Jonah was too proud to be taught, so God gives him a task that brings the issue to the surface and then he slowly skims away the dirt. God loves us too deeply to leave us without correction. I am grateful for brothers and sisters who love me enough to speak up when I do something stupid. They are a wonderful gift from God. Treasure the people in your life who love you enough to have tough conversations.

Dishing Out and Taking in Correction
Correction hurts. Even when we speak truthfully, we can go too far, cut too deep, and end up being harmful, not helpful. When we are careless, our words become weapons (Js 3:1-9). On the flip side, misunderstanding the motive when a friend corrects us can sever a decades-long friendship. Pride can stick its fingers in our ears and blocks any noise of rebuke. Giving and receiving correction is dangerous, but needed.
A wise person learns how to deliver and digest correction. Proverbs 9:8 says, “rebuke the wise, and he will love you,” and Proverbs 12:18 says, “the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Watching God correct Jonah is one place to see the wisdom of these proverbs in action.
Watching God Correct
As God corrects Jonah, he uses different tactics. He does not always bring a belt. He uses a variety of strategies. When you expect God to send a different, more obedient prophet, instead, he doubles down on Jonah (Jonah 3:1-4). When you assume God will send another storm, he sits for a conversation (4:1-11). God shows skill and sensitivity with Jonah. God humbles him when he is proud (1-2), exhorts him when he wavers (3:1-4), gently exposes his idols (4:5-11), teaches him when he doubts (4:10-11), and when Jonah despairs God carries him forward (4:9).
His timing, his tone, and his motive are always perfect. His words are a scalpel in the hand of the perfect surgeon. God never cuts in the wrong place or cuts too deep. Every place he cuts, he heals.
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In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 1-10.

In 2022 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 1-10:

An Open Letter With A Broken Heart to My Beloved Church

[Editor’s Note: This is a letter from a member to her church explaining the reasons she left a church she loved after being a member for eight years. We are publishing the letter anonymously to avoid publicly impugning anyone’s integrity and to allow the content of the letter to be read on its merits.]

What Greg Johnson Won’t Tell You About “Double Repentance”

Here we have biblical truth, expounded clearly and succinctly. Christ’s blood does not merely take away the guilt of our sin but also removes the powerful grip it holds on us, enabling us to choose righteousness over wickedness, allowing us to actually put sin to death even at the level of our desires. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). While Revoice proponents are busy delicately nuancing a distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior, the Lord calls us to put it all to death because it is worldly and wicked.

Disney Airs Animated Series about Satan Impregnating a Reluctant Mother Who Births the Antichrist

Artist Ricky Cometa said, “When Dana first approached me, she said that ‘we’re trying to make this demon realm part of Disney,’ which is something I didn’t think would happen.” Cometa went on to say, “We really wanted to make this demon realm feel like home, and just had to figure out how to do it.”

Overture 15 – The Tipping Point for a Split in the PCA?

The following is the wording of Overture 15 approved by the General Assembly: “Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.”

Ash Wednesday: Picking and Choosing our Piety

When Presbyterians and Baptists and free church evangelicals start attending Ash Wednesday services and observing Lent, one can only conclude that they have either been poorly instructed in the theology or the history of their own traditions, or that they have no theology and history. Or maybe they are simply exhibiting the attitude of the world around: They consume the bits and pieces which catch their attention in any tradition they find appealing, while eschewing the broader structure, demands and discipline which belonging to an historically rooted confessional community requires.

Testimony and Covenant of the Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church

By God’s grace, under Christ’s authority, we vow to strive for purity, peace, and Scriptural order in the formation of the Christ Reformed Presbyterian Church. Therefore, we endeavor to exclude those who disturb her peace, corrupt her testimony, and subvert her established forms from her communion. Therefore, as previous generations of Presbyterians did before us, we covenant together as elders in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ to be “True to the Scriptures, the Reformed Faith, and the Great Commission!”

What To Do About Greg Johnson?

As an ordained PCA minister, his participation in Revoice and his determination to embrace a gay lifestyle and culture has given comfort and aid to one of the great modern movements attacking the church and orthodoxy.  Furthermore, he has continued to write, speak, and make money off his self-ascribed role as a gay martyr trying to help a misguided denomination that may “still have time to care.”

A Single Woman’s Response to Greg Johnson

Christians ever identified themselves by inner desires?  Don’t we all experience a multitude of desires we deal with besides sexual ones?  As a single female Christian, it never occurred to me to identify myself related to any sexual desires.  I am not alone.  Among Christians, there are life-long single men and women, widowed men and women, divorced men and women, who have obeyed God’s commandments while remaining celibate during periods of their lives.  Furthermore, they never identified themselves by any desires they experienced during those same periods of their lives.

The End of Overtures 23 & 37

While Overtures 23 and 37 did not receive the approval of 2/3 of presbyteries, they did receive more than a majority of the presbyteries that have voted so far. The debate on the issue is not over. There are a number of presbyteries preparing to send overtures to the 49th PCA General Assembly on the qualifications for ordination to church office. 
And the number one story on The Aquila Report for 2022:

Memorial Presbyterian Church Session Calls Congregation Meeting

It is with a mixture of sorrow and hope that we, the elders of Memorial Presbyterian Church, after fifteen months spent fasting, praying, waiting, consulting and listening, now write to call a meeting of the congregation for 5:30–6:30 p.m. Friday, November 18, 2022, in the Auditorium for the purpose of deciding on matters pertaining to denominational alignment. We are recommending the congregation vote to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church in America in accordance with Book of Church Order 25-11.
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Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Getting worship right really matters. Of course I’m fully aware that plenty will agree with me but their vision of “right” will not cohere with mine. It’s a challenge we have to work through. But, even so, it does mean that if we want to reform our communities we start by reforming the worship of the church.

We see this in the way it’s structured; it’s built as a copy of the Garden of Eden: a mountaintop land with trees. The Temple is on the apex of a mountain, it’s full of trees (the lampstands and the decorations), and it’s decorated with fruit (all those pomegranates, notice the connection between the Song of Songs and the Temple).
It’s also a model of the world, with layers. We find the ‘sea’ on the outside (the large replacement for the tabernacle’s laver), then an outer court with the altar, then inside the temple, and then into the holiest place with the Ark.
The Temple moves from the chaos of the sea, to the courtyard where sacrifice is made representing the land, into the heavens and then the third heaven in the holiest place. It’s a microcosm of the whole world.
More than that, it’s a microcosm of the whole of reality as it’s supposed to be. It’s a copy of the new creation, or the old creation before it fell at least.
The Church works the same way, except it actually is the new creation (2 Corinthians 5). Not the New Heavens and the New Earth, not yet, but the in-breaking of the New into the Old because Christians are new creation and the Church is the new society. The local church is supposed to be a mirror of true reality, a blueprint for the Kingdom; she’s a microcosm, a miniature cosmos.
As an aside, if the church has deeply hurt you, this sounds like nonsense. Believe me, I understand. We aren’t good at being a mirror, but that means we’ve been terrible mirrors not that we don’t reflect the new creation. I think this concept intensifies how bad it is when churches get things terribly wrong.
This is why Paul is so concerned about ‘order’ in worship (1 Corinthians 12-14), he’s concerned that worship appropriately reflect the reality of the world. It’s as we encounter true reality in Christian worship each Sunday that we start to be reordered—or as I would say ‘restoried’—into people who live like the new creation and then restory/reorder their own worlds (households, initially) into the image of the kingdom.
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