“A Fierce Anger” (Jonah 4:1) (PT-1)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/10/2025 11:00 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                  Focus:  “A Fierce Anger”

Bible Reading and Meditation                                                                     Reference: Jonah 4:1

            Message of the verse:  “But this was a great evil to Jonah, and he became angry.”

            I would suppose that this is the part of the story of Jonah’s book that I remember the most, his anger over people being saved, and this is the part of the story that I truly don’t understand.  I really thought that this would be a short SD, doing it in one day but my thoughts have gone to a man named Josh McDowell, and the story of his early life which was turned into a movie.  You see the early story of Josh McDowell, to me anyway, has similarities to the story of Jonah, the part that we will be looking at in the 4^th chapter of Jonah, and it is a story of not being able to forgive others in difficult circumstances.  I remember going to a Moody Bible Institute’s “Founders Week” which always takes place in the months of either late January, or early February, as it is centered around Moody’s birthday.  At any rate I remember that Josh McDowell had been ministering in Russia, but he flew to Chicago in order to speak at “Founders Week.”  I did not know his story of when he was younger at the time, but I truly enjoyed some of the books that he wrote, as he was a man on fire for the Gospel

            Let’s get back to the story of his early life where he grew up and what happened to him while he was young, a story that was actually made into a movie “Undaunted; The early of Josh McDowell,” a story that I did not really know about when I was reading some of his books and saw him at “Moody’s Founder Week.”  In the DVD folder of his story there is a booklet entitled “my journey…from skepticism to faith,” and I have not read it but I did see the movie a number of times as we have the DVD.

            This story kind of reminds me of Jonah is a way, although I am not sure why it was that Jonah seemed to hate the Gentiles as much as he did.  Perhaps it was because of what the Ninevites had done, as they were a very fierce nation doing things to people after they conquered them that was despicable. 

            A brief story of Josh McDowell when he was young was that he grew up in a household that was, to be frank, was terrible in many ways.  His mother was very much overweight, and his father was a drunk, and there was a man helping the family that would sexual abuse Josh when he was young.  The only thing it seems that his mother wanted was to see Josh graduate from High School.  Because of his drunken father he would be tied up in the barn when he became drunk so no one could see him in his drunken condition.  After he graduated from High School his mother died, and it seemed that this was what she was living for, to see him graduate. 

            I have to admit that I do not know how he came to know the Lord, what the circumstances were that God used to bring him to Christ, but he did become a believer.  He finally dealt with the man who was abusing him by actually threatening him.  Now here is the part of the story that is like Jonah’s story.  Josh’s father became a believer and this actually upset Josh because of what he had done to his mother, who as far as it is known, was not a believer.  Josh really had a difficult time when his father, “the drunk” became a believer and his mother had not.  Sounds something like Jonah being so upset that God saved the Ninevites!

            Again the movie is called “Undaunted, The early life of Josh McDowell,” and if you get a chance to see it please do so.  Here is the story that AI has on this movie:

 Undaunted

“Is the story of Josh McDowell's traumatic childhood, marked by an alcoholic father and a farmhand's abuse, and his subsequent journey from an atheist to a Christian evangelist. The book and film detail his search to disprove Christianity, which instead led him to find overwhelming evidence for the faith after challenging his own disbelief and facing his past through faith in God.”

            Looks like I will do my next morning SD on the verse above, but I thought this was interesting and hope all who read it will like it, and perhaps search the internet for his movie and also some other things about him and his very difficult early childhood.

11/10/2025 12:20 PM