We all face times in our lives when our world, as we know it, gets flooded.  These are times in our lives when life as we thought it would be, is lost forever.  It is the intersection of where ‘what was’ and ‘what is’ meets.  When ‘forever changed’ comes knocking on our door.  These are the instances in our lives when we need to decide:  Will we keep walking with God?  Will we keep trusting God?  Will we keep hoping and believing?

Meet Noah

Genesis 6:8-9 (NLT) “But Noah found favour with the Lord.  This is the account of Noah and his family.  Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.”  The CEV translation says “But the Lord was pleased with Noah …Noah was the only person who lived right and obeyed God.”

Noah lived in time when the world was filled with violence and corruption (Genesis 6:5,13).  He was part of an extended family as his father, Lamech, had 2 wives (Genesis 4:19-22) and numerous sons and daughters (Genesis 5:29-30).  After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 5:32).  Noah was 600 years old when the flood started (Genesis 7:6) and he lived for 350 years after the flood (Genesis 9:28).  Only 8 people were saved from drowning in that terrible flood (1 Peter 3:20).

12 Learning points from Noah and his life story:

  1. Walk in faith

Hebrews 11:7 (NLT) declares “It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood.  He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before [rain].  By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith.”

Faith looks heroic in hindsight, but in the present, it often looks utterly foolish.  To be willing to risk things in faith is not easy.  People in Scripture, like Noah, were real people with real struggles and real questions about if they heard God correctly.  He didn’t know at the time how his story would turn out, and being human, he may have wondered if God would really vindicate his faith.

How would you have reacted if your neighbour, Noah, told you that the Lord is going to flood the earth by rain?  That God told him to build an ark to save his family and the animals on earth?
(Keep in mind – you have never even seen rain.)

Noah walked in close fellowship with God (Genesis 6:9).  To hear God, we need to practice the spiritual disciplines of seeking God’s presence and being silent before God.

Listen is an anagram for silent.

Genesis 6:8 (NKJV) “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”  By building the ark, Noah demonstrated that he believed God wanted to save his family.  There is a huge difference between believing that God is the God of the impossible (Luke 1:37) and believing that God wants to do the impossible for you.  We often don’t believe or don’t speak words of belief because we’ve been wrong before.  Being wrong has a way to silence our ability to speak our faith.

Prayer: Father God if I misheard You, show me the right way, but if I heard You right, help me to speak my faith and wait patiently until You fulfil what I heard.  In Jesus name, Amen.

Noah faithfully showed up over many years constructing the ark.  Faithfulness is demonstrated through days, weeks, months and years of showing up in God’s presence with expectancy, hope and belief.  Sometimes we wait a lifetime for something we may never see fulfilled until we reach eternity.  Rising above the timeline of man to trust the timeline of God can be hard.  Are we still showing up?  Do we continue to trust God with our needs, desires, wants, or miracles?  Or have we stopped asking, seeking and believing?

Faithfulness is when we show up every day believing God would do, what we know He could do, even if for whatever reason things don’t turnout as we have hoped.

  1. Be obedient

God told Noah his plan (Genesis 6:13).  He gave him the instructions (Genesis 6:14-16, 6:19-21).  Noah listened and obeyed God by doing everything exactly as commanded (Genesis 6:22, 7:8).  Whether Noah agreed with God or not, wasn’t the issue, obedience was – even when the plan and instructions may have made no sense to him.

Nothing deterred Noah from staying obedient.  For years he stuck it out, while everyone else continued with their lives.  Matthew 24:38 (CEV) tells us that “People were eating, drinking, and getting married right up to the day the flood came and Noah went into the big boat.”  People must have voiced their opinions to Noah.  It didn’t mean he was not hurt by their words or opinions, but he did not allow them to defeat him or cause him to disobey.

Food for thought:

  • We have to be brave enough to admit when things happen that we don’t like. Just because we don’t like God’s ways, doesn’t mean we can’t trust His ways.  It is easy to trust God when our prayers are answered and life advances as expected.  To keep on trusting God when your world is flooded and seems lost forever is more challenging.  Psalm 46:1-3 (NKJV) promises us “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore, we will not fear.  Even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling.”
  • To obey God, we need to hear the hard things just as much as we need to hear the easy ones. We can’t cherry pick.
  • We are taught from young that obedience brings results. But being obedient to God doesn’t always bring the results we expected.  That begs the question:

Will you hear and obey even if you don’t see your ‘expected’ results?

  1. Work hard and wait for it

When God wants to do a miracle – heal a disease, repair a broken relationship, fulfil an impossible dream, you name it – He often develops our faith by promising it ahead of time and then causes us to wait for it to happen.  During the wait, our faith gets thrown into a container along with rational processing, our sense of dignity, our assumptions, the opinions of others, well-meant advice from people, our history of disappointments, our unbelief, our doubts and periods of trail.  The container is then heated and our faith tested (1 Peter 1:7).

Genesis 6:14-16 (CEV) “Get some good lumber and build a boat.  Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out.  Make it 133 meters long, 22 meters wide, and 13 meters high.  Build a roof on the boat and leave a space of about 44 centimetres between the roof and the sides [a].  Make the boat three stories high and put a door on one side.” [a = like a window].  If you ‘generalize’ a storey in a building is about 3m.  Making the ark just higher than a 4-storey building.  Building a boat with these dimensions were hard work and took years to complete.  For Noah this meant building, believing, obeying and more building.  Keeping at it.  Waiting and wondering.  Dealing with comments, Noah-jokes, criticism, naysaying, and doubt.  We don’t see God giving Noah any signs along the way that he was still on the right track.  He had to just believe and keep walking in faith.  Often God don’t send us a sign that we heard Him correctly.  We need to keep at it – obey, believe and keep ‘building’.  Waiting on His timing.

After constructing the ark, Noah loaded the animals and his family.  He fitted out the expedition and successfully completed his to-do-list after decades of effort and waiting.  Then we read in Genesis 7:4 (CEV) “Seven days from now I will send rain that will last for 40 days and nights, and I will destroy all other living creatures I have made.”  You must be joking!  Loaded, packed and ready to go.  After years of waiting comes more waiting – “7 days from now”.  Another period of ‘what if’.  Trusting in God’s timing are some of the greatest obstacles to obedience.

Waiting is often harder than working.

  1. Carry out your part

1 Peter 3:20 (CEV) “God waited patiently while Noah was building his boat.”  God patiently waits for us to carry out our part.  The sooner we accomplish our task, the quicker God can step into the situation.

God gave Noah the vision and broad instructions, but those instructions were not a detailed plan, or blue print, or a step-by-step manual.  Noah had to take them and develop them into action steps.  He had to, for example, make plans for how to load the animals, store the animals and food, organize life onboard for himself and his family (cooking, washing, living, all the aspects of human life).  Imagine all the jobs required to be done during their stay in the ark (feeding animals, mucking pens, inspecting the boat, checking in on the animals, cooking food, mending clothes, etc.) and consider all the tools and equipment needed onboard to do these chores.

Genesis 6:19-21 (CEV) “Take into the boat with you a male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, as well as a male and a female of every reptile.  I don’t want them to be destroyed.  Store up enough food both for yourself and for them.”  Getting the animals into the ark was God’s plan, and God sent the animals as promised, but Noah had to get them loaded and organized.  Time, patience and planning.  God told Noah to load enough food, but He did not tell him in advance for how long they will stay in the ark!

What dream has God deposit into your heart or what promise did God gave you?
What steps have you taken to turn it into a reality?

  1. Remember who is in charge
  • Arks are boats without steering mechanisms. To listen and obey requires surrendering it all.  It is allowing God to do the steering.
  • God did not show Noah the end destination. Listening becomes even harder when we don’t know where we are going.
  • Genesis 7:1 (ESV) “Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household.” Going into the ark knowing that your world will flood and not knowing what to expect afterwards could not have been easy.  That said, it is a lot easier to enter a hard place when we know God has commanded it.  Romans 8:31 (CEV) provides comfort “What can we say about all this?  If God is on our side, can anyone be against us?”
  • The ark was meant to be a sanctuary for Noah and his family. A refuge, a shelter from the elements, a safe haven.  When your world gets flooded, remember to enter into the sanctuary of God’s presence.  Proverbs 18:10 (GNT) reminds us “The Lord is like a strong tower, where the righteous can go and be safe.”
  1. Recognize closed doors as underserved grace

Genesis 7:16 (CEV) “And when they were all in the boat, the Lord closed the door.”  God closed the door, not Noah.  Revelation 3:7 (NLT) teaches us “This is the message from the one who is holy and true, the one who has the key of David.  What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open”.  When God shuts a door, it cannot be opened, and it is grace.

Think of the grief that Noah had to carry in his heart knowing what is coming and what is going to happen to his friends, neighbours, extended family, etc.  Think of all the screaming, pleading to open the door and sounds of desperation that entered through the 44 centimetres opening between the roof and the sides.  Can you imagine the violence of the storm that raged outside, destroying the world?  When God shut that door, Noah and his family received grace.

What doors has God close in your life that you are grieving about?

When God closes a door, we are allowed to grieve over it, and but then we need to place that grief at the feet of Jesus.  Because in Psalm 147:3 (AMP) God promises “He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds [healing their pain and comforting their sorrow].”

Have you accepted the closed door as grace bestowed upon you?

  1. God remembers

Genesis 8:1 (NLT) “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat.  He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede.”

God remembered.  We are never forgotten.  When God remembers, He does something on our behalf.  He sent a wind for Noah.  Have you ever thought about how strong and powerful the wind must have been to blow the water back?  When God steps into our circumstances – expect it to be mighty powerful!

  1. Don’t take matters into your own hands

What will you do after the storm that flooded your life and destroyed your world has passed over?

Noah was aboard the ark for one year and 10 days (Genesis 8:18 AMP).  Nonetheless, Noah remained patient and stayed in the process with God.

We control our decisions and actions.  Don’t be tempted to take over when the water starts subsiding.  When we get restless it is easy to try to take matters in our own hands thinking there must be a faster or better way.  When we are between the problem and the promise it is easy to allow doubt to convince us that is time to take things into our own hands.

  1. Try again

Noah wanted to see if the water had receded and it if there was dry ground so “after another 40 days, Noah opened the window he had made in the boat and released a raven.  The bird flew back and forth until the floodwaters on the earth had dried up, but did not return to the ark” (Genesis 8:6).  He then sent out a dove (Genesis 8:8) and again (Genesis 8:10) and again (Gensis 8:12).

If the first time doesn’t work – try again.  The raven was not the right choice – it did not come back.  Then Noah tried again.  This time sending a dove, then again and again.  Each time was a sign of faith.  Often, we miss out because we give up to easy or we do not try different ways.

  1. Put God first

What did Noah do first when the ordeal was over?  He kept putting God first.  Genesis 8:20-21 (CEV) “Noah built an altar where he could offer sacrifices to the Lord.  Then he offered on the altar one of each kind of animal and bird that could be used for a sacrifice.  The smell of the burning offering pleased the Lord.”

Moving on, creating a new start after a defining moment is good, but we need to remain fully present before God as one season ends and another begins.  Like Noah, there will be a lot of things to figure out and stuff to do, but everything else can wait – first things first.  Follow Noah’s example.

  1. Remember the faithfulness of God

When your world has drastically changed, God is still the same.  He is the same God before, in and after your flood.  God never changes (Malachi 3:6).

Recall the faithfulness of God.  From one hard season to another, God’s faithfulness remains.  Psalm 77:11-12 (NLT) affirms “But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.  They are constantly in my thoughts.  I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.”  The faithfulness of God never leaves us, but we tend to forget them.  Especially when that faithfulness looks different from how we think things should be or faithfulness should look like.

The rainbow is a reminder of God’s mercy.  It represents hope after the storm (Genesis 9:12-17).  Look for the ‘rainbows’ in your life.  They are your testimonies of God’s faithfulness, examples of God’s mercy, favour and grace in the past and present.

12 Even heroes have bad days and mess up

Even heroes have bad days and mess up.  Genesis 9:21 (CEV) “One day he got drunk and was lying naked in his tent.”

When we mess up, we should turn to God, repent and restore our relationship with Him.  1 John 1:9 (CEV) reminds “But if we confess our sins to God, he can always be trusted to forgive us and take our sins away.”

Prayer: Dear Father, You are my refuge and strength.  My very present help in trouble.  Therefore, I will not fear.  Even if the earth tremble and the mountains tumble into the deepest sea, even if the ocean roar and foam, and its raging waves shake the mountains.  I will keep on trusting You.  Your promises cannot be shaken as You forever remain the same.  I know that You will come to my rescue.  You will turn my mourning into gladness and my darkness into light.  In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

Like Noah we can make choices today that will determine the legacy our life story tells tomorrow.