Have you ever stopped to think about the faith of Noah?
📖 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith. Hebrews 11:7
📖 This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Genesis 6:1
A song on the radio made me do just that.
It was last week when we were leaving camp...where we had been soaking up the sun and enjoying the peacefulness of the water, and I had blogged The Significance Of Water.
🎶 Build A Boat🎶 by Colton Dixon (link to listen at the end of the blog) came on.
As I was listening to the words it just struck me; the faith that Noah had to have had to build a boat, not just a boat but a MANSION with a HUGE barn attached kind of a boat!
📖 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” Noah did everything just as God commanded him. Genesis 6:9-22
He was asked to do something so out of his realm for an event that he had not ever considered or experienced, a flooding rain. Rain was not something that had happened before, it is believed that up until that point, no water had fallen from the sky.. and even if it had who could fathom the amount and sheer magnitude of an earth covering flood!
📖 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in. For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Genesis 7:11-20
Can we say that?
We follow God's instructions even when we can't see the point, can't comprehend the outcome?
Or do we argue with God; explaining why our plan is probably best, why taking the steps we think we should will take us where He wants us to go, why we have everything under control regardless of what may be coming on the horizon?
I know we have had circumstances in our lives that we never imagined we would be in, and couldn't fathom if we had.
He may be asking us to do something that makes no sense right now, but God knows what storms are ahead....and though we would love for Him to allow us to circumvent the storm, He is preparing us to ride through the storm, even sail on through! And come out stronger, wiser and closer to Him.
BUT we have to be listening, willing to follow what He tells us, and brave enough to stay the course.
With faith, each step we take in Christ, He builds us and shapes us to be able to handle the storm.
📖 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Romans 5:1-2
📖 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Hebrews 11:1-3
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