“Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” The LORD said, “Do you have a good reason to be angry?”

—Jonah 4:3-4

This morning we’re back in Jonah! Y’all know I’ve been enjoying this study, but today’s lesson hit me square on the chin, so this morning is as much a confession of my struggles as a look at what we can learn from Jonah.

Here’s where we are in Jonah’s story. Jonah has already run from God and earned himself a one-way first-class belly-of-the-fish trip back in the right direction. When he found himself back on land, he chose to follow God’s instructions and go prophecy to Nineveh.

To his great disappointment, the people of Nineveh turned from their sins and repented, and God chose to spare them. At the beginning of chapter four, Jonah threw a fit worthy of a two-year-old because God chose to be merciful to Nineveh and revealed that he ran away in the first place because he expected God to do this.

Then we come to verses three and four and find this exchange. This is the part that screams terrible-twos-tantrum to me. Jonah literally tells God that he would rather die than live in a world where God has mercy on people he doesn’t like. Granted the evil of Nineveh ran deep enough that it’s easy to see why God’s people didn’t like them, but Jonah is acting like he is qualified to judge whether or not Nineveh should receive mercy.

Here’s what gets me. Verse two is where we learn that God having mercy on the Ninevites is what sent him running in the wrong direction in the first place. The secret, underlying sin was what caused all the problems to begin with and it doesn’t even come to the surface until the end of the book.

By the grace of God, Jonah is allowed to complete the mission God gave him, but Jonah misses out on so much because of his sinful attitude. Jonah now knows first-hand how wonderful it is to receive mercy from God, but instead of celebrating the mercy of God like he did in chapter two, he asks for death.

This is so convicting for me because I feel like God is walking me through a season of revealing my own heart to me. For some time He’s been showing me where I’ve set up boundaries in my heart against steps He may want me to take and attitudes I’m holding onto that, like Jonah, make me more likely to be unfaithful in my calling.

Just like Jonah, I’ve been guilty of listening to fear instead of God’s instructions. Just like Jonah, I’ve been guilty of following God’s instructions while harboring the same kind of I’m-gonna-pout-about-this attitude.

The result for Jonah was that he almost lost his life, potentially taking down many other people with him, and in the end, he missed out on enjoying the blessing he was given by being able to be used by God to bring people to repentance. 

I don’t know about you, but that scares me. According to Jonah’s example, exempt ourselves from God’s gifts, and it’s not like there’s a ten-step process with lots of paperwork to go through. We can cause ourselves to miss out on God’s blessing in our lives through our attitude or mindset, through focusing on the things we don’t like about our calling or situation instead of focusing on God and what He’s doing. That’s all it takes.

While God has specifically been showing me my poor attitude toward my call to teach and my call to write, it makes me wonder where else this tendency to miss God’s blessing because of our attitude or mindset might be found. Our friendships? Our marriages? Our parenting? Our work? This week, let’s ask God to reveal where our attitude is preventing us from receiving the blessing and abundant life He desires for us.