Down Below | Jonah Part 4

The Prophet Jonah Before the Walls of Nineveh
by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

In my last post, I gave a little bit more information about Jonah “before he got on the boat”. We also looked at a few examples of what running might look like in our own lives. Then I noticed something else in verse 5.

“But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.”

In other words, he withdrew.

Sometimes when you feel a storm be it a mood or an actual change. Don’t you have the tendency to withdraw? Some go to the bar. Some, like Jonah, return to their bed and try to sleep through it and some lose themselves in the tasks that we described in the last post.

Sometimes when you’re going through something, don’t you just want to get to the bottom of it? You withdraw from all other activities to analyze ‘this thing’. You're on a mission. You’re not trying to withdraw; you’re actually trying really hard to be present. –The purest and present self that you can be. “You just gotta get this thing worked out first…”

Let me quickly add that I don’t think all withdrawing is bad. Jesus went away on a mountain. A caterpillar goes away to transform into a butterfly. Good things come out of retreating.

But you need to be careful here because 1 Peter 5:8 also says “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” I do believe that you are more susceptible to spiritual attack when you remain isolated or withdrawn because;

When you’re alone, your story becomes the only one that you hear. -And let’s be honest, sometimes the story inside our head is a little out of focus. So, our responses to the situation get a little skewed as well. We need some interaction to help keep us from slipping too deeply into "our version".

But also, in that place of being withdrawn, you’re usually worn out. Whether or not you’re asleep or simply want to be. The first half of the verse in Peter says “Be alert and sober-minded.” When you’re weary, you’re not “alert”. You can even experience a little drunkenness from a lack of sleep. Then there’s sobriety from any “helpers” we might consider to “take the edge off.” When you’re not fully rested and “sober”, you’re exacerbating that “thought problem” and your emotional responses to it.

We see examples of Jonah's heightened emotions and exhaustion between these pages. It is assumed by other commentators that Jonah might have feared the Assyrians rising back up to overtake Israel. We know that in Chapter 4 he displays anger at the Lord for showing mercy to them. This is most likely because he had "stewed" in his frustration and fear of them for so long. Any of us can admit that happens more when we're alone. Whether or not he had wanted to die when decided to go overboard, he had convinced himself that suicide might be "the only way out" of his misery because running and isolation didn't work!

Whether or not you think that's true, it is what happens next.

"Jonah and the Whale Bible Story" by Dennis McGeary

So I ask you to consider, if you feel the need to withdraw for any reason but particularly during a storm, could you be running from something as well? If so, try to identify any fear(s), especially if you can’t stop what you're doing, and then ask yourself why that might be important. Jot it down.

This is kind of a sidebar but it's an important one. Sometimes this thought process can become an obsession or an addiction. You might not know how you get there. You might not see any way out. You might choose to steep yourselves in scriptures trying to combat it. While that must be better- is it really? 

I am not saying that scripture doesn't have power. The Bible plainly tells us to meditate on His Word and that scripture IS our greatest weapon of defense. I learned what I am getting ready to tell you by being in this place and meditating on scripture. So YES, there is power in it but also hear this with your heart-

If you're allowing a thing to isolate you or to control your moods and thoughts; and if even the scriptures that you meditate on have to be about your problem, you're getting sideswiped by something else and it is called worry.

When you give something else that much power over you, it can become an idol [limiting your view of God] and inadvertently, you can let it devour you. 

Pastor Fred Michaux of City Life church said: "You will never have dominion of any appetite of your body until you make fasting a regular part of your diet". If you've gone, like Jonah, down into the deepest part of your storm, I challenge you to fast from that place and come up for air and out into the light. Practice putting it down.

Aside from that, just because you’re running / withdrawing, doesn’t mean that it’s only affecting you. -No matter what you might tell yourself. Look around you and then back at Jonah. The men were throwing stuff off the boat while Jonah was asleep because his resistance turned pure chaos. Ahem, calamity. The point is, it's likely that everyone around you is affected by what you're going through, even if they’re not sure yet what it is or that you have something to do with it. 

***

Storms don’t always look like the message in Jonah. Sometimes we’re homesick. Sometimes our parenting skills reveal to us that we don’t know all that we think that we do. Sometimes we need to have a conversation with our spouse or maybe there’s sickness, adultery or addiction. Storms come in a variety of ways but perhaps our responses are really kind of the same. Even when we try to justify that we’re not on a boat and haven’t fled the country.

The storm comes to reveal what we’re afraid of and sometimes it takes something that we hate to reveal it. But keep in mind that Jonah was challenged with delivering the truth. Is it also possible that some of your own “truths” need to be a little challenged here as well?  

Everyone in this picture; the Assyrians, the men in the boat and Jonah needed a different perspective about God. Could He really be -even bigger- than what our view and "allowances" make of him too? After all, isn't that why we sometimes think that we can take things into our own hands? -And don't storms often come and clear the air?

And yes, there's more.

[To be Continued]

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