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“And Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly” (Jonah 2:1).
Jonah had to be put in a very serious position before he felt the need to pray. When the storm was going on and the sailors were praying to their false gods, Jonah was sleeping. Even when the captain of the ship woke up Jonah and urged him to pray to his God, there is no record that he did so. No, Jonah was running away from the Lord, and was not in any spiritual condition to pray. Even when Jonah told the sailors to throw him into the sea, and he was expecting to be drowned, he did not pray.
But then, when he found himself in the fish’s belly, with no hope of rescue except from the Lord, he finally prayed. It would have been an awful place to be in, but at last Jonah was restored in his soul, and prayed.
Jonah was no different from you and me, for we too can get away from the Lord, and want our own way. The Lord may have to put us in a very hard situation, to bring us back to Him. But it is worth it, for Jonah not only learned his lesson, but wrote the book of Jonah so that we could learn the lesson from his experiences.
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