The Four Chapters of Jonah

To put the story in short
God sent Jonah to the great city Nineveh to announce His judgement against it because people in nineveh were wicked!
But Jonah got up and went to the opposite direction to get away from God.
Jonah was both foolish and selfish. He mistakenly thought he could run away from God. He ignored God's desires and indulged his own prejudice against the people of Nineveh, Israel's fiercest enemies. He thought he knew better than God when it came to the fate of the Ninevites.
But finally he recognized the power of God when he was swallowed by a whale and remained in its belly for three days. Jonah had the good sense to repent and thank God for his life. He delivered God's message to Nineveh with skill and accuracy. Even though he resented it, he did his duty.
We may think that we can run or hide from God but we're only fooling ourselves. Our role may not be as dramatic as Jonah's, but we have a duty to God to carry it out to the best of our ability.
Only God who's in control of everything, not us. When we choose to disobey him, we should expect bad consequences. From the moment Jonah went his own way, things started to go wrong.
God is the only righteous judge, favoring whom he pleases. God sets the agenda and timetable. Our job is to follow his instructions.
It only takes our obedience to God for our lives to change for better or to disobey God for things to go wrong in life!
Remain blessed!

In Order to Succeed........

Something has to change in us.
This is what happened when Jesus appear to His disciples besides the sea of Galilee, after they had caught nothing for all night. He said to them, "Cast your net on the right hand side of the boat and you will get some" (John 21:6) and the bible says when they obeyed Jesus's voice they couldn't haul in the net because of there were so many fish in it.
Now, with a human mind we could easy dis-agree with what a carpenter(Jesus) would say to a fisherman (Professionals - Simon Peter one of them) who has been fishing for a long time( same way with same attitude - no change even when there's nothing to catch.
The lesson here is that if we want to succeed we have to be obedient to God.
Jesus tested the disciples' obedience so that they could learn that blessings comes from obeying. In our relationship with God, success follows obedience, even when what He is asking us to do seems ridiculous to us. We are not clever than God. We can’t keep doing the same things or go against God's words or do all the wrong things and expect success and good things to happen. Success only comes as we are willing to listen to Jesus and do what he says.

Another lesson is to have a humble heart (humility). As we have learned that the disciples were professional fishermen.  So they had to be humble enough to do what Jesus said rather than trusting what they had personally learned about fishing. It was not just what they had learned through experience but what their parents had taught them. What he was asking them to do did not seem that different from what they had been doing all night.  But when it is time to follow God, we can’t give up and we can’t always depend on our own knowledge. Jesus wants us to have a teachable spirit. I am convinced that having a teachable spirit is one of the most important characteristics that we can have in life. There are some people among us to whom you simply can’t tell them anything, because they think they already know it all. They don’t want any body's advise. They don’t want to hear it and so they never learn.  We have to have humility and a willing spirit.
After king David had committed adultery with Bathsheba, he prayed and said, "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and make me willing to obey you"  (Psalm 51:12) And so we should be willing to listen to Jesus and do what he says. 
One more lesson is that, we meet God when we come to the end of our resources.
The disciples had been fishing all night. They had done all they could do. They knew the best fishing holes. They were experts at their trade they knew how to use their fishing knowledge but they still had no fish. They were at the end of what they could do. Their resources were spent. At the point where we give up is often when God shows up. That is when Jesus appeared to them and asked them to cast their net on their right hand side!
Remain blessed

Fellowship with God is a tremendous privilege.

Apostle Paul wrote this in Philippians 3:10-14

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death...Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus"

In the progression of our Christian life, we are transformed into the likeness of Jesus by the Spirit of God. Sometimes we fall back into the rut of trying to change ourselves, and we end up frustrated. We forget that we can't change ourselves. You see, in the same way we submitted to the Lord in our initial salvation experience, we must daily submit to God. We need to develop a vibrant daily devotional life, He will change us, and develop us. Interestingly enough, we will never get to the point where God stops to develop us. In this life we'll never come to a place where we have finally arrived, where we can retire as Christians. Our true retirement plan God has for us is heaven!
Make time to spend a quality time with your maker.
Remain blessed!