“Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from inside the fish: I called to the Lord in my distress, and He answered me” (Jonah 2:1-2, HCSB).

You probably have a quiet, peaceful place where you like to go to pray.

Jonah’s place wasn’t quiet or peaceful. He tried to run from God and ended up being thrown overboard from a ship into the ocean and swallowed by a large fish.

Some say it was a whale.

Yet, God still heard him from inside the fish.

And answered Jonah’s prayer!

The problem with Jonah was not that he needed God to hear him. Jonah needed to follow God’s will.

And that’s what prayer can do.

God doesn’t need a quiet, peaceful place to hear us. We need a quiet, peaceful place to hear Him!

You’ve heard the old adage, “Prayer changes things.” But what really happens with prayer is that it changes me!

When we earnestly and persistently seek God in prayer, it changes us so that we start to align our own will with God’s will.

At least, that’s what happened to Jonah!

But, it took three days in the digestive track of a large fish: “I will fulfill what I have vowed. Salvation is from the Lord! Then the Lord commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah onto dry land” (vs 9-10).

And when our own will becomes aligned with God’s will, then our prayers become more powerful. They become prayers that change things because we begin to pray according to God’s will.