I’ve heard so many times "practice what you preach" but I think you have to be what you preach. Jonah preached a message of conviction but he also learned a message of compassion in the belly of the whale. He assumed the second chance was for him only and the punishment was for the people of Nineveh. I look at that story and see someone who could have used his blunder to gain a deeper understanding of himself so that he could have a deeper understanding of the people he was preaching to. It’s easy to pass on a message of correction to others when you’re more spiritually mature than them. Unless I get a word for someone suddenly, something that doesn’t make sense in the context of my life, I assume the message is for me also. Jonah had time to sit in the whale, God gave him that time to reflect on his own shortcomings. How much more effective would Jonah have been in preaching to Nineveh had he really understood the message of second chances, had he really understood the compassion that God had on him. Jesus prayed that believers would know that the Father loves us as much as He loves Jesus. Do you understand the compassion God has on you every day? You have no right to condemn others or yourself.
Jonah preached the message to Nineveh out of obedience to God and God got His message across to those people despite the lack of love Jonah had in his heart. Jonah got the message to them but he didn’t get it for himself. How effective we could be if we really sought to know the love of God. To know His love is to know His will on the deepest level. Christ wants us to be like Him, He wants us to be so filled with the love of God that we are one with Him. I think Christians go one of two ways too often; either we look at other people and try to "have a heart for them" and strain to love them, or we look at what God is doing in our lives and become too fixated with battling our own strongholds. I think we need more of both. More self-examination with the mind of Christ helps you to step out of yourself, understand and be filled with the love of God, which motivates you to love others. Ministering to others should seem effortless in the sense of effort the way the world sees it. There is a different kind of exhaustion that comes when you’re really feeding others, it causes you to go right back to God to seek Him for your life which motivates you to go right back out to serve others. A happy little cycle that I hardly have down to a science.