Jonah 2:1-10
Jonah’s Prayer and God’s Answer
1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish’s belly.
2 And he said:
“I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction,
And He answered me.
“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
And You heard my voice.
3 For You cast me into the deep,
Into the heart of the seas,
And the floods surrounded me;
All Your billows and Your waves passed over me.
4 Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight;
Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’
5 The waters surrounded me, even to my soul;
The deep closed around me;
Weeds were wrapped around my head.
6 I went down to the moorings of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever;
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord, my God.
7 “When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple.
8 “Those who regard worthless idols
Forsake their own Mercy.
9 But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.”
10 So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Context
- How did Jonah get this low?
- What’s it like to be inside a big fish? (Jonah 1:3, 10, Numbers 32:33, Lamentations 3:7, Galatians 6:7, 8)
- What was so important about his prayer? (Psalm 18:5, 6, 30:3, 69:1, 2, 1 Peter 5:6, 7, 1 John 1:9)
- What kind of prayer does God hear & answer? (Psalm 34:4-6, 102:17, Proverbs 15:9, Luke 18:13, James 5:16)
- How important is the phrase ‘salvation is of the Lord?’
- Why is Thanksgiving key to his prayer? (Psalm 27:1, 92:1, 2, 100:4, Acts 4:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Philippians 4:6, 7)
Testimony Time
- How has God heard you from your deepest pit? (Psalm 34:18, 40:1, 2, 46:1-5, 10)
- What ‘whale’ of God brought you back to the ‘will’ of God and to the ‘well’ of Grace? (Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:1-5, James 4:6-10)
