Imagine the scene.

Everything was going wrong. God had created a wonderful, perfect, sinless world. Adam and Eve had the experience of “walking in the cool of the day” with God. Enjoying the presence of God, learning from Him. And then Adam sinned, ate from the tree which God had forbidden and there began the downward spiral towards ruin. It simply wasn’t supposed to end like this.

God knew that giving mankind freewill might result in this, but He didn’t want puppets, He wanted relationship.

Genesis says that there came a point in time when “mankind’s intention was towards evil at all times.” (Gen 6:5) It got so bad that God, who perhaps only 1000 years before had declared that all of creation was good, had decided that He was sorry that He had made man.

According to Genesis, there was only one man who found favour in the eyes of the Lord. Noah.

Many of us will be familiar with the story of Noah. God speaks to Him, tells him to build a boat, with space for every kind of animal (various numbers depending on whether they were clean or unclean), and his wife, three sons and their wives.

It rained, perhaps for the first time ever, every other man, woman and child was wiped from the face of the earth, along with all the animals. After the flood waters subsided, Noah and his family became the basis for mankind’s continued existence on earth.

Aside from the fact that the story of almost destruction of mankind from the face of the earth isn’t the “nice” children’s story that we frequently tell it as, I often wonder how Noah felt being the only person who God saw as worth saving. God had promised that Noah and his family would survive, but how did it feel in real life, when he started building a boat, miles from the nearest body of water?  Imagine the ridicule. The taunting. If Noah was the only righteous man on the face of the earth, the taunting likely came from his own family too. I imagine there was frequent sabotage of the project. After all, mankind was evil, and the Ark was Gods lifeboat.

My reading of the text suggests that the boat took at least 120 years to build. That’s a lot of ridicule. Day after day, year after year.  We struggle with even a few minutes taunting, and yet Noah persevered for decades.

How does one stay focused when literally everything, and everyone around you, wants to see you fail. Wants to destroy what you are doing and what you stand for.

We read in Hebrews chapter 11 that Noah constructed the boat, which condemned the world, and made him an heir of righteousness, which comes by faith.

So Noah had faith, but what does it mean to have the kind of faith that will persevere even if the entire world is against you?

 

There have been many definitions suggested but much more qualified people than me.

 

Personally, I like the one given at the beginning of Hebrew 11 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”.

 

Substance can be defined as “the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists of, and which has a tangible, solid presence.” Faith is touchable. Faith carries weight. When you have faith in something it is not some whimsical, ethereal thing. It is very real.

Noah had received something from God that allowed him to continue through all the taunts and doubt that must surely have occurred over those long 120 years.

Is faith like that possible today?

 

I believe it is. The Hebrew word Yada means to know. I find it interesting that this word is a verb. It’s active, not passive. I want to suggest that Noah knew (yada) God. You can’t have true faith in someone or something without ‘knowing that you know that you know’. You can’t endure 120 years of ridicule without being absolutely confident that the One in whom you have put your trust is trustworthy.

 

I think that is the secret. We need to know God. The question is how does one do that. I mean, God must be busy right? He is far to consumed with holding yyhe planet together, and answering the prayers of the popular preachers on YouTube to take an interest in knowing me?

Not true, God is crazy about you. He is waiting patiently for you to ask Him to come. He won’t force Himself into your life – but if you will but ask – you will find that He is right next to you, desperate to show you all that He has for you.

I believe that we need to actively pursue Him. Actively spend time with Him. Actively learn from Him and enjoy His presence. I think that we need activity to know Him. The beauty about God is that there is always more to find out. If we keep actively pursuing Him, the faith that Noah had, the ability to endure, to keep on going when you think there is no end in sight will develop.

Faith is a muscle. The more you use it the bigger it gets. I don’t believe that Noah suddenly had the faith to endure whilst he built a boat in the middle of nowhere. His day to day life must have needed faith and endurance. The world was spiralling towards destruction and Noah was the only righteous man found on the face of the earth. That took a daily dose of faith and connection with God.

Why do we think we can do it differently?

Imagine the scene.

Everything was going wrong. God had created a wonderful, perfect, sinless world. Adam and Eve had the experience of “walking in the cool of the day” with God. Enjoying the presence of God, learning from Him. And then Adam sinned, ate from the tree which God had forbidden and there began the downward spiral towards ruin. It simply wasn’t supposed to end like this.

God knew that giving mankind freewill might result in this, but He didn’t want puppets, He wanted relationship.

Genesis says that there came a point in time when “mankind’s intention was towards evil at all times.” (Gen 6:5) It got so bad that God, who perhaps only 1000 years before had declared that all of creation was good, had decided that He was sorry that He had made man.

According to Genesis, there was only one man who found favour in the eyes of the Lord. Noah.

Many of us will be familiar with the story of Noah. God speaks to Him, tells him to build a boat, with space for every kind of animal (various numbers depending on whether they were clean or unclean), and his wife, three sons and their wives.

It rained, perhaps for the first time ever, every other man, woman and child was wiped from the face of the earth, along with all the animals. After the flood waters subsided, Noah and his family became the basis for mankind’s continued existence on earth.

Aside from the fact that the story of almost destruction of mankind from the face of the earth isn’t the “nice” children’s story that we frequently tell it as, I often wonder how Noah felt being the only person who God saw as worth saving. God had promised that Noah and his family would survive, but how did it feel in real life, when he started building a boat, miles from the nearest body of water?  Imagine the ridicule. The taunting. If Noah was the only righteous man on the face of the earth, the taunting likely came from his own family too. I imagine there was frequent sabotage of the project. After all, mankind was evil, and the Ark was Gods lifeboat.

My reading of the text suggests that the boat took at least 120 years to build. That’s a lot of ridicule. Day after day, year after year.  We struggle with even a few minutes taunting, and yet Noah persevered for decades.

How does one stay focused when literally everything, and everyone around you, wants to see you fail. Wants to destroy what you are doing and what you stand for.

We read in Hebrews chapter 11 that Noah constructed the boat, which condemned the world, and made him an heir of righteousness, which comes by faith.

So Noah had faith, but what does it mean to have the kind of faith that will persevere even if the entire world is against you?

 

There have been many definitions suggested but much more qualified people than me.

 

Personally, I like the one given at the beginning of Hebrew 11 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”.

 

Substance can be defined as “the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists of, and which has a tangible, solid presence.” Faith is touchable. Faith carries weight. When you have faith in something it is not some whimsical, ethereal thing. It is very real.

Noah had received something from God that allowed him to continue through all the taunts and doubt that must surely have occurred over those long 120 years.

Is faith like that possible today?

 

I believe it is. The Hebrew word Yada means to know. I find it interesting that this word is a verb. It’s active, not passive. I want to suggest that Noah knew (yada) God. You can’t have true faith in someone or something without ‘knowing that you know that you know’. You can’t endure 120 years of ridicule without being absolutely confident that the One in whom you have put your trust is trustworthy.

 

I think that is the secret. We need to know God. The question is how does one do that. I mean, God must be busy right? He is far to consumed with holding yyhe planet together, and answering the prayers of the popular preachers on YouTube to take an interest in knowing me?

Not true, God is crazy about you. He is waiting patiently for you to ask Him to come. He won’t force Himself into your life – but if you will but ask – you will find that He is right next to you, desperate to show you all that He has for you.

I believe that we need to actively pursue Him. Actively spend time with Him. Actively learn from Him and enjoy His presence. I think that we need activity to know Him. The beauty about God is that there is always more to find out. If we keep actively pursuing Him, the faith that Noah had, the ability to endure, to keep on going when you think there is no end in sight will develop.

Faith is a muscle. The more you use it the bigger it gets. I don’t believe that Noah suddenly had the faith to endure whilst he built a boat in the middle of nowhere. His day to day life must have needed faith and endurance. The world was spiralling towards destruction and Noah was the only righteous man found on the face of the earth. That took a daily dose of faith and connection with God.

Why do we think we can do it differently?

I came across the Serentity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) a little while ago on Facebook. Niebuhr was an American theolgian who commented on politics and religion. His serenity prayer (or at least the first part of it) is used by Alcoholics anonymous as part of their program.the world over. Many of us will be familiar with at least the first part, but will be less so with the next section.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.

Taking as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

I know that I have read this several times, assumed that it was fine, usually because of who had posted it, without given it a second thought. Having been caught out a few times, I have started looking a bit more carefully at things before blindly forwarding them. And thats when it all started!!

The more I looked at the prayer, the more I found that there was only really one statement in it that I could fully agree with. Other statements didn’t sit comfortably with me (I’m not going to address them here as I haven’t fully processed my thoughts on them) and others I felt were just plain wrong. I understand that this is just my opinion on this – but it’s my blog and I get to say what I want 🙂

Serenity means tranquility, peace, calmness and stillness. There is no doubt that God can grant us peace. The peace He promises is His peace. Not a worldly peace (which is so often filled with doubt), but a peace that “trancends understanding” (Phil 4:7). I have experienced this peace personally – when the world has been falling in around me, I have felt unexplicably calm and composed. When I say it’s inexplicalble, I really do mean that. I wish I could explain it to you – but I just feel peace.

So the prayer asks God to grant us this peace for a purpose. “To accept things that I cannot change, and courage to change those that I can.”

Whilst I understand the sentiment of this statement, the problem I have with it is that it restricts the truth in scripture that “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4:13). If we can do all things through Christ, that surely means that there is nothing that I cannot change. I can accept that our experience may be different from this, however, I am a firm believer that if we start from a point of accepting that we might fail, we are never going to be dissapointed. I choose to believe that if scripture tells me I can do all things, that means I can do all things. If I find that things aren’t changing, scripture is still truth, and I need to ask God to help me to change them.

The prayer goes on – “accepting hardship as the pathway to peace”. Really? There is clear evidence in scripture that we will experience hardship. Jesus himself warned us that we would experience hardship. We will be laughed at and mocked because we follow Jesus. The apostle Paul’s life was testament to the fact that life will be tough for the sake of the gospel. The only way we are going to be able to survive this sort of persecution is reliance on the one who give perfect peace. The answer to any problem is never found in the problem – it is only ever found in Jesus.

“Taking as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.”. 

Jesus did indeed come to this world as it was. The bible says that “at the right time, Christ died for us“. (Rom 5:6). The world was full of sin (not much has changed has it? , and Jesus came into that world. Jesus came to turn the world on its head. He came to destroy the work that the devil does. And He has told us to do likewise. I am called to be a world changer – not to accept the world as it is. I’m called to love those whom I come in contact with – and to point them to Jesus. The world is messed up, and Jesus has given me (and you if you are a Christian) authority over everything that isn’t good.

“That I might be reasonably happy in this life.” Jesus is the example that I want to model my life on. He is the one that I seek to emlulate. Was Jesus reasonably happy? The Psalmist, prophosing about Jesus was “annointed with the oil of gladness beyond His companions.”  Luke 10:21 says that “In that same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” It doesn’t appear that Jesus was “reasonably happy”, but was someone who was filled with joy.  The key to this was being filled with the Holy Spirit. I suppose it is possible to be reasonably happy without Holy Spirit, but why settle for reasonable, when the Holy Spirit gives us access to “fullness of joy” and “perfect peace”?

One thing we can be sure of however, is that the life we will have with Him will be supremely better than what we experience in this life. 

Stephen Curtis Chapman wrote a song years ago called “More to this life.” He sang the “there is more to this life, than living and dying, more than just trying to make it through the day.”

I think he was right – and God wants to do so much more with and through us – will you let Him??