Which way is Nineveh?

The preacher said something today at church that has stuck with me all day. It is like holding an unopened present and the anticipation of knowing that there is something special inside. What he said was in passing to a joke about Jonah standing on a beach with seaweed hanging from his head and gross looking and being asked what happened and him replying, never mind that, which way is Nineveh?


I keep hearing that phrase over and over in my head. Which way is Nineveh? Are we ready as Christians to quit being whiners and big babies constantly wanting from God. Always asking never giving? Always looking at God’s hands and never at his face? You know God was pretty kind to Jonah. Instead of killing him or ruining his reputation or any of a thousand things he could have done to destroy him, God simply gave him a ride in an unsavory and nasty place and gave him the time he needed to reconcile his life as not his own. You see, Jonah thought his life belonged to him, just like we tend to think that our lives belong to us. And we preen during the times of plenty and when things go our way, but tend to run off in a huff when God presents something we don’t want to do.


I think many times, our situations are simply the results of being carried around in the belly of a whale until we reevaluate our lives and come to the realization that our lives are not ours. When we willingly accepted Christ, we gave up the right to call our lives our own. Course we didn’t own them then either, they were owned by darkness that we could not see, but God set us free from the darkness by accepting us into the Blood of Christ.


The whole concept of my life not belonging to me is very difficult for a strong willed and independent minded person to accept. I want to believe in myself. Understandable, since I have had no one to lean on or help me get through anything, I have had to learn to stand alone, because there has never been anyone willing to stand with me. But what I didn’t see was that I have never stood alone. Unseen though he may have been, God has always been beside me and the Holy Spirit has always held my hand. Now, has that taken the place of social needs, no, but it is truth just the same.


So, I return to the phrase, which way is Nineveh? I hope I have spent enough time floating around in the digestive tract of a big fish to be able to accept God’s wishes for my life over mine. In my favor, I have to say that I have mostly tried to go where I thought God wanted me to go, but many times I don’t think I was hearing God at all over the sound of my own soul demands for meaning and purpose. So, God sucked me up into a big fish and let me ride around perfectly safe but empty for a while until I could come to the place where I remembered that my life is not mine.


There are things that I may not want to do. Places I may not want to go. A life I may not want to live, but I freely give up my right to direct my own life to be what God would have me be and do and go. Jonah demanded that God not send him to people he was afraid of and hated and I have demanded that God not make me live alone because I HATE it. I am not sure that Jonah actually learned his lesson because of his sense of self-righteousness, as he demanded that God destroy the people of Nineveh. But I hope that I can accept even that which I HATE if I have to because God wills it that way.
However, I have also come to understand that we should not be asking Christ for what we need, but go straight to the Father using Christ’s name that he secured for us by his sacrificial death and our willingness to accept it. So, by that understanding I also go before the Lord God and ask Him under the covering of the blood of His son to bring an end to my loneliness. I ask it not in my name or under my own righteousness, but as the chosen bride of the living Christ. Not because I deserve it. Not because I am so worthy. It is simply the one thing after God that I desire with all that is left of my heart.


In the past I have begged as a child. At times graveled on the floor begging, pleading, crying my eyes out feeling only that if I were not answered I wanted to die. But never before this moment, have I ever felt like I had the right to ask. I have always been worthless in my own eyes and no matter how much I begged, it was backed by despair because deep inside I knew that I was not worthy of love and no one would ever want me. I am not worthy of love, I have no earned love, and I cannot. But what I can do is accept that I am not worthy in myself, but it is the Christ in me that is worthy and it is the Christ in me that can do anything. I don’t have to earn love. I don’t have to be perfect or do things exactly right to be loved. Which is a good thing, but it is a better thing that the Christ in me brings me love that I cannot earn. So, bringing before God his word which says that if a man finds a wife he finds a good thing, and knowing I am not worthy, but that I have the right to ask because Christ gave it to me, I ask and am trusting God to end my loneliness. The details are not necessary here, because God and I know them.


And I am waiting expectantly… for love to walk in, because my Father in Heaven loves me and my savior Christ loves me. I am choosing to believe, even with a lifetime of failure and rejection, I am choosing to believe that God is preparing a love just for me. And he is coming soon. And I know these two things seem totally opposite of each other, but somehow they are not, so, which way is Nineveh?