When God told Jonah to go and preach to Nineveh, Jonah went down to the port, found a ship heading the opposite way and paid his fare.
“But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.” (Jonah 1:3, NKJV)
The verse says twice that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD. This was outright refusal of a direct assignment. Yet after the storm, the great fish and three days of desperate prayer, Jonah ended up in Nineveh preaching the message God had given him, and the whole city repented (Jonah 3:5-10). God’s call outlasted Jonah’s attempt to sail away from it.
Jonah is not the only reluctant servant in Scripture.
Moses Asked God to Send Someone Else
At the burning bush, Moses met God’s call with one objection after another. His first was “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11, NKJV). God answered him. Then Moses worried that the people would not believe him, and God gave him signs (Exodus 4:1-9). Then he protested that he was slow of speech (Exodus 4:10), and God promised to be with his mouth. Finally Moses said what he had meant all along:
“But he said, ‘O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send.'” (Exodus 4:13, NKJV)
God was angry with him (Exodus 4:14), but He did not withdraw the call. He gave Moses Aaron as a helper. The greatest deliverance in the Old Testament was led by a man who very nearly talked God into choosing somebody else.
Gideon Asked for Proof, Twice
Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from raiders when the angel greeted him: “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!” (Judges 6:12, NKJV). Gideon replied with a complaint, then pointed out how insignificant his family was (Judges 6:13, 15), and later asked God for two signs with a fleece of wool, first wet while the ground stayed dry, then dry while the ground was wet (Judges 6:36-40). God granted both without rebuke. The man remembered as one of Israel’s judges began by asking for proof from a hiding place.
A Reluctant Writer
The story of one man shows the same pattern. As a boy he loved reading, and while other children spent their pocket money on sweets, roasted corn or an hour on a hired bicycle, he saved his for comics and then for books. From his first salary onwards, he set aside part of every pay packet for books, until his collection ran into thousands and spilled from the shelves onto the floor and into boxes. He read history and comparative religion, and above all he studied the Bible with the same seriousness, wanting to understand it rather than just absorb it.
When the call to ministry came, he resisted it for years. It was not rebellion so much as a sense that he lacked the background such a calling seemed to need. It took a visiting minister from overseas, with one well-chosen analogy, to break through his hesitation.
Even then, a second reluctance remained. His wife, and many who had sat under his teaching, kept urging him to write down what he shared so freely in conversation and from the pulpit. For decades he waved the idea away, convinced he lacked the credentials of a “real” author. Only in his late fifties, after losing his wife, the person who had encouraged him longest and most patiently, did he begin to write in earnest. The response from readers convinced him that he should have listened to her years earlier. He has written several books since, and he speaks of the work as a stewardship of a gift he was given long before he acknowledged it.
Reluctance Does Not Disqualify
It is tempting to think God prefers confident volunteers and puts up with the reluctant as a last resort. Paul suggests otherwise:
“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27, NKJV)
Nobody watching Moses protest at the bush, Gideon ask for a second sign or Jonah board a ship for Tarshish would have predicted an exodus, a victory or a city’s repentance. The gap between their reluctant beginnings and what followed makes it plain that the work was God’s.
If you have been holding back from something you sense God has asked of you, because you feel unqualified or unready, take one small step towards it this week. God has a long record of working through people who were slow to say yes.
I have written more about stewarding what God places in our hands, however long we take to pick it up, in my book Entrusted, which you can read online or download free.
