The Sovereignty of God

A fourteen-part devotional series, published once a week on Fridays on womentoday.international

By Jasmine Britto, Kerala, India

Day 2

Jonah 1:4-9

Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.” Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

It was the Lord who stirred up the storm. We often think of Jesus calming the waters, and He can do that. But God also can stir up the storm.

Storm at Sea

The ship and the sailors were in a dangerous place; this was all due to Jonah being on the ship. We have a great responsibility to obey God’s word because our sin and disobedience can hurt others around us.

While the storm raged, Jonah was sound asleep below the deck. Even as he ran from God, Jonah’s actions apparently didn’t bother his conscience. Everything was going upside down, yet Jonah was sleeping. This portrays spiritual apathy. Perhaps the storm outside seemed insignificant to him in comparison to the storm inside, the storm that came from his resistance against God.

If you have ever been resistant to what God is telling you to do, or if you have ever knowingly been disobedient to his word, then you know that inner turmoil. We are in sin when we are rejecting God’s word and running from his presence; it is exhausting and it is blinding.

God’s word is a comfort to us when we walk in obedience to him but when we walk away from his word it wears us down because we know that we are not in alignment with what we are called to do.

It must have seemed ironic to Jonah that the sailors demanded that he call on his God. His only reason for being on that ship was to escape from his God.

Jonah knew very well that the God he was running away from is the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land, and yet he thought of escaping from that God through the sea.

Jonah’s life contradicted the knowledge he had about God.We are God’s people. We learn a lot about God through our Bible studies and the messages we hear in church and from other reliable spiritual sources.

Are we living in alignment with what we know about God or are we living contradictory to the Scriptures?

Prayer Focus

Today, can we ask God to help us see the true condition of our spiritual life and our hearts? If we sense dissonance of any kind, let’s ask God to reveal the reason to us and make us whole. May He bring us into alignment with His good, pleasing, and perfect will (Romans 12:2b).

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