No Doubt

November 1, 2005

Faith. How can you “just believe” something? What kinds of experience do you need to have with someone to believe that an event will happen or a condition will come to be based upon what they tell you? Imagine the situation for Noah. We find in Noah a man who's lifestyle and who's daily walk was so in step with the Lord that the Lord called him righteous. The Lord found him to be blameless among all the people of his time. It's good that Noah walked with God every day because God told Noah a frightening story. God told Noah that everyone except his immediate family would soon die.

The bible is not specific enough to tell us exactly how many people Noah knew. It does not tell us how many other family members of Noah were living during that time. It would seem logical that he would have had brothers and sisters. He might have had aunts and uncles living at that time too. The Lord told him that they would all die. His friends would die. The people on the street that he saw every day would die too. As a matter of fact, according to the biblical account every person he had ever seen in his entire life would all be dead except for his wife, his three sons, and his sons' wives.

All of the animals save those he took with him would perish. The houses and farms and shops and stores would all be completely destroyed. The meadow and the grove and the hollow and the field and all of it's beauty would no longer exist. A massive flood of water would completely take it all away.

Nothing like this had ever happened before. There were no leading indicators in the stock market of life to suggest that “Oh. Yes, I've seen this once before. It's likely that a flood is going to occur.” By all accounts we can probably say it had never even rained before! Further, God tells Noah to build a huge boat on the scale of the Queen Mary for those times. Incredible! There is no history in Noah's time to give him any confidence in what he was about to do. None whatsoever. Yet Noah, with the simple faith of a child doing his mother's bidding, puts in place plans to accomplish the task one timber, one board, one nail at a time every day for a hundred or so years, slowly building a monstrosity in his back yard. He couldn't hide this from anybody. His faith was put on display for the whole world to see for over a hundred years.

What kind of faith do you have? Let's say you wake up today and you feel impressed by God during your morning prayers to paint your house bright orange. All of it. Orange siding. Orange shingles. Orange doors, windows, shutters, and trim. Do you think you would do it? What do you think your neighbor would say? Would he ask you something like, “Hey there. I see that you are painting your house orange. Um... what in the world are you doing that for?” Would you say, “God told me to.” Or would you make up a different story?

The strength of your faith will indicate your willingness to go beyond the call of the normal. Your faith can only be built bit by precious bit through the investment of time. There simply is no other way to build it. Investing time in someone will slowly define how much trust in things not yet seen you are willing to have in what they say. Each of us can predict the future in some respect. Simply stating “I'll be there at four o'clock this afternoon to pick you up.” is a prediction of a future event. If you say that every day for thirty days and if you never fail in that task, it's reasonable to believe the same thing will happen the thirty first day. The time has been invested. The history has been written. The by-product is faith.

Noah walked a righteous life on a daily basis with God. He talked with God and he listened. Every day. Probably many times each day. Maybe continuously during the day. Maybe he never stopped communicating with God. There must have been an tremendous amount of time spent together for Noah to have even a glimpse of the faith it required to build that boat. He couldn't harbor even a speck of doubt that this would not happen. He couldn't. He couldn't because his faith told him otherwise. He needed to have absolute faith.

We each have a choice about every minute of our lives. God is willing to communicate with you at a heartbeat's notice. If you lack faith, begin investing time in that conversation. Begin reading his word each and every day without fail. You will be amazed at the vision it can provide. I don't know that you will ever have the faith to build a monument to a conversation to God like the arc would have been. But I do know that your life will be hugely blessed. I have that faith. I have that faith because I've experienced it in my own life. Try it for thirty days and see for yourself. Your life will be better. Of that I have no doubt.