{"id":7642,"date":"2021-07-24T16:46:07","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T21:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/?p=7642"},"modified":"2021-07-24T16:46:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T21:46:07","slug":"devotional-on-jonah-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-jonah-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Jonah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 2048px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-euRPk1AOoPg\/YPsBVZWrK1I\/AAAAAAABKzs\/pBjO_d2kLFAs4BFKu8PV_SnkhUJDDPnKgCPcBGAsYHg\/s2048\/P7308878.JPG\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2013 &#8211; Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nThe hardest work of all<br \/>\nJonah 1: He was sound asleep.<br \/>\nWe don\u2019t know anything about Jonah\u2019s background.  It may be that he\u2019s been a prophet for years, faithfully preaching God\u2019s messages to his people.  On the other hand, this may be Jonah\u2019s first encounter with God.  He may have been an average fellow just minding his own business who heard the Voice of God.  Either way, the mission he&#8217;s given isn\u2019t one he wants.  Nineveh is the capital of the hated and feared Assyrian empire.  There\u2019s nothing Jonah or any of his fellow countrymen would like better than to see Nineveh destroyed.  Just a few pages over in our Bibles we find ourselves in the book of Nahum.  That short book of the Bible is all about God\u2019s promised destruction of this same city.  Now, that\u2019s the sermon Jonah wants to preach.  Instead, God calls him to call them to repent that they might be spared.  Jonah doesn\u2019t want the job so he flees Israel and, he supposes, the presence of the Lord by hopping a boat headed in the opposite direction.  Once aboard, he heads for the deepest, most out-of-the-way spot he can find and falls fast asleep.  I\u2019ve only been out on rough seas one time so my experience is very limited.  Still, I can say with confidence that such a time and place isn\u2019t a good one for a nap.  In fact, the only possibility of falling into a sound sleep in that circumstance is exhaustion.   I think Jonah has wrestled with his call to preach to Israel\u2019s enemies to the point that he&#8217;s not slept for days and is operating on the ragged edge of collapse.  People think that doing what God wants is too hard or that it won\u2019t satisfy their lives.  To their chagrin they discover that refusing God is even harder and that whatever they do instead fails to satisfy.   Running from God is hard work.<br \/>\nTake Away: Disobeying the Lord is hard work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hardest work of all Jonah 1: He was sound asleep. We don\u2019t know anything about Jonah\u2019s background. It may be that he\u2019s been a prophet for years, faithfully preaching God\u2019s messages to his people. On the other hand, this may be Jonah\u2019s first encounter with God. He may have been an average fellow just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1508,6,7],"tags":[135,336,497,772],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7642"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15419,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions\/15419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}