Even when God’s will seem unclear to us, we can choose to trust in His goodness and respond with faith.

Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” Then the LORD said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” Jonah 4:9-11

You would think a life-threatening storm and a few days in a fish’s belly would shake some sense into a person. Yet that wasn’t the case with Jonah. The final paragraphs of his story reveal a prophet who technically obeyed God but allowed his heart to remain on the run.

Jonah paid a high price for running from the Lord—he endured many physical, social, and emotional consequences for trying to ignore God’s instructions. But when those events were long past, Jonah still grappled with the spiritual cost of his flight. He lived with anger and a bitterness so strong that he begged God for the relief that death would bring.

As believers, we cannot disobey the Lord without paying a price. Perhaps you have a habit, a desire, or a current course of action that you know is against God’s will. Have you considered the cost? The Lord is holy and righteous, and tolerating sin is incompatible with who He is. What’s more, the price for following our own will is high, but if we obey the Lord, He will bless us (Deuteronomy 5:33). We can trust in His love for His children, even if we don’t understand exactly what He’s calling us to do—or why.