Work work work…

Last week I said, “God gives us the materials, He gives us the instructions but He won’t do the journey for us.” I want to expand a little on that this week. I was thinking about Noah. My friends and I call him uncle Noah because we are all part of God’s family, lol. We have so many awesome uncles and aunties in heaven! Anyway, the Word says:

“Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. So God said to Noah, “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth! “Build a large boat from cypress wood and waterproof it with tar, inside and out. Then construct decks and stalls throughout its interior. Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Leave an 18-inch opening below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the side, and build three decks inside the boat—lower, middle, and upper. “Look! I am about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die.But I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat—you and your wife and your sons and their wives… 

So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him.”

Genesis 6:11-18 and 22. 

What I want us to see from that story is that God loved Noah. But not only that, Noah was said to be a righteous man (Genesis 6:9) so much so God decided to save only him and his family. Now imagine that. He lived in a world full of corrupt people, a world full of violence. A world that was turned against itself and yet he did not allow all the chaos around him to harden his heart. His heart was tender enough for him to hear God speak to him and give him specific instructions. Even though Noah had not seen anything like what God was talking about, he chose to follow God. He chose to obey God even without understanding.

Also, what is important to see from our verses is that even though God knew that the boat or ark would be crucial to Noah’s survival, God did not build the ark. Noah built the ark. God gave Noah the instructions, the measurements the types of materials needed but Noah had to do the work. 

See sometimes we have it in our heads that if it is important enough God will step in and do it for us. But by God talking to Noah and telling him what to do, He had already stepped in. He was making a way for Noah and his family and the animals to survive the flood. 

Question then is this: are you able to see when God has stepped in to help you out or are you waiting for Him to build the ark, roll out the red carpet and send you an e-vite? When God speaks to us, His words are both Spirit and they are life, John 6:63. If we want to live, it is up to us to obey those words and take them seriously and follow His instructions. God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. Following God sometimes involves hard work. Angels didn’t carry the wood or build the ark for Noah. He had to figure it out.

I think we sometimes imagine that it was easy for Noah but I doubt it. Imagine living in the world that he was living in, full of people who didn’t believe in God and he was building this ginormous boat. I imagine there was a lot of talk around town about how Noah had lost his marbles. How Noah was hearing voices and was crazy. How Noah had completely lost the plot. I am sure people made fun of him. If there was Twitter or Instagram he would have been trending and not in a good way, people would have had lots of not so nice things to say about him, #craycrayNoah. It could not have been easy being the only person hearing from God in a world that had grown cold towards God. Yet, Noah did not let that stop him. 

We find ourselves many years later in a world that is also rejecting God and whose hearts are cold towards God, but that is never a good enough reason to back down from what we believe God is calling us to do. We trust God in every situation and with everything.

What matters is not what people say about you, it’s what God says about you that matters. People may have called Noah crazy but God called him righteous (Genesis 7:1). I pray that we learn from Noah, to listen, to obey and to follow God, no matter the cost. 

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano