When the Holy Spirit spoke to Bodie Kuljian, who goes by the stage name of Bodie, to move from secular music to Christian, it reminded me a bit about the story of Jonah.

Bodie was the former worship leader at Oceans Church in Irvine, California, before competing in The Voice in 2022. He reached the final coming in second behind Bryce Leatherwood.

Now to be fair, Bodie, did not run off to Tarshish, like Jonah did when God called His prophet to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, and tell it to repent.

But as Bodie was wrestling with this decision, the Holy Spirit spoke to him during a time of prayer:

“You don’t choose who you reach. I choose that.”

In an interview with the Christian Post, Bodie said that though he loved Jesus, he was fearful of switching to Christian music.

“I didn’t want to lose the audience of people who hated Jesus and hated the Church,” Brodie said. “I still wanted to write music that gave them glimpses of hope.”

But in obedience, he signed with Providence, a Christian label.

Brodie said that decision resulted in him reaching “more people than I ever could have imagined; those who love the Church, hate the Church, and everyone in between.”

His influence grew as he obeyed the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

But it leads to a broader discussion does the Holy Spirit call people to a specific group.

We know in Jonah’s case that God called the disobedient prophet to Nineveh. This resulted in the whole city turning to God.

But there are other instances where the Holy Spirit was clearly guiding the direction that people were to go.

During the Apostle Paul’s second missionary journey, Luke writes that twice the Holy Spirit forbade them from going a certain direction:

They passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, after being forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; ⁷ and after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; (Luke 16:6-7 NASV)

We are not told how the Holy Spirit communicated this, but He did. More importantly, they were obedient.

At this point, the missionary group was uncertain of what to do. Then the Holy Spirit gave specific direction where He wanted them to go.

Luke writes that a man appeared to Paul in a night vision, pleading, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” (Acts 16:10 NASV).

The group took this as the Holy Spirit’s direction. This resulted in the formation of churches in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea.