Fire
in 
the Hole
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord”
Genesis 6:8
On Sunday morning,
my two girls wanted to read about Noah.
It’s a cute story with lots of animals and rainbows. They’ve seen all the pictures of a chubby old
Noah in his brown robe and sandals looking over the side of the boat with all
the friendly animals crowded around him.
Such a fun story!
Of course, the
reality of it all was much different. It
was a severe time of trials, persecution, hardship, and death, and I’m sure Noah
would never want to go through it again.
One passage that
has always stood out to me as significant was that Noah and his family were in
that boat for seven days before the first drop of water fell. Those seven days must have presented the
hardest time of all for Noah and his little group.
Noah had been a
preacher of righteousness in a world full of scorners, and must have been the
most unpopular man on the face of the Earth.
Nobody likes to hear that they are going to Hell, and I’m sure his
generation was no different than ours.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know about God – they were only a handful of
generations away from Adam and Eve -- it’s just that they did not want to give
up sin, and figured that somehow they would be able to get away with it.
We’ve all heard the
Cosby-type jokes of how much jeering Noah must have suffered. After all, for 100 years all he had to show
for his faith was a boat in the backyard.
To the rest of the world, it was a huge monument to folly, but Noah
believed God, and moved with fear to construct that Ark of Safety.
And then came the word to enter in the Ark. Seven long days, cooped up with all those
animals. No ventilation, no sunlight, … and no rain. Just waiting for
God to move.
I can just imagine the echo of the howls of
laughter coming from outside the boat.
The old fool had cooped up his family inside that smelly monstrosity,
and now he was locked in! But inside,
the feeling of anticipation must have been thick and heavy. When was God going to fulfill the word that
He had spoken to Noah in what must have seemed like such a long time ago?
Tell me you
wouldn’t have been wondering.
Why wait another
seven days? Why couldn’t God have just
flipped the switch as soon as they got inside?
Why this final test of faith? Hadn’t they endured enough?
We see this same
pattern with God several times throughout the Bible. After all you’ve gone through, there is often
one more final challenge of faith that you must overcome before you reach the
final goal.
Faith in God is not
determined by what you know or what you have seen. It is not a matter of how many miracles or
personal experiences you have had with God.
You cannot count on past victories or things that you have done in the
past. Your faith is measured by where
you are in God today.
Faith is built in
your heart by a continuous determination to seek the face of God each and every
day, and like a flame in your heart, it goes out when it runs out of fuel.
How many times I
have heard people say that they believe in God, and even bolster it by pointing
to their church attendance, but when times of severe tribulation and testing
come, how many of us fail. When you dig
down into the foundations of our failures, you find that it was based on a
faith in name only.
Faith comes by
hearing the Word of God, and immersing yourself in the Word of God gives you
the power to pray – not just muttering a bunch empty words, but real, heart
wrenching prayer. That, in turn, brings
you deeper into the Spirit of the Lord to absorb more of the Word of God. And that builds your faith – one step at a
time.
Do you think you
can accomplish the same things by skimming the Bible in a year? Or throwing God some casual requests when
you’ve got the time? No, only a driven
heart will seek the face of God and be able to receive the faith to stand in
the times of deep trials and testing when you will need it the most.
Noah had that kind
of faith because he relentlessly sought the face of God. And it carried him and his family like a
solid rock through those final seven days.