Thoughts from Camp - Day 14 - Jonah

"Seek God until He breaks your heart, and then preach from the bottom of your broken heart." This 

is what I often say to those I mentor. So with seven weeks of speaking, writing devotions and heading up ministry at a summer camp, I anticipate being challenged, stretched and broken as the weeks roll on. Each day I will post some lessons to be learned from the devotions and messages we have studied as a camp.

I stared down at my Bible and blinked again. Nope. That was it. Four verses. Half the story of Jonah, as it had been told to me, was contained within the first four measly verses. Now, to be fair, Jonah isn't a very big book. But I still feel like I have spent more time in my life than necessary hearing that flimsy narrative retold. But here's the part that gets me is that the rest of the book is hardly touched. I don't think I've ever heard someone tell me any of the details in chapter 2.

So when I told the story today, I told the whole story. The whole book. Not just the narrative parts. And more than that, I encouraged them to go back to their cabins and read it for themselves in case I missed something. But here's what I'm wondering and learning today - why do we reduce the Bible down to historical narrative. The Bible contains much history, true, but as a book, the Bible tells only one story. If the details you are highlighting to your Sunday School class aren't helping to grow them in their understanding of the redemption narrative, why are you teaching them? Leave cute children stories for Kindergarten - let the church be for the sanctification  of the saints.

Read your Bibles, teachers. Don't repeat the words of teachers before you who haven't read their Bibles. Because we are so often missing so many fantastic, Messianic, gospel-centred messages. The story of Jonah only matters because it is a shadow of another prophet who would one day descend to a grave for three days and emerge preaching repentance. So maybe spend less time worrying about the excitement of a ship caught in a storm and spend more time noting the fact that Jonah's disobedience and desire to condemn the world is a perfect antitype of his repentance-preaching counterpart, who loved the Gentiles Jonah didn't want to go to.