Get up and pray! Some thoughts about last night's prayer meeting

9 Then God said to Jonah, “What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?”

Jonah said, “Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!”

10-11 God said, “What’s this? How is it that you can change your feelings from pleasure to anger overnight about a mere shade tree that you did nothing to get? You neither planted nor watered it. It grew up one night and died the next night. So, why can’t I likewise change what I feel about Nineveh from anger to pleasure, this big city of more than 120,000 childlike people who don’t yet know right from wrong, to say nothing of all the innocent animals?” Jonah 4:9-11, The Message

Once a month a handful of people from our fellowship gathers on a Sunday evening to wait upon the Lord for an hour. While anyone can come to these gatherings it's never more than a handful and why that is I couldn't say (although I have my opinions). The format is simple. We sit quietly by ourselves for the first half hour or so and seek to listen to his voice. Then during the second half hour we gather in “the couch corner” of the sanctuary and share what verse of Scripture, images, or impressions that have come to mind while we have quietly sat before the Lord. Often a certain theme emerges in the sharing and then we seek to pray “into” that theme together. It's not a perfect science but frequently we feel “led” by the Spirit to pray in a certain manner.

Last night as I knelt at the altar Jonah 4:9-11 came directly to mind. Jonah, of course, is the reluctant prophet. He's the guy who didn't want to go to Nineveh and warn them of the judgment that was coming. After some divine arm-twisting that occurs in the belly of a whale he grudgingly obeys God's command. Peeved at having to deliver God's warning to one of the enemies of his nation, he marches into the main square of Nineveh and like Luther nailing his 95 Theses upon the door of the Wittenburg Church declares: “In forty days Nineveh will be smashed” (3:4, Msg). That's it or at least all that Jonah said that he shared with these uncircumcised pagans. He then marches out of town and sits on a hill and waits for the fire to fall.

But these Ninevehites do something surprising. They don't scorn or mock Jonah. They listen to him. They get serious with God. They repent for their sins. They are, as we like to say now, all in.

“The people of Nineveh listened, and trusted God. They proclaimed a citywide fast and dressed in burlap to show their repentance. Everyone did it—rich and poor, famous and obscure, leaders and followers.” (3:5)

Well, this is awkward

Their response is so complete and so sincere that God changes his mind. “On second thought, I'm not going destroy their city” (3:10)

You would think that this kind of response is enough to summon a chorus of Hallelujahs from Jonah. Instead by the end of his short story he is sitting in a sulk mad at God for changing his mind. In fact, we learn why he's so peeved is that he anticipated such a response. He knows enough of God's heart to know that the only reason Yahweh would send him there was so that these people could get another chance.

4 1-2 Jonah was furious. He lost his temper. He yelled at God, “God! I knew it—when I was back home, I knew this was going to happen! That’s why I ran off to Tarshish! I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness!”

"Dang."

When the story began God is angry with Nineveh for its practice and reputation for wickedness. Like Marvel's Thing Yahweh says to anyone who may be listening, “It's clobberin' time.” But at the end of the story, the people of Nineveh have repented in sackcloth and ashes and now God is angry with his prophet who should know better. If, as he said, he knew that God was “sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love, and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a program of forgiveness” why should he be stewing over the salvation of 120,000 people who spiritually speaking don't know what they don't know?

After awhile another verse came to mind. Jesus used parables, hyperbole, dialogue, Scripture references to persuade his fellow Jewish countrymen to believe what he was telling them. He always seems in control of the conversation, engaged but not overly argumentative. But in Matthew 23 the water flows over the dam. Jesus' frustration with the obstinacy of the religious establishment leads him to pronounce seven “woes” upon them. I certainly don't believe he “lost it” with them but I'm sure he didn't say these things with a smile. At the end of his litany he says this,

“Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me.” (23:37-38, Msg).

He should look angrier

In Jonah's story, an entire city of spiritually ignorant people humble themselves because of a one-sentence sermon delivered by a guy who didn't even want to be there. At this moment, Jesus speaks to the spiritual gatekeepers of his nation expressing God's great heart to draw them to himself as a hen gathers her chicks but they are tone-deaf to his plea. “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. We're not listening. No thank you. We don't want any.” In his next breath he pronounces the judgment that will visit them within a generation for their hardheartedness (v. 39).

It occurred to me that both verses reveal that when it comes to spiritually dead or deaf people God's arms are wide open. He is, as Jonah testified to, “sheer grace and mercy”. He is that mother hen who wants nothing more to draw her chicks back under the protection of her wing. The people who don't know a thing – who “don't know right from wrong” (Jonah 4:11) – listen and respond. The people who know it all – who certainly cannot claim spiritual ignorance – act as if they are entitled to God's deliverance when, in fact, they are headed to a rendezvous with destiny.

Randy is one of our elders at Refuge and a very thoughtful man. He reads a lot and ponders the ways of God. His contribution to our discussion was this passage from Romans 13

“Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.”

“But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!” (Romans 3:8-14, The Message)

This text, in my mind, was the exclamation point that the Holy Spirit was placing upon our hearts last night. Pray! We must pray and intercede for our neighbors, the city we call home, the state and country we live in, the world we share with so many others. We can't tell ourselves that “God's gonna do whatever he's gonna do” when in fact he partners with us to stand before him (ala Abraham in Genesis 18) and plead for those we care about – and for those we don't care about but should. To not respond to the Holy Spirit's voice is to be guilty of wasting time and laying around when we should be dressing ourselves “in Christ and be up and about.”

And so we did pray together and will continue to do so because somehow or another our prayers matter to "the Judge of all the earth" (Gen 18) and he waits for us to call on him.