Deliverance belongs to the Lord!
What do you need to be delivered from in your life?
Welcome back to this series on Real Faith. Right now, you could be reading just about anything. Between books, the internet, and streaming, you have more choices today than ever before in human history to give your time and attention, yet you’re reading this blog. Maybe that’s because in a world as busy and stressful as ever, with so many things vying for your attention, you are looking for real, tangible tools for your spiritual journey. This Real Faith series is my attempt at humbly providing some tools I personally find helpful in my spiritual life.
In the last two parts of this series, I looked at how we use the Psalms spiritually. If you haven’t read them, go back and check them out. Today I want to talk about reading other parts of scripture in a similar way.
We often think of reading the Bible as learning its stories, getting to know the characters, perhaps learning some truths about how God worked in history. Have you ever thought about praying the scripture? It was natural to talk in the last few segments of this series about praying the psalms. The psalms are meant to be prayed, after all, and we pray them every week in the Holy Eucharist, so if you go to church, we’ve done it before. But we don’t often think about praying the narrative parts of scripture, the stories. There are actually several ways to pray them, and I am just going to focus on this one today as a tool for your faith journey.
Just like we prayed the psalms for our own context, and the reality of our own lives, we can do so with other scripture as well. Let’s take this moving passage from one of the most powerful stories in scripture, the story of Jonah:
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’ The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
Jonah 1:17-2:10
Regardless of the narrative of this Jonah story, we can apply this passage to our own lives. Can you relate to these prayers at all? “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me.” When thinking of praying over a text like this, we might think, what are the large fishes that swallow me up in my own life? Maybe you are at a time when you feel like death and the grave have overcome you, that floods have surrounded you, that you are being pulled down into the depths of despair.
In the story, God called Jonah to travel to Nineveh as a prophet, preaching repentance. However, Jonah instead decides to travel to a more exotic, far off place, rather than where God called Jonah to go. When that happens, he provides a large fish to swallow him up.
Now we could focus on a lot of things when looking at this passage. If we were talking about exegesis, in other words, really focusing in on the text, we might look at how this is a story of someone who died and came back to life three days later. We might look at the historic and literary context. We might look at how the first Christians saw Jesus allusions in the story. But for us today, we just want to focus on praying this text for our own situations.
What was God delivering Jonah from in this story? Certainly he delivers him from death, as the large fish spits him out after three days and he comes back from the land of the dead to the land of the living to go on to ministry. But I believe God was also delivering Jonah from something else. I think that through the fish, God delivered Jonah from going his own way rather than pursuing his true calling.
Jonah’s true calling was Ninevah, but he tried to fight God and go his own way. How often have we done that?
Read the passage again, this time placing yourself and your own circumstances in your mind as you read. Think about what you need to be delivered from right now in your life. Think about what is holding you back, or dragging you down. Where do you need release? Where do you need deliverance?
But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.
Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’ The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
Jonah 1:17-2:10
Especially if you’re going through a hard time, try praying this passage as a prayer to God for deliverance. If you need to, go back to one of the psalms we prayed in part one or two of this series, and pray those as well. And if you need pastoral care around these or other issues, please comment below, or send me an email at fatherbenjamingildas@gmail.com and we can pray with you and for you, and we can provide pastoral care for your time of need.
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