Jasmyne as Jonah

As promised, I told you that I would be upfront and honest about my life as a Christian. Too many times people believe that we have it all together because we’re Christians. That is not the case. For the longest, I wanted to make sure my flaws were hidden. If people knew I messed up, I would no longer be a “good Christian”. That’s the mindset I was in. AND ITS WRONG. I want you to see where I fall short. I want you to see that God’s grace is there to catch me. I want you to see the goodness of God. And if I hide my mess ups, I’m setting an unrealistic expectation for others who may be watching. 

Disclaimer: I’m not a perfect person. I only serve a perfect God. A God who meets me where I am and works with me.

Today, I was Jonah. Maybe I didn’t run to another country or get swallowed by a whale, but I didn’t want to listen to God. 

Throughout the years, I never understood Jonah. He was angry at God for showing the same mercy and grace to the people of Nineveh as God showed him. And us even. It wasn’t until this past week that I had to deal with my own people of Nineveh. 

If you’re not familiar with the story of Jonah, allow me to sum it up for you. In the Bible, Nineveh was the enemy of the Israelites. God called to the prophet one day, telling him that he would go to Nineveh to preach to their people. Because God is so good, He wanted to give the people of Nineveh a chance to get their act together, destroying them otherwise. Jonah refused to go preach to the people. He loaded on a ship to Tarshish to escape God. During that ride, it begins to storm. Jonah knew it was because of his own actions, so he let the crewmates throw him overboard. Jonah got swallowed and spent three days and three nights in the belly of a whale. After praying and pleading with the Lord, the whale spits Jonah back up. Jonah then goes to Nineveh to warn the people to fix their ways or God would destroy them within 40 days. Well, like any sane person, they fixed their wicked ways. AND JONAH GOT MAD AT GOD. 

Do you ever just wake up with someone’s name on your heart? That’s how it started for me. Before waking, I saw her name clearly in my mind. For the sake of her privacy, we’ll call her Nineveh. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. I had hardened my heart towards her, unintentionally. We weren’t enemies though. We were actually friends for a while. We even hung out in some of the same crowds. But in a past relationship, my ex let her get between us. When I expressed my concern, he would always push it off. So, when my relationship started to fail, instead of accepting that it wasn’t what God had for me, I wanted to blame it on Nineveh. Over a year later, I thought I had gotten over it. I guess I hadn’t. I knew at 6 am that morning that I needed to talk to her. It just felt so heavy. I dragged my feet. It felt like I was swallowing rocks. I absolutely did NOT want to do this. And I questioned God.

“Are you sure, God?” 

“God, maybe you can find someone else, someone better to take this situation.”

“Well, if I have to do it, can it just wait?”

But, I did it. I bit the bullet and I texted Nineveh. Let me just tell you. Pride is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s like all of the rocks I felt like swallowing finally hit my stomach as I typed the message up to her. And after I sent it.. After I sent it, the weight of the world was lifted off of my shoulders. I could breathe again. I don’t tell you this so that you’ll applaud me or tell me how proud you are. I don’t want to hear that I was “the bigger person”. I tell you this so that you know it’s completely normal to feel this way from time to time. If Jonah HADN’T preached to Nineveh, God was going to destroy them. For me, I don’t know what my Nineveh was going through. I don’t know what was at stake in her life. But I didn’t want to show her the grace that God has shown me. God chose me to speak with her for a reason. A reason that I may never know. That’s okay. Because, I did it. Even though I questioned God. Even though I wanted Him to have someone else preach to her. Even though I felt unqualified. God still chose me. So, today, I was Jonah. Sometimes we don’t even realize that our hearts have been hardened towards someone until God tells us to step out on a limb for them. It’s scary. It’s uncomfortable. But God is good and He loves us. He wouldn’t put us through something if He didn’t think it would make us better. The growing pains hurt, but the outcome is worth it.

In today’s society, people often use the excuse of the Bible being outdated as to why they don’t follow Christianity. “Things like that don’t happen in today’s society.” And while we are more technologically advanced now, our thinking patterns have significantly decreased. Whether you see the Bible as the truth it is or a made-up story, several of the lessons are still applicable to our everyday lives. Because I, a 21 year old young woman in the twenty-first century, was Jonah from the Biblical times BC.