God Won’t Give Up On You

(Jonah’s Prayer)

Introduction – A Strange Place to Pray

The Bible contains some very peculiar verses, doesn’t it?

And I must say, the story we’re looking at today begins and ends with two of the strangest.

Jonah 2:1 — “From inside the fish Jonah prayed.”

Jonah 2:10 — “And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”

Now that’s a situation you don’t see every day.

You talk about a prayer closet — Jonah’s came with gills!

But make no mistake: it was in that suffocating, seaweed-wrapped belly that Jonah learned the lesson every one of us must learn — that God doesn’t give up easily.

Sometimes God has to strip everything away just to get our attention.

And sometimes, like Jonah, He has to take us so far down that the only way to look is up.

So let’s open that old prophet’s journal, look at his prayer, and see what it says about salvation — not just Jonah’s, not just Nineveh’s, but yours and mine too.

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Part 1 — The Descent of Jonah

Before Jonah prayed, he ran.

Before he cried out, he checked out.

Jonah was the prophet who didn’t want to preach.

God said, “Go to Nineveh.” Jonah said, “No thanks, I’ll head for Tarshish.”

And down he went — down to Joppa, down to the ship, down below deck, and finally down into the depths of the sea.

That’s what disobedience does.

It always takes you downhill.

Maybe you know what that feels like.

You didn’t wake up one day planning to drift from God, but somehow you did.

You used to hear His voice clearly — now it’s muffled.

You used to run to Him; now you’re running from Him.

And one day, you wake up in the belly of your own storm wondering, “How did I get here?”

Jonah could have blamed the sailors, or the storm, or even the sea —

but listen to his words in verse 3:

“You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas… all Your waves and breakers swept over me.”

Jonah recognizes that it’s God’s hand bringing him to this low place.

And that’s the first hard truth about grace — sometimes God’s love will let you fall until you finally call.

David once said in Psalm 51, “Let the bones You have crushed rejoice.”

That’s strange language — crushed bones rejoicing —

but sometimes the pressure that breaks you is the same pressure that saves you.

You see, Jonah had given up on God, but God had not given up on Jonah.

He pursued him through wind, storm, and whale.

And maybe God’s been pursuing you too — through a disappointment, a loss, a closed door — not to destroy you, but to wake you up.

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Part 2 — The Depth of Grace

Picture Jonah for a moment:

the darkness, the stink, the sound of that creature’s heart beating beside him — it’s like being buried alive.

But there, at his lowest, Jonah finally prays.

He says, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered You, Lord, and my prayer rose to You, to Your holy temple.” (v.7)

That’s the turning point.

When everything else is stripped away, Jonah remembers God.

It’s amazing how clear things become when there’s nowhere left to run.

I’ve watched people in the hospital — I mean really sick, can’t lift their head from the pillow — pray more sincerely in thirty seconds than in thirty years of routine.

When you hit rock bottom, you finally discover that God is the rock.

But notice this: Jonah doesn’t pray before the fish; he prays inside it.

Sometimes God’s rescue doesn’t look like a rescue at first.

The fish was dark, confining, miserable — but it was mercy.

God could’ve let Jonah drown, but He sent a fish instead of a funeral.

That’s grace.

And I wonder how many of us have misjudged God’s rescue because it didn’t come wrapped the way we wanted.

You lost the job — and thought it was disaster, but it was deliverance.

The relationship ended — and you thought it was rejection, but it was redirection.

Sometimes grace has teeth, and it swallows you whole just to spit you out alive.

Jonah realizes this, and his prayer turns from panic to praise:

“But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to You. What I have vowed I will make good.” (v.9)

That’s repentance in action.

When grace finds you, it changes you.

When God pulls you out of the water, you don’t climb back on the boat of rebellion.

Jonah couldn’t save himself — the sea was too deep, the current too strong — but God provided a way.

And that’s the pattern of salvation through all of Scripture: