We don’t always get to do the stuff we want to do. I try to teach this lesson to my kids. My three year old son especially has issues with this lesson. He only wants to do the things he wants to do. One of his favorite words is “no.”

Jonah had gone down that road of telling the Creator of the Universe, “no.” He found out what happens when you try to go your own way and it didn’t work out so well. Finally, Jonah follows God’s prompting and goes to Ninevah to preach about God there. We’ve all had one of those, “God, I’ll go wherever you want me to go, but don’t send me to Ninevah” moments, haven’t we?

I had a time in my life when I was leading worship and I had taken a church as far as I could within my skill set in that area. BUT, I resisted God’s prompting to walk away. He had bigger plans to develop a different gift in my life and within the church, but I was too stubborn and scared to walk away from what I knew. I stood in this defiant posture before God for more than 6 months before I finally realized that this defiance was causing crushing stress in my life. It wasn’t until staying in my current situation became more difficult than the prospect of stepping out in the unknown that I was obedient. That’s where Jonah had been. He realized that following God into the unknown was a better prospect than doing it his own way. Good Leaders Follow God’s Prompting.

Honestly, I wasn’t a good leader back then and sometimes I’m still not. Following God where He leads no matter what is hard. I have to learn that lesson everyday. But, because of the struggle that God and I had during that six month period, I can see better my own tendencies to do things my way and hopefully, I adjust course quicker now than before. Hopefully, I will walk more faithfully everyday. Jonah should have learned a valuable lesson from those three days in Ninevah. As we will see tomorrow, He takes a huge step back in his leadership in a time that should have been a win.