40 Days of Faith
"By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen,
moved with godly fear, prepared and ark for the saving of his household,
by which he condemned the world and
became heir of the righteousness
which is according to faith."
Genesis 11:7
Often when we speak of faith, we think of it in the personal realm and how it affects the relationship between the individual and God. There is no doubt that faith is a deeply personal issue, but it also affects every other area of our lives. The story of Noah and his life is no greater illustration of this.
In a devotional for our teens, we talked about how parents ask them to do some things sometimes that they don't quite understand. As a matter of fact, to the cynical teenage brain these requests may even seem ridiculous. There is no parent in our society that has ever asked their children to do something as strange as what Noah asked his sons to do. Noah's faith challenged the faith of his entire family.
Can you imagine what that first conversation about the ark between Noah and his family must have been like? He sat them down and told them that God wanted him to build a boat. It was not just any boat either; this boat was longer and as wide as a football field and four stories high. They were going to build it because of the flood that was coming that would wipe out all of humanity. On this epic journey they would be accompanied by a host of animals which they would be taking care of. With stunned silence the questions ran through their mind. Where are we going to float this boat? What is a flood? What do we know about taking care of animals? How much pizza did you eat before you went to bed last night? (Okay, they probably didn't ask the last question, but you know they must have thought something was wrong.)
This directive from God was as unbelievable to the whole family as it originally was to Noah. Noah's decision to trust God by faith had an impact on his entire family. His faith in God was so strong that his wife, his sons, and their wives followed along with the plan. Although they could not see what God was going to do and had not heard directly from God themselves, they picked up a hammer day after day and prepared for rain. Is our faith strong enough to have an impact on those around us? Are parents living such godly lives that their children would trust them with their lives? Do we live with such faith each and every day that our own loved ones would be willing to follow the voice of the Lord when we are the only ones that heard it?
May your faith impact those around you today!
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