News Health: What’s your Nineveh?

Happy Sunday,

“That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster.”

Jonah 4:2

What is your Nineveh?

I heard an excellent—and convicting—sermon on Jonah last week (shoutout pastor James Pusey).

Quick refresher: God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and announce that it will be destroyed in 40 days because of the evil they are committing. Jonah tries to sail away from God (but is delivered back to shore via a “big fish” stomach), and eventually, he reluctantly delivers the message to Nineveh.

Then, two (more) surprising things happen:

1. Nineveh repents, causing God to call off the destruction

2. This makes Jonah really upset

In chapter 4 verse 2 (read above), Jonah angrily prays that he had expected God to save Nineveh… and that was “why I fled.” Jonah didn’t want Nineveh to be saved. He wanted it to be destroyed. 

I want to defend Jonah, even though he’s wrong (you can tell because he’s arguing with God). Nineveh was an evil place known for evil things, and God Himself called for its destruction. Jonah was, in many ways, simply hating what God hated. That’s a good thing.

The problem was… Jonah failed to love who God loved.

God hated the evil of Nineveh, but loved the people. He was willing to destroy Nineveh, but He wanted to see the people of Nineveh turn away from evil.

I’m a lot like Jonah. There are lots of things I see in the world/news that are evil, and my first instinct is to want to see them destroyed. I want evil people to fail (preferably publicly, where I can watch). Unfortunately for me… God doesn’t. He doesn’t want to see the evil people destroyed; he wants to see them restored.

What is your Nineveh? What (or who) are you hoping will be destroyed, that you should actually be praying will be restored?


Jason Woodruff

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