He allow him to hide from his calling. Instead, God pursues him, not with wrath, but by providing a storm and a fish that ultimately bring Jonah back to where he needs to be. It’s a picture of lavish grace that we also experience in our own lives; God’s pursuit of us is relentless, and He uses even the storms of life to draw us closer to Him.
So Jonah runs, and God responds by sending a storm. It may have been a storm that was coming that way anyway, but today it was Jonah’s storm. It’s easy to view the storm as punishment, but if you read the story, you’ll realise that’s not the full story by any means. The storm itself is an intervention, an instrument of grace—a means by which God interrupts Jonah’s flight. It’s in the storm that Jonah begins to wake up to the reality of God’s presence and purpose, even when he wants nothing to do with it. You may be able to relate—for us, it’s usually evident when we ask, “What on earth is going on?”
God is in the chaos?
Storms in life can feel disorienting and overwhelming. Whether it’s personal loss, shattered plans, or a spiritual crisis, these moments often leave us asking, “Where is God?” But just as the storm in Jonah’s story was under God’s control (and provided by God), so too are the storms in our own lives. God is present in the chaos, not absent from it. His sovereignty means that nothing we face is outside His redemptive reach—God has long arms.
What if, with faith and trust in God, we began to see the storms not as disruptions but as opportunities for Him to work in ways we hadn’t anticipated? Jonah’s storm was the catalyst for his journey back to God’s purposes. Likewise, the difficult places in our lives can become arenas where God’s grace works most profoundly, stripping away our self-reliance and drawing us closer to His heart. It’s often in the chaos that we come to see His steadfastness. We may very well stand on our own two feet—but we always need the steadying, reassuring, and strengthening hand of God to keep us standing. Never underestimate how much God is with and for you as a Christian!
Grace for the Unlikely—When God’s Mercy Surprises Us
Perhaps the most shocking part of Jonah’s story, at least from Jonah’s perspective, is not the storm or the fish, but the extravagant mercy God shows to Nineveh. Nineveh was the enemy, known for its cruelty and wickedness, and to Jonah, with a tarnished understanding of grace and knowing the wickedness of the city, they needed judgment and didn’t deserve grace. But God had other plans.
When Jonah finally, after dramatic interventions for and on his own behalf, delivers his message of “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” something extraordinary happens—the people repent. You can never second-guess what God can do or is up to! A nation repenting was the very thing Jonah feared, not because he doubted God’s power, but because he knew God’s character. Jonah confesses later in frustration, “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Jonah 4:2, ESV). Jonah wasn’t surprised by God’s mercy; he was uncomfortable with it. He didn’t think Nineveh deserved it. The mind boggles. Think of the news events today—do they deserve mercy?
If we’re honest, we often share Jonah’s discomfort. Grace is easy to celebrate when it’s extended to us and our friends, but what about when it’s extended to those we deem unworthy? We live in a world that operates on a system of merit—if you work hard, you deserve rewards; if you fail, you face the consequences. But grace disrupts this system. It’s given freely, without regard to merit, to those who least expect it.
Jonah’s struggle with God’s mercy towards Nineveh invites us to closely examine our own hearts. Do we resist the radical nature of God’s grace? Do we withhold forgiveness, mercy, or love from those we feel don’t deserve it? God’s grace isn’t bound by our sense of justice. It’s bigger, more expansive, reaching into places and people we might never consider worthy. And that is exactly why we shouldn’t be surprised by it. Neither should we be surprised that, having been rescued from a broken world and brought into a living and dynamic relationship with Jesus, He sends us back into that broken world to share God’s astonishing good news and grace with the many who, like us, don’t deserve it.
God succeeded!
That grace goes beyond our depths of understanding. Jonah’s frustration after Nineveh repents reveals a deep tension many of us face when God’s actions don’t align with our expectations. He’s angry, not because God failed, but because God succeeded. Jonah wanted justice for Nineveh, not mercy. It wasn’t that they got away with it, but God extended undeserved mercy and grace towards them. It may be bewildering at times. My own salvation in September 1979 was the same—God came against all the odds stacked against me, reached into my life, and gave me the irresistible call to follow Him—with only one condition: all my multitude of sins would be forgiven, atoned for, removed, and forgotten. It was a glorious exchange—my sins for His righteousness.
This is where Jonah’s story gets personal. It’s easy to criticise Jonah for his hardness of heart, but his reaction is a window into our own souls. How do we respond when God shows grace in ways that challenge our assumptions or desires? Perhaps it’s a co-worker who receives an opportunity we felt was ours. Maybe it’s someone who wronged us being blessed in ways we can’t understand. We struggle with God’s grace when it cuts across our sense of fairness. God brings the story back to Himself again and gently confronts Jonah’s anger with a question: “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4, ESV). It’s a question He asks us, too. Do we trust God’s wisdom in how He dispenses grace? Do we believe that His mercy is just as necessary for us as it is for those we find difficult to love?
The story of Jonah isn’t about a prophet who simply had a bad attitude. It’s about the deeply ingrained struggle we all have with the wideness of God’s mercy. But in challenging Jonah’s anger, God also extends an invitation to grow, to step into a deeper understanding of His love that surpasses our limited view.
God never gives up on us
As I shared in my own encounter with Jesus, Jonah’s story is not about a prophet’s failure, but about a God who pursues. Jonah runs, but God follows. He flees, but God draws him back. Even Nineveh, a city far from God, is sought out and offered redemption. This is the heartbeat of Jonah’s narrative—a God who never gives up, even when we do.
When we find ourselves in places of resistance, doubt, or frustration, Jonah’s story offers profound hope. We are not the heroes of our own lives; God is. Even when we resist, even when we fail, God is faithful. His pursuit of Jonah is a reminder that He doesn’t abandon us, even in our reluctance. He works through flawed, broken people—people like Jonah, people like us.
We shouldn’t be surprised that God calls and follows us into difficult places. He is, after all, the God who sent His Son to the cross, the most difficult place of all, to redeem a world steeped in sin. If He was willing to go to such lengths, should we be surprised when He asks us to follow Him into hard, uncomfortable places? God doesn’t just lead us into hard places; He meets us there. Whether it’s in the belly of a fish, the chaos of a storm, or the unexpected mercy shown to an enemy, God is present. His grace sustains, His Spirit empowers, and His purposes prevail, even when we can’t see the full picture.
We may not always understand or appreciate the path He leads us on, but we can trust that His grace will be enough, His presence will go before us, and His grace will meet us in every place.
