WHALE BELLY PRAYER RETREAT

I was just looking again at Jonah 2 and thinking about having a Prayer Retreat with Jonah. The text says that he “prayed from the belly of the whale” (2:1). So, the Retreat Center is total darkness, the smell of the inside of a whale stomach, it is confusing and frightening, one feels forsaken, and finished. You can feel the ribs, tonsils, stomach lining, colon, slime and such of a whale belly. This is where we start our Prayer Retreat. The Retreat will be three days and three nights.
Prayer Retreat Agenda from Jonah 2:
1. We Cry out in distress (2:2). The Lord answers us.
2. We cry out from the belly of Sheol (place of the
dead or Hell or The Pit) (2:2). The Lord hears our
voice.
3. We are cast into the deep, the heart of the seas,
surrounded by floods, waves and billows passing
over us (2:3). We pray the prayer of being forsaken.
4. We are driven from the sight of the Lord (2:4). We
pray by faith to see again the Holy Presence of the
Lord.
5. We are overwhelmed with water that encompasses
and engulfs our very soul. Seaweeds are wrapped
around our heads. (2:5). We pray the prayer of
despair and untangling while untangling the
seaweed.
6. We are descended to the depths of the roots of the
mountains where the bars of the earth close us in
(2:6). The Lord hears our prayers and brings us up
from The Pit.
7. We feel our lives ebbing (fainting) away (2:7). We
pray to the Lord in his Holy Presence.
8. We have a voice of thanksgiving and we vow to
serve the Lord (2:9) We shout in prayer: Salvation
and Deliverance is from the Lord!
9. We get puked up on Dry Land 2:10). We clean up
and go home from the Retreat.

I’m taking early Registrations for the Prayer Retreat.

(Roz says it is time for me to get back over to the other side of the pond.)

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Jesus