I am a church planter. The path God has led me down is not the typical path for your modern, trendy church planter. Everyone knows that hurting people are not the best people to start a church plant with. And yet, I was called to plant a church that was still healing after being a part of a church that closed it’s doors.
Thankfully, even when the odds are stacked against you, if you just trust God and do as He says, if you exhibit faith, you will find that he gives everything needed to accomplish what He has called you to do.
This is such a blessing because there have been so many things in the past 4 1/2 years that without trusting that God provides, we would have already quit. But we have experienced that if you just listen to God, no matter what people are saying, He will deliver you through the trials. This had to have been true for Noah.
I mean, think about it… Noah was a good man, a righteous man. In fact he was the one righteous man of his generation. Because of his righteousness and good standing with God, when God decided to destroy the whole world, he was not willing to destroy Noah and his family. So God gave Noah instructions on what he needed to do. He told him to build a boat. A very specific type of boat with very specific building instructions to weather the very specific storm that was coming.
Most of us know how this played out. Noah did what God asked him to do. He built the boat. To the dismay of his contemporaries. One can only imagine the slander they must have been throwing at Noah. They did not understand what God was up to. And they were unwilling to listen to Noah, even though Noah tried to ask them to repent and help him to build the boat. For their disobedience, they all ended up dying in the flood. If hey had just listened to God’s messenger, His vision keeper, they would have made it.
Sometimes people need to realize that God delivers a message to a person and he expects others to trust the messenger based on the reputation and Godly character of the messenger. But usually, people don’t want to hear. They want to live their own ways, following their own direction, because they think they know best. They are unwilling to listen to the man of God. They are unwilling to trust his message. They instead decide they have things figured out and in the end, end up dying a death of sorts.
So the question is, who will we be? Will we be the type of people that make fun of Noah and call him names behind his back? Or will we be the type of people that will trust God’s anointed do what is necessary for us to do in order to make it to the next level? Will we drown in a flood, or will we push through to see a brand new world with many messengers to do the work of the Lord?
Maybe today you are at a cross roads. Maybe today you are struggling with what to do. Be assured, if the way you are handling a situation has caused you to handle it outside of the way God has described in His word how to handle situations, then you are sinning. And if you are in sin, then how can you be in God’s will? If you are in sin, maybe it is time to get back under God’s authority and listen to His anointed and remember, He did not give you the instructions on how to build the boat anyway. He just wants you to trust His messenger. It’s your choice… Trust the messenger, build the boat and live. OR do you own thing, and die. What will you do?
