Write down your answer to each of these questions
- What fruit is used to make wine?
- What vegetable makes you cry?
- Which sticky fruit grows on palm trees?
- Which fruit when put into cans comes in either rings or cubes?
- What do people in Asia eat instead of potatoes?
- Which colour in the rainbow comes between red and yellow?
- When onions come in a jar, what liquid are they in?
- What is frozen water called?
- Coke-a-cola, orange squash & tea are all kinds of what?
- What symbol of new life do we give at Easter?
- According to the nursery rhyme, what are little girls made of?
What do all of these answers have in common? Take the first letter from each of your answers and it should give you a message.
But the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah
and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah ch.1 v17
Most people are familiar with the events recorded in the Old Testament book of Jonah, but if you have 10 minutes it doesn’t take very long to read all four chapters of the book.
Jonah’s experience of God’s provision wasn’t a pleasant one. Jonah hadn’t been calling out to God, in fact he was trying to hide from God! Jonah disobedience didn’t cause God to forget about him, but instead God provides Jonah with a saviour – a great fish (a Whale?). Jonah spends three day entombed in the fish, giving him plenty of time to reflect on what the Lord has done for him and repent of his disobedient ways.
Read Jonah 2: 1-9 I would be very surprised if you ever found yourself in a situation where God needed to use a Whale to provide for your needs, but I guess there may be occasions when like Jonah, we find ourselves in distress and call out to the Lord (v.2). No matter how distraught we are, we probably have an idea in our mind as to how God could provide for our needs, and there-in lies a problem, we might be so busy looking for the RNLI boat or helicopter that we miss ‘the great fish’ God has provided to meet our needs.
Jonah’s three days and nights inside the fish wouldn’t have been a comfortable time, and it would have been easy for him to mistake God’s provision for a bad event turning even worse. While Jonah did immediately recognise that the fish was God’s provision for him, we might find ourselves continuing to ask God to provide for us, when in fact he has already answered our prayer, but we simply haven’t recognised what God has provided. Jonah quickly recognised that ‘Salvation comes from the Lord’ (v.9) and then trust in what God had provided.
So, while we often we think of God’s provision as something that is going to be nice and comforting - strawberries and cream; sunshine and flowers; that isn’t always the way in which God provides for our needs. God also provides ‘the cold wind in the winter and the (not always) soft, refreshing rain.’ God sometimes provides for a light to guide the way, and sometimes he asks us to take a step of faith without us knowing what will come next.
What we can rely upon is that God will provide, from Genesis to Revelation we see time and again God providing for people’s needs, and Philippians ch.4: v,19 tells us: “my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
Listen on YouTube: Bob Dylan – Father of night, based on an ancient Jewish prayer
Use these lyrics to inspire prayers of thanks for God faithfulness
Shout for joy and sing your praises to the king,
Lift your voice and let your hallelujahs ring;
Come before his throne to worship and adore,
enter joyfully now the presence of the Lord.
You are my creator, you are my deliverer,
you are my Redeemer, you are Lord, and you are my healer.
You are my provider, you are now my shepherd,
and my guide, Jesus, Lord and King, I worship you.
David Fellingham © 1988 ThankYou Music
We have a guest writer on Friday and we will return to our studies in Ephesians (Chapter 4) on Sunday – Stephen