I’ve been at a church conference all weekend and today’s sermon was such amazing food for thought.  The preacher spoke about Jonah’s journey when he was running away from God’s Will. As they set out, these seasoned sailors are struck by a surprise storm. The people on the boat start tossing their goods while sleeping away in the hold is the source of their storm. They finally wake Jonah up from his sleep and he realizes that he is the cause of the storm and tells them to throw him off the ship. As soon as they do, the storm calms.

As the preacher said, sometimes we allow things into our life that causes our storms. In that time of storm what do we do? We’ll throw things off the boat that are precious cargo- purity, hope, faith, and more.  The whole time, we don’t throw the one thing causing us the storm because it looks innocent, it seems so good. Jonah was a prophet. He was a good man quietly sleeping in the hold.  We allow things into our life where we don’t even recognize it’s presence in our life. It causes us storms. It gets us to throw the good things in our life out our boat because we don’t even remember it’s in our life anymore.

Is there anything you need to kick out of your life? Are there any Jonahs who must go?  Tonight in family prayer we asked God to help us recognize and then kick out the Jonahs in our lives.  Whether it be friends, TV, movies, or more- whatever is stopping us from holding on to the good things of God in our life, we MUST kick it out of our lives!

Jesus,

Help us lose the things from our lives that we need to. Help us recognize what things are causing storms to stay in our lives.  Help us shed ourselves of the storm causers. Thank You God for being so good to us. Thank You God for Your mercy and grace.

Rebekah M.