God sent the storm. God prepared the sea-creature. In one sense, these calamities represented God’s chastening. At the same time, however, the sovereign Lord meant them to change Jonah’s direction. God used both the storm and the leviathan to lead His prophet.

We face a kind of paradox in doing the Lord’s work. On the one hand, God often places us in positions that require us to overcome obstacles. As we depend upon Him, these circumstances require determination, persistence, and courage if we are to succeed. In fact, God often uses difficulties to develop exactly those qualities in us.

On the other hand, God also leads through circumstances. If we ignore His leading, our determination becomes defiance, our persistence degenerates into obstinacy, and our courage turns into the worst sort of self-reliance. Consequently, we must develop a capacity for judging when God is using circumstances to test us and when He is using circumstances to change our direction.

If we are headed in a direction that we know to contradict His will, we can expect our circumstances to become painful. That was certainly Jonah’s experience as he fled to Tarshish. He was trying to evade God’s will by escaping from the presence of the Lord. The Lord pursued him into the hold of the ship, then into the sea, then into the maw of the monster that He had prepared.

In the creature’s belly Jonah recognized that he might as well be in Sheol. There the prophet humbled himself and submitted to God’s will. The world’s most reluctant prophet, he went on to complete a mission that he was never happy about.

God sent the storm. God prepared the sea-creature. In one sense, these calamities represented God’s chastening. At the same time, however, the sovereign Lord meant them to change Jonah’s direction. God used both the storm and the leviathan to lead His prophet.

It would be a mistake to think that God only uses hard circumstances to direct us away from disobedience. God repeatedly used affliction to stop the apostle Paul from doing one good thing and start him doing another. Paul was actively ministering in Philippi when God used a beating and imprisonment to send him down the road to Thessalonica. At Thessalonica a riot and the arrest of a colleague induced the brethren to hustle Paul out of town; he went to Berea. More public agitation prompted brothers from Berea to escort Paul into Athens. In Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea, Paul was experiencing effective ministry. He led souls to Christ and planted churches. He left none of these churches willingly. God used harsh events to lead Paul from one good thing to the next.

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