Jonah 2:1
“Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly,”
The Book of Jonah is truly about how to get right with God. There are two prevailing stories in this book. The first story is about the Prophet Jonah running from God’s presence because he didn’t want to preach a revival meeting to the people of Nineveh. The second story is about the city of Nineveh that had pushed God to the point where He would destroy the whole city.
Each story has similar results, but both stories are very different. One story is about an individual getting right with God and the other story is about corporate revival. The key to both of these is the individual getting right. When one got right it enabled the other to get right. In other words, you will never have corporate revival until you have individual revival. In these stories we learn several lessons.
First, God will not be merciful towards your sin forever. In both stories they pushed God past His limits. Jonah pushed God past His limit and had to go through the belly of the whale. Nineveh passed God’s limits and was about to face total annihilation.
Christian, you must be careful about pushing God past His limit of grace and mercy. We do not know where the limit is, and that is why you must take care of your sin immediately. Furthermore, God does not have to be merciful or gracious towards you. You can continue to think you can get away with sin, but God always judges sin. This is why it’s imperative to get things right immediately because you never know when you have passed God’s limit of grace and mercy.
Second, you can’t go so deep that God won’t hear your prayer of repentance. In both cases they repented of their sin and God stopped his judgment. Jonah didn’t see God’s mercy until he was in the belly of the whale; whereas, Nineveh repented before they experienced God’s wrath and judgment.
Friend, it doesn’t matter where you are in this story, if you will repent of sin then you can stop God’s judgment and experience His mercy again. If you are in the midst of God’s judgment, don’t wait for three days as Jonah did; instead, get right immediately. If you are at the brink of God’s judgment, then now is the time to repent of your sin so you can once again experience God’s grace and mercy.
Third, individual revival is the catalyst for corporate revival. It’s interesting that Jonah had to get right before Nineveh got right. Then, each individual in Nineveh had to get right before the whole city got right. Revival all starts with you. What are you going to do about your sin? If you continue in your sin, then you are hindering revival from happening to others. There are people who will never get right with God until you get right. Your repentance of your sin will always lead to others getting right. It simply comes down to every Christian repenting of their sin for their nation to see revival. Corporate revival will never happen until we have individual revival.
Friend, are you hindering a corporate revival? I know you may think that you are not that influential, but I’m sure Jonah didn’t believe a whole city would get right either. Don’t be the hindrance to corporate revival. As an individual, you need to determine not to be the one who hinders corporate revival. If you will repent and get right, you never know how many others will get right with God. Look at yourself and not others, and find the areas where you need to get right. It just might be that corporate revival will start with you.