Hello, My Name is Jonah: So is Yours

ISBN: 978-1-63357-008-5

 

 

You’ll be stunned by all you’ve missed about Jonah. Watch the eventually compliant complainant from new perspectives. He’s offended by God’s sovereignty, but the Creator remains personally appropriate, patient, and even humorous in guiding this malcontent.

 

 

God uses Jonah’s revolt to make the preacher’s appearance revolting!  In Nineveh, the lips of this pickled prophet speak God’s tough truth, but his skin blabs a soliloquy about God’s rescuing and re-commissioning the rebel. This marinated missionary becomes a sign---a walking billboard, broadcasting the story of God’s amazing grace.

 

 

Gray compares Jonah to: Abraham, Job, Jacob, Joseph, Peter, Paul, and Jesus. You’ll be encouraged by the book’s questions, quotes, illustrations, applications, its poems, and discussions of hymns. You’ll laugh at the wit and wisdom of 20 exasperation statements like Jonah and we have silently muttered.  In Jeff Foxworthy fashion, Gray lists 17 ways “You Might Be a Jonah if . . . .”

 

 

Hebrew scholar Jack Lewis introduces the book. Tom Langley and George Funk tell enlightening missionary stories. This unique book is superb for Bible curriculum, personal study, small groups, book club, and libraries.  Jim McGuiggan, Charles Hodge, Harold Shank, Jim Gardner, Wayne Jackson, and Greg Tidwell are among its contributing authors. LaGard Smith recommends the book for its lifetime of sermon ideas.

 

 

Like Jonah, I got swallowed---swallowed up in this remarkable collection of insights on the prophet whose name everybody knows, but whose remarkable story is as much about us as about Jonah. For preachers, there are sermons for a lifetime!  For each of us, it’s a personal journey to our own “spiritual Ninevehs” from which we cannot return unchanged.

 

F. LaGard Smith:
       Professor of Law; Faulkner University
       Compiler and Narrator of The Daily Bible; Author of Circles of Fellowship

 

I applaud Gray’s bringing biblical materials to contemporary life in an effective way.

 

Clyde Woods:
       Professor of Bible; Freed-Hardman University
       Author of The College Press NIV Commentary: Leviticus-Numbers

 

Jonah’s story conjures up flannel images of a man so swallowed up in pride that he defies God.  Gray strips away the flannel to scrutinize Jonah in a spiritual CAT scan.  But Jonah is not the primary object of her scrutiny!  In Jeff Foxworthy fashion, she alerts us:  “You might be a Jonah if … .”  God’s laser surgery can work in our own souls; but will we allow Him to heal us? 

 

Dale Manor: 
       Professor of Archaeology & Bible; Harding University
       Co-author of Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary

 

Excellent! Gray’s writing is engaging, fun and convicting. Great insights!

 

Dale Jenkins:
       The Jenkins Institute; Author of A Minister’s Heart 

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