Dear Friends,
How does one know what one should do? Some people follow a feeling; others what they think is a clue from providence; life is so confusing. Today’s devotional should dispel a lot of that confusion. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Jonah 1:3 (ESV)

  But Jonah rose 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, away from the presence of the Lord.

“Some people have, every now and then, a supposed revelation that just suits them. A man believes that it is impressed upon him to do exactly what he wants to do. For instance, he is sure that he ought to get married; many young people are quite sure about that matter when it would be far better for them not to do anything of the sort. A man is often impressed that he ought to do a thing simply because he wants to do it; the wish is father to the thought. Now, if you believe God’s commandments, you will not always believe in what looks like a providence. Do you not know that there are devil’s providences, sometimes; at least, that is what I call them? When Jonah went down to flee unto Tarshish, he found a ship going there; was not that a remarkable providence? Perhaps he said to himself, ‘I felt some doubt about whether I was right in going there, but when I got down to the seashore, there was a ship, and there was just room for me to go as a passenger, and the fare was just the amount that I had got, and so I felt that it must be of the Lord.’ Nonsense, Jonah; it is of the Lord for you to do what is right; and if you have judgment enough to do that, let others be foolish enough to follow this impression or that, this whim or that, this notion or that, which may come to them from Satan, or their own evil hearts. Be you, dear friends, wise enough to stand to the plain commandments of the Word. God help you to do so, for uprightness and integrity shall preserve you, and nothing else will.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLVI, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1900), p. 394-395]