The Prayer of Jonah (Part 1-A)

Praying Through the Bible #101

TEXT: Jonah 2

We are all familiar with Jonah's story. He was the disobedient prophet whom God told to go and preach at Ninevah, but he didn't want to go, and he thought he could run away from God. Jonah got on a ship headed in the opposite direction. The ship was going to Tarshish which was all the way at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea in modern-day Spain. Well, Jonah found that just as God knew how to get to him on land, God knew how to get to him at sea. God stirred up a storm so bad that it frightened the seasoned sailors whom he was sailing with. Jonah knew that God was trying to get his attention specifically, and he told the sailors, "If you throw me into the sea, the storm will stop." So, Jonah gets thrown overboard. The Bible tells us that God prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah, and the last verse of Jonah 1 reads, "And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights."
 
In the next chapter, our passage for tonight, Jonah is talking to God. He is praying. Before, He didn't want to have anything to do with God; he was trying to get away from God. But, now that he finds himself in the belly of a great fish, all alone beneath the surface of the water -- as good as dead to the rest of the world -- he finds himself wanting to talk to God. Some scholars have suggested that by the tense used in this chapter, these are actually Jonah's words after the three days and three nights in the fish's belly...
 
Let's take a look at Jonah's prayer.

1. Notice the painful predicament. 

2. Notice the passionate prayer. 

3. Notice the perfect peace.