God Says Do One Thing, and I Do Something Else
I am Jonah every day. I get this from Jonah 1:1,3: "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah...but Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Every day God speaks to me, but every day I find myself going in the opposite direction from where His word says to go.
But God often does for me what He did for Jonah—prepares a great fish to swallow my waywardness to get me to turn back to following Him. Sometimes God allows me to see the fishes He prepares for others so that I don't have to experience them myself. Such is the case with the true story about Brad Storey of Granada Hills, California.
Brad didn't know the Lord growing up and always did what he wanted to do in his own mind. One day while drinking on Zuma Beach in Malibu, he decided to take his inebriated self for a swim. The lifeguard cautioned him about going out because the riptides were particularly strong that day.
"The lifeguard tried to tell me to be careful out there," Brad said, recounting his attitude towards being told what to do. "I knew I was a strong swimmer, so I shrugged him off. I was listening more to my beer than to him."
As Brad floated on his back, he could hear the lifeguard yelling from the beach. "I floated into a riptide and was being pulled out to sea. I thought, no problem, and started to swim back. But the more I swam towards the beach, the further out to sea the riptide carried me."
The harder Brad swam the more the riptide resisted him. His muscles were fatigued and he could no longer feel the bottom of the ocean. "I tried swimming as hard as I could, and I could see the lifeguard waving me to the side trying to get me to swim out of the riptide. I was so far out that the riptide was at least 100 feet wide and had breakers eight feet tall. The only way I could save myself was to head for the beach."
But that was a fatal mistake. With every stroke the riptide kept pulling Brad out to sea. He was fighting a losing battle and he knew it. His mind begged his muscles not to give up, but it was only a matter of time before reality set in and his fight would be over.
"I began to panic and had to fight to keep on swimming even though I knew there was no way I would make it."
Brad looked towards the beach. Nobody came in the water to help him. The lifeguard just stood there waving him out of the riptide.
"I thought, What in the hell is he doing? I’m about to drown. He should be here saving me. I then saw everyone on the beach jumping up and running towards the water and pointing at me. There were about forty or fifty people there and I thought, What are they doing? They act like they’ve never seen a person drowning before. Don't just stand there, somebody do something."
Brad's mind began the countdown to where all hope was lost. He could no longer resist the riptide and turned his mind towards the open sea. He was done.
Then the impossible happened. The riptide stopped pulling him out to sea and Brad began floating back to shore.
"I heard a loud Shhhhh! sound like a locomotive blowing off steam. I turned around and not twenty feet from me was a 60-foot sperm whale. It was so close I could see its eye looking right at me. I was too exhausted to be terrified and too terrified to just keep floating there looking at this whale looking at me. I made a beeline for the beach."
Brad swam to the beach and collapsed on the sand. He looked back just in time to see the whale return to the sea. It seemed to wait for him to make it back to safety. Brad realized that the crowd wasn’t pointing at him, but at the whale that blocked the riptide that saved his life.
The lifeguard ran over to Brad. "Dude! Do you know what just happened?" Brad nodded completely out of breath. "Dude, I've been on this beach for twelve years and I’ve never seen anything like that. Sperm whales don't ever come this close to shore. You're lucky to be alive."
Lucky to be alive. The enormity of those words echoed in Brad’s brain. He realized that no one else knew he was drowning but the lifeguard, and perhaps a sperm whale sent by God. His head fell into his hands and he began sobbing right there on the beach. He thanked God for saving his life.
God prepared a great fish to save Brad, just as He did Jonah. Like Jonah, God gave Brad this testimony for us to know that although we may be like Jonah every day, He loves us so much that He is willing to prepare a great fish to save us from ourselves.
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