This came from my pastor this past Sunday. He is doing a study on Genesis and I am really loving it. He is shedding some in site an parallels that I never thought of before. This is merely one of them. Although I have two other post that are in my drafts, I wanted to go ahead and post this.
We all know the story of Noah. He built a big boat and took a world cruise for a while in order for God to reorganize the Earth. Well, it was far more destructive than that, but we know the story.
Noah spent 120 something years, its early and I am not awake yet, building this ark. God told him that there was going to be rain and a big flood. Neither of these were something that had ever happened before. Noah even lived 500 miles from the ocean. He didn't even know what a big body of water looked like. But he was still obedient.
Now the thought that meant something to me that I had never thought of before. Our pastor painted a picture of Noah standing in the doorway of the ark looking out over the world. He would have been able to see all that was "his". His house, his land, his cattle, his crops, all of his possessions. This was the world that he new. It was his existence.
Now building the ark took obedience. But Noah was also required to be obedient to the point of turning his back on everything that he knew. He was required to abandon the world and cling to the promise that God made to him. He wouldn't have understood what this promise meant. He didn't know what the silly things called rain or flood were. He probably couldn't imagine something so devastating that would completely destroy the world and even reform the world! But still he was faced with this choice. Does he follow the world and cling to what he has been taught, what he owns, and what he knows? Or does he turn his back on all that is evil to Gods sight and get on the boat!
I fear to say in my day to day trials, so many times I fail to get on the boat. So many times I try to insert my wisdom (I know that is laughable) to correct what God is telling me. How many opportunities do we miss to get on the boat? Each moment of our lives we find ourselves at the crossroads to choose.
Will you choose to get on the boat?
