Praying: God, I Disagree With Your Decision

Jonah is one of the most fascinating characters in Scripture—not because of his obedience, but because of his resistance. In this episode of the Press Movement Podcast, we step into Jonah chapter 4 and unpack his raw, emotional prayer after Nineveh repents. Instead of rejoicing, Jonah is angry. He knew God would be merciful, gracious, and slow to anger—and that’s exactly what frustrated him.

Together with guest Ethan White, we dive into the cliffhanger ending of Jonah’s story: a conversation with God that challenges not only Jonah’s motives but also ours. What does it mean to obey God with the wrong heart? Why does God care about why we act, not just what we do? And what happens when our prayers are fueled more by frustration than by faith?

Jonah’s prayer reminds us that God doesn’t just want robotic obedience—He desires transformed hearts that align with His will. Even when our emotions clash with His mercy, God engages us, corrects us, and calls us higher. Join us as we explore this powerful prayer of disagreement and discover how prayer still reaches every single situation.

#PressMovementPodcast #Jonah #Prayer #BibleStudy #Obedience #HeartOverSacrifice #FaithJourney

Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.
 
 And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Press Movement Podcast.
 
 As we're counting down our way out of the Old Testament into the New, we only have a few weeks left in the Old Testament. If you've not listened to all those episodes, I highly suggest you go back and listen, take it all in, especially if you've not listened over the last two weeks, because we are now coming to our third prayer in the book of Jonah. We've covered the prayers that were in Jonah chapter one, and that carried us into talking about chapter two, and then the prayer that was in chapter three.
 
 But Jonah had a lot to pray about because Jonah is quite the character in the Bible. And so, though he only has four chapters attributed to him, he is somebody who needed to pray quite a bit. And we're really glad he did because we get to learn from those prayers today.
 
 And I am here with one of my most favorite young people in the universe, and one of my favorite up-and-coming preachers. And that is the young man that I birthed. If you see me on Facebook saying hashtag Preach E, then you know I'm talking about him.
 
 And with all that hype, I really hope he has something to say about Jonah chapter four. So Ethan, welcome back to the podcast.
 
 ETHAN WHITE: Great to be back. I hope you didn't set them up for disappointment, but I'm always honored to be discussing the Word of God, no less with my mother.
 
 PAULA: And I'm honored to have you. So we'll throw this into your hands. Take us into Jonah chapter four.
 
 ETHAN WHITE: Absolutely. And like you mentioned before, Jonah has four chapters. And as you had mentioned, there's a prayer in chapter one and in chapter three, but it would still be remiss not to at least give a brief overview, a SparkNotes, as we say. Most recently, when you were told to read a book, the professor or teacher would normally ask who all read the book. And many, many students will know what I mean by the SparkNotes definition.
 
 And so Jonah is going, and he's told by God to go to the city of Nineveh and to preach. And it's famously said that he went on the ship and got thrown overboard and a whale swallowed him up, a whale that we know according to Matthew chapter 12, verse 40. And then he goes to the city of Nineveh, cries against it.
 
 And Jonah chapter three talks about how he preached. What happens is they repent. And Jonah tells them that specifically in 40 days, basically the Lord is going to have judgment on you.
 
 They repent. They fast. Not only the people fast, but all the animals. Every single person the Bible talks about from the greatest all the way down had fasted.
 
 And so that's where we find ourselves in Jonah chapter four, verse two. Verse one says, "But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry." This is very important now to the prayer, that we get the emotional state of Jonah.
 
 It says, "And he prayed unto the Lord and said, 'I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country?'" If you read Jonah chapter one, you don't really see this type of pushback. That's why I think it's so interesting in this story. You don't really see him say this prior to, but you just see the by-product of it.
 
 He gets a ship to Tarshish, which, if you check on a map, is so far away from Nineveh that the sentiment is seen here in Jonah chapter four, verse two. It says, "Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repentest thou of the evil." Verse three is important.
 
 It says, "Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." I think that growing up, this was a really, really hard portion of the story for me to understand because Jonah just preached to people, they had repented, and the Lord had forgiven them.
 
 But going back to the recap that I gave prior to this, if you understand one of the people that he's talking to, he's talking to Nineveh, which was a part of the Assyrian Empire, which would be direct enemies to the children of Israel, number one. Number two, God is telling Jonah basically to go and to cry against your biggest enemy. I don't know anybody in the world that would, one, be comfortable enough to go to an enemy city.
 
 If you read Jonah 4:11, it's six score thousand, which is 120,000 people in the city. I don't know any preacher that would be comfortable enough just to say, "You're wrong," maybe nowadays, but Jonah did not have that sentiment. But two, with the understanding that they're his enemies, there would be some form of desire for the Lord to follow through on destroying them.
 
 You see the sentiment now in Jonah 4:2. It wasn't that the Lord destroyed them, or it wasn't that the Lord had burned down everything, but it was the opposite, that the Lord had forgiven them. And Jonah knew prior to that if he had preached this message, that God would be gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and God would repent against evil that he was going to do to Nineveh. And now Jonah's prayer is that he may die. And I think that this is a very important picture, especially in ministry, about when we pray with our emotions. Jonah wasn't a robot. He was a prophet with anger, disappointment, and resentment.
 
 Now we see Jonah here in this state where he'd rather die. And God doesn't immediately—this is why the book of Jonah is so interesting. It is one of those that leaves on a cliffhanger.
 
 It is a great discussion book, because as we progress down, God doesn't snap and kill Jonah. In verse 4, it says, "Then said the Lord, 'Doest thou well to be angry?'" And Jonah—you don't see a response in verse 5. He goes to the east part of the city. He makes a little booth. He sits underneath where there might be a shadow so that he could see what would become of the city. This is some serious level hating. When it says that he would see what would become of the city, he's so angry. He wishes that God might still destroy Nineveh.
 
 But he knows that God is a gracious God, merciful God, and slow to anger. And so God doesn't snap and kill Jonah. Actually, the Bible talks about how in verses 6 through 10, God prepared a gourd. In the night, the gourd would rise up. And the next night, the gourd would get eaten. And so Jonah wakes up and he's really angry. He's really hot and confused. Why is the gourd eaten up? And so the Lord asks him this question in verse 10. It says, "Then said the Lord, 'Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which t...
 
 Verse 11 says, "And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?" I believe that this is an important piece of the story, understanding how wrong the city of Nineveh was. They were in such wrong that the Bible talks about how they couldn't even discern. They couldn't pick up spiritually their left from their right hand. And they had 120,000 people. Imagine a city that size, filled with people blind to spiritual truth. And yet God wanted to spare them.
 
 Why wouldn't God do this? Why wouldn't God treat them like Sodom and Gomorrah? Why wouldn't God destroy them? And so the point I want to circle back with is this is the classic prayer of somebody who's praying but disagrees with God. And so I like that Jonah is such an interesting book because in verse 9 it says, "And God said to Jonah, 'Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?' And he said, 'I do well to be angry, even unto death.'" Jonah was ready to die on this hill of anger.
 
 And it leaves this book with the question: Should God have mercy on Nineveh, like this gourd that he's asking about? And I believe that not only do you see the kindness and the mercy that God has on Nineveh, but you also see the kindness and mercy that God has with Jonah—not only to see him and his emotions, but to actually talk with him and to give him an example. That's the classic example of prayer, not only when you're praying with your emotions, but the response that God will give: God will talk with you, God will show you things, and God will guide you.
 
 Do we know what happened with Jonah? No. Can we say what happened with Jonah? No. "Doest thou well to be angry?" He said yes. "Should I have mercy on Nineveh?" We see no response. But we see that Jonah said in 40 days that God is going to have vengeance.
 
 But we also see that in Matthew 12:40, Jesus talks about how Jonah was in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. And in Acts chapter 1, Jesus comes and shows himself alive for 40 days—but it's not that he's coming with anger and not that he's going to be angry when we're saved. It's that the hearts of men will change, that we'll receive the Holy Ghost, and that through repentance we will see the kind and merciful God. So I believe that the comparison doesn't just stop in the Old Testament, but extends into the New Testament of Jesus Christ.
 
 And so this is a great book, and especially for prayer, to see somebody who has emotions and still goes to God.
 
 PAULA: And it does beg the question, is obedience really all He wants? You know, as a parent, sometimes you'll have a child who you tell to do something, and you can tell in their attitude and in the way they're doing it, they do not want to do this. They've been obedient, but they're still missing the point that will help them beyond the moment.
 
 And I look at this and see God going after Jonah's why—Jonah's motives. Not just Jonah's actions, but his motives. That further leads me to give glory and honor to God in that He doesn't want us to just be robots. He really did not have to take the time to deal with Jonah's positioning after his obedience, but He wants his heart to be right before Him. Now, whether or not Jonah accepted that, like you said, I completely agree that this book is probably the biggest cliffhanger in the Bible, because it just ends with God asking him a question.
 
 Do you get what I'm trying to teach you? And you never get to see that answer, nor do you get to hear from Jonah again. But in it, we still see that God responds to prayer. He responds to us, and He responds to why we do what we do. And He wants our hearts, not just our actions.
 
 With that said, Ethan, what would you leave the people with today?
 
 ETHAN WHITE: I think that the first thing that comes to my mind is in 1 Samuel, where it talks about how obedience is better than sacrifice, and how Jonah had been inside the belly of the whale, and you see his prayers that go before that. But most importantly, that he obeyed and followed God.
 
 I think that at the end of all of our prayer, it should always be, "Lord, what's your will that I might do it?" And so it's very simple. I think that there's no reason to overcomplicate it. Just: How can I please you? Yes. How can I please you with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul? And the best way to learn to do that is by talking to God and learning about His Word, because in both, you'll find Him and you'll know that prayer reaches every single situation.
 
 Join the movement, join the community, like, share, and subscribe to this podcast. Visit us at PressToPray.com or find us on Instagram or Facebook.
 
 Did you know that when you are quiet, your voice is missing to God's ears? I know some of us have prayed and were wondering: How long should I pray about this? Why should I pray if God already knows? How will I know God is answering? And what do I do when I feel like God's not listening? But God is listening for your voice. It's too quiet in this world for the troubles we have. You have to raise your voice, and God wants to hear from you.
 
 *It's Too Quiet*, a book about prayer, is designed to answer your prayer questions and build your faith. Visit PressToPray.com.