God who turns His will
“When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).
We often feel guilty when our sins are exposed through the Word of God. And often we are disappointed and discouraged by ourselves. And this disappointment and discouragement can lead us to spiritual depression. But here is a very scary strategy of Satan. It is that Satan makes us to keep on looking at ourselves (our sins, our guilt and so on) and not allowing us to look at Jesus Christ who died of the cross to forgive our sins. Satan never lets us look at Jesus and what He has done on the cross but making us concentrate on what we didn’t do that we supposed to do and what we did that we not supposed to do. As a result, Satan is making us to live in guilt by our sin. Satan doesn’t allow us to enjoy freedom from our sins, but rather to provoke the sinful instincts of the old nature to make us continue to commit the same sin again and again. What should we do? First, we must confess our sins. When God makes us realize our sins through His holy Word, we must also acknowledge our sin as what God said to be sin. When God speaks to us through the Word of God, 'It is sin,' then we should say, 'Yes, Lord. I agree’. We must acknowledge our sin to God. But the problem is that we confess our sins and then commit the same sins again. Like a dong that returns to its vomit (Prov. 26:11), there are many times when we commit the same sins again and again. What is the problem? The problem is that we don’t hate the sin we have committed as God hates the sin. The reason is that we don’t fear God. If we fear God, we must hate sin (8:13). But our old nature loves sin instead of hating it. That’s why we continue to commit the sin. What must we do? We must repent our sins. We shouldn’t end in confessing our sins, but we must truly repent our sins. What is true repentance? True repentance is to turn away from the sinful way we are walking and walking toward the way of the Lord.
In Jonah 3:10, we can see the people of Nineveh who are truly repentant. When the Ninevites heard the word “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown” through the prophet Jonah (v. 4) the people of Nineveh believed in God, they called a fast and put sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them (v. 5). “When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes” (v. 6). And the king “issued a proclamation and it said, "In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands” (vv. 7-8). They did so because they expected that God would turn His will and that His wrath would not destroy them (v. 9). In the end, when King Nineveh and the people truly repented of their sins and turned away from their evil ways, God looked upon their true repentance and turned His will to bring calamity on them. And God didn’t bring calamity on them (v. 10). Why did God turn His will? The reason is that King Nineveh and the people of Nineveh had turned away from their way of sin.
I personally remember two things when I think about why I cannot turn away from the path of sin. First, I was a little afraid when I thought of God, who did not discipline me when I didn’t truly repent my sins but was in silence. Although I supposed to fear God more, I wasn’t and this means that I didn’t fear God enough not to commit sins against Him. I was little afraid when I thought of God because I knew that I was willing to accept God's discipline. But why doesn’t God discipline me even though I have been continued to commit the same sin? The reason is that God is waiting for me to truly repent and return to Him (Rom. 2:4). Another thought is that when I didn’t repent my sins, there was a time when my harden heart would melt because of the grace of God rather than the discipline of God. No matter how much I think, only things that I did was committing sins against God. But what I have experienced was that God had given me greater love than to strike a rod of discipline, so that my heart was melt and turn away from sins and turn to God. For example, I don’t recall having discipline from my father that much. In my memory, I remember being disciplined by my father twice when I was in junior high school. Of course, when I was disciplined by my father, it was painful. So I cried and asked my father for forgiveness. But when I was in high school and wandering and sinning, my father didn’t discipline me. Rather, my father was kneeling down in the living room and was praying to God as I entered the house around 3:00 am. But now when I think about those days, I think it was my father’s love and God’s grace through my father that brought me back to the Lord instead of my father’s discipline. His love and grace struck my conscience and made me to turn away from sin and turn to God. It was the my father’s knees of prayer, rather than the stick of my father's discipline, that had made me turn away from sins and turn to the Lord.
When our Heavenly Father makes us to turn away from our sins, he not only uses the stick of discipline but also gives us His love and grace even more. Why does God do that? The reason is because God wants us to turn away from the way of sin. When king of Nineveh and his people turned away from the wicked way of sin, God saw them turning and turned His will concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. When we turn away from our sinful path, God will turn the will of disaster toward us. I hope and pray that all of us will experience God's grace, love, mercy, and compassion as God turns His will of disciplining us because we truly repented our sins.