See Jonah 1:1 “Go to the great city of Nineveh...” –
Here is a general rule of thumb when reading the scriptures: note which word(s) are repeated.
For example, consider Jonah 1. Everything in Jonah is super-sized. God did not send Jonah to the City of Nineveh – no, He sent him to the “great” city of Nineveh. Then, verse 4: was there a storm? No, not a storm; there was a “great” wind and a “great” storm. (The same Hebrew word for “great” is being repeated again and again.) Later, the sailors all “feared a great fear.” And, of course, we all know about the “great” fish.
Read Jonah 1 again. Or this 4 page Book of Jonah. What isn’t big?
Great, great, great. The point is this: the repeated message, in this case the word “great,” carries a message from God; it is a theme in God’s Word. So take that word that keeps running circles in your head. It might be “frustration,” “fear,” “worry,” “uncertainty” or “loneliness.” That recurrent word is what the Lord is working on in your heart right now.
Sometimes we wonder what God is saying to us, but I bet you may already know what God is speaking to you about; you may just need the practice to be still enough to connect deeply with it. Then you will realize, that like Jonah, it will not go away over night, but in the struggle God is doing something big.
The journey cannot be rushed; we have no control over that. In fact, it will probably linger until the growth occurs. …the question is how deeply are we paying attention to it?
