Jonah 2New International Version

Good morning and welcome. This is past that. We'll see painter with your daily insights and today we Continue with divine experience. The 16 life has its seasons of ups and down and sometimes we go through dark faces. It could be a sickness, a loss, heartbreak, a divorce, loss of a job just to mention. But a few sometimes we go through those times of intense loneliness, times when we feel lost, when we just don't know what to do. That time when fear envelopes you and you feel like the cloud will never leech. You get to that point in life where you start feeling like you can't take it anymore. You feel like God has stand the lights out on you and you start asking yourself how can go allow something like that to happen to you.

You may go through the season of people even giving up on you if you like life has given up on you and to the extent of feeling like you're giving up on yourself too. But then right, when you are on that edge, something happened that has God written all over it. Right? When you think this is it for me, God says I'm not yet done with you and until I'm done, you're not done. And I related things you listened to one of the episode I shared about my personal moments like that. You know, it is possible for God to say what you're feeling like you're done. I'm not done with this. So today we are going to read a story, we're very familiar with the story of Jonah and you're going to read about his experience after Jonah was swallowed by the great fish, Jonah from chapter two from Bar Swan says.

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord is God from the fish belly And he said, I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction and he answered me out of the belly of shore. I cried And you heard my voice for you cast me into the deep into the heart of the seas and the flood surrounded me. Oh, you're billows! And your waves passed over me. When I say, I have been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look again towards your holy temple. The water surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountain. The art with its birds closed behind me forever. Yet you have brought add my life from the pit or Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord and my prayer went up to you into your holy Temple.

Those who regard waterless idols forsake their own mercy. But it was sacrificed to you with a voice of thanksgiving. I will pay what I have vowed salvation is of the Lord. So the Lord spoke to the fish and it informative Jonah onto the dry lane were a powerful, powerful destroyed prayer. You know Jonah story is really not that complicated. It's not that complicated. Yeah, you had me right. He was a believer. He was a child of God and one god one day God sends him to a place called never but Jonah like a reburial resistant child, decides to run away from the Lord and he gets on a ship and heads off to a different place. But the law pursues Jonah on the wings of a storm and when he realizes that those who are with him will perish with him in that storm, he confesses what he has done and asked them to draw him into the sea.

But the bible says that the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah. You see Jonah had just hit rock bottom, he had survived the storm. He had, he had survived drowning. But now he was in a new depth in his opinion. He was as good as dead. And he even says that he cried out from the depths of the grave. But after the experience he just had after surviving all this journal, new that there was no distance too long for the Lord to hear him. And so at that time when he needed most, when he, when he most needed piece at a time when he needed assurance, Jonah cried out to the law and the Lord had him. You know, sometimes it becomes so hard to pray when we are in distress, we become so n crossed in our sufferings that we forget that the Lordy seems to us.

We forget that we are not alone in our suffering, but Jonah saves out of the belly of shore. The Lord had his voice. He knew he had never been out of God's hand. He knew he wasn't too far down that he was out of God's rich. He knew that none of his trouble that he had gone through had been without God storage. And that is why he says, you cast me into the deep into the heart of the city. He might have played a part in. He's been there. The sailors might have had a hard and him being there, but Jonah knew that nothing happened without the Lord's knowledge. You know, we've said before in the service of divine experience that when the Lord wants to get your attention, he isolated everyone who looked at heavier divine experience and they were alone. And we see the same thing happening with Jonah. The time in the belly of the fish might have been difficult.

It might have been uncomfortable, but that experience was necessary to break join us disobedient nature. He needed to be alone for his eyes to be open to his sin into his Miss given, but beyond the Lord. Using the fish as a confinement as an isolation room. For Jonah, the Lord used the discomfort as a protective haven from something worse. He used it to keep Jonah from brown. And so even through the rules of the consequences of his action, God still protected Jonah. He still showed his love to him. And in the midst of the tunnel the Lord gave him time to empty his city for her. He gave him time to reflect on the condition of his heart, on his relationship with God. The Lord time Jonas crisis into a sanctuary. He made a sanctuary where journal would have his encounter God right in the middle of a strong and in that moment when everything had diminished from his side except a lot john a real live, his dependence on God.

And we see this when he says I cried out for help. In that moment when there was nothing between him and God, when all distractions, his pride and his prejudice had been removed, Jonah got his alone moment with God and he surrendered, he submitted to go without reservation and he was waiting to obey the Lord commanded the fish to release him. The Lord used the very thing that Jonah had brought to be his end to deliver him to the coast. The Lord desired for him to be in neineva. But his attempts to do things by his own mind, Jonah had ended up in the wrong place. But the Lord, in his sovereign timing prepared a way to move here from the middle of the ocean to where he wanted him to be. And at the end of his divine encounter, Jonah had experienced something we have seen in so many of those who had an encounter with the Lord.

His heart had been conquered by the Lord. His rebellious heart had been salted and he was ready to answer his calling. It is my prayer today and we may recognize God's hand even in the latest of our suffering and even in the deepest ends, we may not take our eyes from the Lord and if in our difficult moments we have lost sight of the Lord when we look once more towards him. But we remember the Lord with gratefulness of presiding us even when we pass through the fire and like Jonah said, I will fulfill my vows when we remember to fulfill the vows we have made before the Lord. If he delivers us because when we are in trouble, we are quick to say and to vow what we will do, do we not remain the same after our encounter with the Lord. It is my prayer that if you are going through a dark face in life when it has served its purpose and the Lord's purpose in your life, you can stand and proclaim like Jonah that salvation is overboard Shall um this is faster lucy painter with your daily insight and this is divine experience.

Day 16