Storms of Correction

Storms of Correction

The Sermon on the Mount is, without a doubt, one passage of Scripture which never fails to stir my soul.  Its close, in Matthew 7:24-27, contains truths which may be troubling, but, yet, which are also comforting, at the same time.  Jesus, in His first formal instruction to His apostles before a mixed crowd of believers and unbelievers, foretells challenging times for His followers.  In this passage about the wise man and foolish man who built their homes upon rock and sand, respectively, Jesus does not say that if the storms come, their homes will be impacted; He says when the storms came.  Every believer, as well as non-believers, will face difficult times during life.  I once tried to encourage a friend during a painful time in her life, assuring her that there was light at the end of the tunnel.  She assured me that it was only another training coming from the other direction.

God never promised His children a storm-free life.  What He did promise is that we would never go through that storm alone.  He promised, in 2 Corinthians 1, that no pain is ever wasted, and He promised that He would catch every tear that drops from our eyes.  Far too often, believers think that every storm in their life is because they are doing something wrong.  The concept of God’s character is that He is just waiting for us to make a mistake so that He can zap us.  Really, now, who would not have already been zapped if that were God’s attitude toward us?  God never allows anything into our lives that is not for His glory and our good.

When we find ourselves struggling for understand in the midst of a storm, we need to ask God to show us what type of storm surrounds us.  For the believer, there can be two types of storms:  Storms of correction and storms of perfection.  A storm of correction can best be explained by the Old Testament book of Jonah, the counterpart to the New Testament prodigal son.  All storms of correction begin the same way as Jonah 1:  Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah… But Jonah…In other words,  all storms of correction begin with disobedience to God’s Word for our lives, deliberate, willful, and rebellious disobedience.  God speaks to us about an attitude, a decision, a relationship, but we…

Reading the rest of Jonah, we find that he attempted to flee God’s presence – impossible, according to Psalm 139.  It always reminds me of when my grandchildren and I play hide and seek.  They will stand behind a small tree or post, convinced that if they don’t see me, I can’t see them.  We, too, play hide and seek with God, convinced that if we don’t read our Bible, pray, go to church, or look at God, He is not looking at us.  Wrong.  In Zechariah 4:10, the Bible says …the eyes of the Lord run to and from through the whole earth.  He sees it all!  He sees us all!

Just like a parent who sees, with a broken heart, the rebellion of a child, God saw Jonah’s feeble attempt to ignore His commandment to His son.  He loved Jonah too much to allow him the responsibility to shoulder all choices for his life.  There are consequences to choices.  Never make a decision for which you are unprepared to pay the highest price you could pay for that decision.  Jonah boarded a ship headed in the opposite direction of God’s choice, the best choice, for his life.  Jonah 1:3 says he paid a price for boarding that ship.  Jonah attempted to get as far away from God as he could, much like a recalcitrant teen storming into his or her room and slamming the door.  In essence, that teen is saying, I don’t like you.  You can’t tell me what to do.  I don’t want to be around you.  How often have we treated God in the same disrespectful way?

As Jonah sailed away from Joppa, down in the belly of the ship with the door slammed in the face of God, however, a storm arose.  It was a violent storm, a tempest, causing everyone on board to fear for his life – everyone, that is, except Jonah, who didn’t think he cared if he lived or died.  Suddenly, the men realized that they hadn’t experienced problems until Jonah boarded the ship.  His life was not worth losing their life, so they, promptly, threw him overboard.  By the way, the people who enable our rebellion as believers are, often, the ones who are quickest to throw us under the bus when things get tough.

As a great fish, prepared by God, swallowed Jonah, the rebellious child of God had finally reached rock bottom, or ocean bottom.  One would expect repentance, an epiphany, a changed life.  Instead, Jonah 1:17 and 2:1 reveal that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.  THEN, Jonah prayed to the Lord.

Can you believe it?  His rotten, stinking pride stayed rotten and stinking for three days and three nights before he was willing to say, I’m sorry, Lord.  I’m thinking I really need a trip to Nineveh.  I believe this may have been the first use of time out, the naughty chair, and an apology.

In other words, the storm of correction ended only when Jonah was willing and ready to go back to the last time he heard God’s Word and to obey it.  When we, as believers, find ourselves in the midst of a storm, the first thing we should do is to ask the Holy Spirit of God to search our hearts, try our hearts, and to see if there is any wicked way in them.  Did I ignore God’s Word, His plan for my life, or a direction He was sending me?  If so, go back to your Father, ask His forgiveness, and forge forward in obedience to His call.  God blessed the entire city of Nineveh through Jonah’s obedience.  However, it took a storm of correction to get him there.

© 2011 Gerry Sisk

(04/20/11)