{"id":7646,"date":"2021-07-25T16:51:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-25T21:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/?p=7646"},"modified":"2021-07-25T16:51:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-25T21:51:52","slug":"devotional-on-jonah-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-jonah-13\/","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\/--yHWdNVc_jc\/YPxhGb6jezI\/AAAAAAABK0U\/V8uai04pFso6XWJuh-XFea8mj6EPf5KDwCPcBGAsYHg\/s2048\/P8208996.JPG\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1280\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2013 &#8211; Shenandoah National Park, VA &#8211; Skyline Drive<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nThe grace that goes before<br \/>\nJonah 1: Get rid of me and you\u2019ll get rid of the storm.<br \/>\nThey make their living on the water but the sailors have never seen a storm like this.  This storm, they fearfully conclude, has supernatural power.  These sailors have no knowledge of God but when Jonah tells them that the God he serves is the Maker of the sea it scares them to death.  Jonah bravely accepts his responsibility in all this and tells them to save themselves by throwing him overboard.  These idol worshipping, superstitious, and desperate men won\u2019t do it.  One has to wonder why Jonah needs to be \u201cthrown\u201d at all.  He can abandon ship with or without their help.  However, I\u2019ll leave that for another day, and focus in on these pagan sailors.  Even though Jonah tells them that tossing him into the sea will save their lives, they row all the harder, trying to escape the storm.  One of John Wesley\u2019s doctrines is called \u201cprevenient grace.\u201d  The \u201cpre\u201d part of the word is the clue to its meaning.  It might be called \u201cthe grace that goes before.\u201d  That is, before I ever think of God he\u2019s already working in my life.  Human beings are created in God\u2019s image and, even though that image is soiled and stained, it remains.  It&#8217;s prevenient grace that enables a sinner to show God-like compassion on others.  It&#8217;s prevenient grace that enables us to respond to God\u2019s love as he offers us a relationship with himself.  In this case, we see prevenient grace at work in the lives of these heathen sailors who risk their own lives in an attempt to save a person who confesses that their predicament is his fault.<br \/>\nTake Away: Before we ever think of the Lord he\u2019s already working in our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The grace that goes before Jonah 1: Get rid of me and you\u2019ll get rid of the storm. They make their living on the water but the sailors have never seen a storm like this. This storm, they fearfully conclude, has supernatural power. These sailors have no knowledge of God but when Jonah tells them [&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":[135,518,713,857],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646"}],"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=7646"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15421,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7646\/revisions\/15421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}