Rights and Wrongs of Pray 1

We have a new fieldworker named Derek. He is married to my vicarage supervisor’s daughter. It has been along time since I was on vicarage (which is a year-long pastoral internship, for those not familiar with it). I’m not even sure I could call him my supervisor anymore. Now he is more of a friend. Relationships have always been important in my life. During vicarage, I was overly focused on whom I was going to marry. The people around me then had to hear girl story after girl story. I have no clue how they survived my preaching. Over the years, I have learned a lot from Scripture about my situation during those years. Since we are studying Jonah, I’ll share what I learned from him. 

Break-ups are a painful reality of any dating relationship, mine included. In each of my break-ups, the people around me watched me go into moments of deep sadness.  Sometimes I wondered if I could even go on. Certainly the conversations God and I had during these times were not great. I was impatient and expected Him to respond quickly.

While this may not be your story (because you aren’t crazy like me about overthinking the relationships in your life), there are things that are tough for each of us. One of the most challenging things is to see God’s grace for us when we feel like He is giving it away too freely to others. In the past, I would look at some of my friends who had made mistakes in their relationships and wonder why God let them marry the ones they loved, but not me. With jealous eyes, all I could see or think of was that they were not getting consequences fitting of their actions. These may not be the things we say out loud, but the thoughts in our head go to places like that; places that even cause us to contemplate not wanting to go on in life, or wanting to start all over.  In those times and places, our conversations with God are very important. This week we learn the whole reason Jonah ran from God was because He knew God would forgive Ninevah. He just knew God would do that. Jonah didn’t want to see that happen. Jonah wanted God’s grace for himself. In my sermon prep reading this week, one author said that people rarely psycho-analyze Biblical characters – assigning problems, thoughts and feelings that they may have dealt with.  In this case, there were deep thoughts and feelings behind Jonah’s wrestling. Some of it was just selfish, and some of it probably had to do with Jonah’s past.

The power of Jonah 4 is the way Jonah communicates with God. He is not afraid to say anything to God. He knows that God knows his deepest and darkest sins. Jonah communicates his frustration with God, and even shows Him silence. Jonah knows that open communication is important with God. Jonah even is willing to say that it is better that he die than live. You may be asking yourself, “Why is this good?” The answer is simple. It is all about the rights and wrongs of B1. I feel the greatest reason people struggle with praying out loud is because they are afraid to say something wrong. We have some feeling or idea that our loving God will be disappointed with our communication with Him. The answer is that He already knows our struggles! We’ve seen Jonah’s prayers.  What do we have to be afraid of? My heart as a pastor is to help the disciples of Christ, those extraordinary servants of Mt. Calvary, pray out loud trusting the Holy Spirit to guide their words.  That means you. Don’t let the devil put thoughts and fears of praying out loud in your head. Sure, there is a lot about Jonah that we could question, but there is something about Pray 1 to be taken as well. Jesus wants us to be able to communicate with Him always. Those moments we have to Pray 1 out loud with others are a great gift.