“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.” — Psalm 130:1,7
Most people think of fishing when they hear the term “reeling.” They think about reeling something in, hopefully a big fish. There is another use for this word. When used as a verb, it means to sway or rock under a blow or shock; to sway about in standing or walking; to turn round and round; to have a sensation of whirling.
You get the picture? What comes to mind when you think about reeling in or under something?
If you’ve been in leadership for any length of time, you probably don’t have to imagine it. You’ve lived it. That season where the ground shifted beneath you and you couldn’t find your footing. That moment when the call came, the news broke, the door closed, and everything started spinning. That period where you went through the motions of leading while the world inside you was turning round and round, and you weren’t sure which way was up.
That’s reeling. And there are many persons and situations that embody the reality of it throughout Scripture.
Jonah: A Leader on the Run
Remember Jonah and his call to reach out to the Ninevites. Jonah was to go and confront them and call them to repentance. But Jonah resented the fact that God would forgive them. He ran. He hid on a boat. He was thrown from the boat. He was swallowed by a huge fish, where he somehow lived for three days.
It was in his greatest time of reeling that he understood best who God was, and who Jonah was not.
That line is worth sitting with. Because Jonah didn’t come to his clearest understanding of God during a worship service or a Bible study or a successful ministry season. He found it in the belly of a fish. In the dark. Alone. Swaying, rocking, disoriented, completely out of control. That’s where God got through to him.
In his great moment of reeling came his greatest moment of experiencing that same grace, love, mercy, and forgiveness from God that he was supposed to share with the people of Nineveh. As the story goes, God took Jonah and restored him back to service. And Nineveh received the message and repented. Jonah still struggled with the process, but God used it to the fullest extent in order to show His great compassion.
That’s nothing short of incredible.
The Leader’s Jonah Problem
There are two parts of Jonah’s story that hit leaders especially hard, and most teaching focuses on only one of them.
The first is the running. Leaders run from assignments all the time. Not always physically. Sometimes it looks like avoiding a hard conversation God has clearly put in front of you. Sometimes it’s resisting a new direction because the current one is comfortable. Sometimes it’s knowing exactly what God is asking you to do and choosing the boat to Tarshish instead, because the assignment feels too big, too risky, or too uncomfortable. Every leader who’s honest will admit they’ve had a Jonah moment. The call was clear. The response was flight.
But the second part is the one that doesn’t get talked about enough: Jonah’s resentment. Jonah didn’t just run from the assignment. He ran from the grace God wanted to extend through it. He couldn’t stomach the idea that people who didn’t deserve forgiveness would receive it anyway. He wanted judgment, not mercy. And when God showed compassion to Nineveh, Jonah was furious about it.
It seems like it’s so easy to be consumed with the apparent injustice of really bad people doing really bad things being offered a really amazing offer of forgiveness and given really awesome opportunities in life. Leaders feel this more than they admit. You watch someone who hurt you get restored. You see someone who failed spectacularly get a second chance that feels unearned. You know someone’s history and you struggle with the idea that God would use them again. And something in you reels at the unfairness of it.
But here’s the thing Jonah had to learn, and every leader has to learn eventually: the grace that feels unfair when it’s extended to others is the same grace that saved you. If God measured forgiveness by what people deserved, none of us would qualify. Including the leader reading this right now.
The Belly as a Classroom
If you have been one of those who found yourself reeling in the belly of the proverbial whale of life, then you know experientially the desperate need for God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, and loving hand of restoration.
There’s something about the belly that teaches you what nothing else can. The belly is dark. It’s disorienting. It’s humbling in a way that no leadership book or conference can replicate. And it strips away every pretense you’ve been carrying. In the belly, you can’t perform your way out. You can’t strategize your way out. You can’t network or rebrand or pivot your way out. You can only cry out. And that cry, when it’s real, is often the beginning of everything God wants to do next in your life.
I’ve walked alongside leaders in the belly. Pastors who made devastating decisions and found themselves in complete freefall. Ministry leaders who burned out so completely they couldn’t open their Bibles for months. Team leaders who lost everything they built and had to start over with nothing but the mercy of God. And in every single case, the ones who listened and learned in the belly came out different. Not just recovered. Transformed. Because God does His deepest work in the darkest places.
The saddest part of the story of Jonah just might be his stubbornness in learning this truth. Even after the belly, even after the restoration, even after watching an entire city repent, Jonah sat on a hill pouting about it. He was so consumed with what he thought should happen that he missed the miracle of what actually did happen. Don’t be that leader. When God puts you in the belly, learn what He’s teaching you. And when He brings you out, don’t waste the experience by resenting the process.
Reeling, Repentance, Redemption, Restoration
One of the great attributes of God is His unexplainable hand of forgiveness, understanding, and patience, all wrapped up in the reality and miracle of redemption. The pattern throughout Scripture is consistent: reeling leads to repentance, repentance leads to redemption, and redemption leads to restoration. It’s a sequence that God uses again and again because it works. Not because He enjoys the reeling part. But because He knows that sometimes the reeling is the only thing that gets our attention long enough to hear His voice.
For leaders, this sequence is not just personal. It’s leadership forming. The leader who has been through the full cycle of reeling, repentance, redemption, and restoration leads differently than the one who hasn’t. There’s a tenderness that wasn’t there before. A patience with other people’s failures that comes from knowing your own. A trust in God’s process that isn’t theoretical anymore because you’ve lived it. And a willingness to extend the same grace you received, even to people you think don’t deserve it.
That’s what makes a reliable messenger. Not someone who has always gotten it right. Someone who has gotten it wrong, been brought to their knees, cried out from the depths, and been restored by a God who specializes in plentiful redemption. That’s the messenger who carries the message with authenticity. Because the message isn’t theory to them. It’s testimony.
Don’t Stay Longer Than You Need
When you find yourself in a situation like Jonah’s, and God gets you alone in the belly of that dark and scary place, listen and learn. Don’t stay longer than you need to. Some leaders set up camp in the belly. They wallow in the guilt, the shame, the disorientation. They replay their failure on a loop and convince themselves that restoration isn’t possible for them. But that was never the point of the belly. The belly is a classroom, not a permanent address. God put you there to teach you something, not to leave you there.
And don’t forget your own experience of reeling, repentance, redemption, and restoration. When God brings you out, carry the lesson forward. Let it shape how you lead, how you extend grace, how you respond to other people’s failures, and how you trust God in the next hard season. The leader who forgets the belly is the leader who repeats the pattern. But the leader who remembers it becomes the kind of person who can reach into someone else’s dark place and say, “I know what it’s like in there. And I know the God who brings you out.”
Next Steps for the Leader Who’s Reeling
If you’re in the belly right now, stop fighting it. The instinct is to claw your way out, to fix it, to manage the situation back to normal. But if God has you in a season of reeling, there’s a reason. Get quiet. Get honest. Ask Him what He’s trying to teach you. The faster you listen, the sooner the restoration comes. But even if it takes longer than you’d like, trust that He’s working. The belly isn’t the end of your story. It’s the turning point.
If you’ve been running, stop. You know what God is asking you to do. You’ve known for a while. The boat to Tarshish might feel safer than the road to Nineveh, but it always leads to a storm. Stop running and start obeying. The assignment might be uncomfortable, but it’s where restoration lives.
Check your Jonah resentment. Is there someone in your life or leadership whom you’re struggling to extend grace to? Someone whose restoration bothers you? Someone whose second chance feels unfair? Bring that resentment to God honestly and ask Him to show you your own belly. The grace that restored you is the same grace He wants to extend through you. Don’t withhold what was freely given to you.
Remember your own restoration and let it shape your leadership. Think about the times in your own history where reeling ran its course and finished with restoration. Write them down. Thank God for His voice and His hand in your life. And let those memories fuel compassion for the people around you who are reeling right now. You’ve been in the belly. You know the way out. Help someone else find it.
Read Psalm 130 this week. It’s only eight verses long, but it captures everything about this journey. Out of the depths, crying to God, waiting for Him, hoping in Him, and finding that with the Lord there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption. Let those eight verses be your anchor if you’re reeling. And let them be your reminder if you’ve already been restored.
Listen and learn. Don’t stay longer than you need. And never forget the God who meets you in the belly and brings you back to shore.