In the Nick of Time
Today's Three-minute Bible Study
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Title: In the Nick of Time
Keywords:
"prayer"
Welcome
to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual
temptation.
Passage: Jonah 2:7*
While I was fainting away,
I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer came to Thee,
Into Thy holy temple.
Questions
1. Jonah, the reluctant prophet, received the command from God to go east to the capitol of the wicked Assyrian empire, Nineveh, and preach good news to them. He refused, heading due west on the open sea for Tarshish (probably present-day Spain). Can you relate to Jonah’s reluctance to do what God told him to do? Can you think of a specific example of a time when you have done this?
2. Jonah prayed the prayer found in the verse above after he had been swallowed by the great whale. Based on the first line of the verse, what kind of shape was Jonah in when he prayed this prayer?
Practical help
The prophet Jonah disobeyed the Lord’s direct command to go to Nineveh. He ran away from what God wanted him to do and found out the hard way that God is not so easily put off.
God pursued Jonah on to the high seas, where He hurled a strong storm against the ship on which he had booked passage. All of the heathen sailors on board turned to the Lord in genuine faith through the storm, but not Jonah! He remained obstinate to the end, never agreeing to go to Nineveh. At last, though, so as to spare the sailors’ lives, he told them to throw him overboard. The sea immediately ceased its ragings.
Jonah was sinking like a stone when salvation came in the most unusual — and gross — way. God appointed a whale to swallow him alive! Eventually, the whale vomited Jonah on to the shore — the eastern shore — of the Mediterranean Sea and he began his long walk to Nineveh to do what he had been ordered by God to do in the first place: preach to the Ninevites.
His prayer, though was prayed while he was "fainting away." As Jonah was free-falling through the sea, he remembered the Lord. Interestingly enough, the Lord was the one Person he had forgotten in all of his running away. And it was calamity that brought Jonah back to his senses and prompted him to remember God.
So, been running away from what God has called YOU to do? He has called you to purity. He has called you to stand firm against sexual temptation. Have you been running/sailing to the Tarshish of Internet porn?
Has God sent storms into your life? Relational storms? Health storms? Spiritual storms? He is graciously seeking your attention. God sometimes sends calamity for the explicit purpose of getting our attention when we are running away from Him.
Why not look your calamity square in the face and recognize it for what it is — an invitation from God to turn to Him in trusting reliance and to begin doing what He has called you to do — stand strong against sexual temptation.
When you, like Jonah, cry out to the Lord, He will hear and deliver.
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*"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright
The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by
permission."
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