Our Appeasable Father in Heaven

On this final day of the week, which began with us honouring fathers and holding highly esteemed, our Supreme and Omnipotent Father in heaven, we are held in wonder and awe that He should be thus minded to us human beings. We have, on each day of the week, been consistently shown the attributes of God in unarguable images. Our Teacher, Companion and Guide, faithfully encouraged and urged us to declare and keep these specific attributes of our Lord, as viewed in this verse of Jonah’s prayer.

God is Approachable

God is Identifiable

God is Available

God is Affable

God is Amenable

Now, on this final day of the week, we look at another attribute of God, as viewed in Jonah’s prayer.  He prayed to the LORD, ‘O LORD’, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I know that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Jonah 4: 2

God is Appeaseable - a God who relents from sending calamity

God is a God who can be appeased. When we listen to Jonah’s angry voice and words, as he speaks to One with whom he is angry, what do you hear? Don’t you just want to fall and die before this God who is your God also? Don’t you hear and see your God, in the amazingly bright Light of His appealing LOVE that you, a sinner, no longer want to remain in any sin?

Aren’t you also, drawn to repentance here and now? How can you not, when you see your Heavenly Father’s relenting Love? God is:-

Abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. NIV

Abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. NKJV

All of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. KJV

Always kind, and always ready to change your mind and not punish. GNT

Here are different translations, and I have only quoted a few, and they all testify to the appeasing nature of God, as Jonah notes. 

Is He not the same God who has told Ezekiel to speak these words to His children? Say to them, As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their wicked ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel. Ezekiel 33: 11

Yes, God can be appeased, for He has said it in no uncertain terms. God is appeased, and repents of all promised calamity and destruction, when there is true, sincere and genuine repentance. Listen to Jonah 3: 10. And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said he would do unto them; and he did it not. KJV.

Repentance is the sweet-smelling incense that reaches the nostrils of God and pleases Him. Repentance brings surrender and forgiveness-seeking, which moves the Heart of God in joyful jubilation. Repentance is the richness and privilege of grace, which all sinners are offered by God Himself, to turn back to Him, and receive pardon in full. Yes! God is appeased by our repentance.   

Whether you are in one mind and heart with God or not, do you declare and display this attribute about Him? He is Appeaseable. Turn to Him in repentance.

You leave this time, where you have been shown Jonah, a servant of God in his anger, praying to God. You have been given a submissive heart and teachable spirit to hear attributes of our Just and Righteous God, who rejoices when you heed His warnings and repent. He is only too happy and delighted to rain down on you, His unstoppable compassion, showing Himself as your Heavenly Father, slow to anger and abounding in love.

Our God is indeed a God who relents from sending calamity.