Go build a boat...

When God says go you go.

Sometimes I find myself asking this questions. You want me to do what? Sometimes Gods instructions don’t make since. Look what he said to Noah.

Genesis 6: 14-18

14 So make yourself an ark of cypress ^[c] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. ^[d] 16 Make a roof for it and finish ^[e] the ark to within 18 inches ^[f] of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

Now you have to understand, Noah lived in the middle of no where, miles from water, and God wanted him to build a boat in his back yard. Now this was not a weekend handy man project. He was not going to the local hardware store and find a kit. The scale of the Ark for that time was staggering, and there not being a lot of world travelers back then, boats/ships of this size were not common on the waters.

Genesis 6: 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

However, Noah obeys God as he always did. (I often wonder what kind of tools Noah had to invent to make God’s ark? He didn’t have 40 position table saws, jig saws, electric screwdrivers, or a Home Depot close.) So here is Noah in his back yard building something that not may people had seen, much less understood why he was building this boat for miles.

It took Noah 120 years to build the ark. God had to provide a lot for Noah here, but the main thing was trees…. I picture a forest clear cut for miles. Stumps upon stumps upon stumps. What a scene it must have been, when his friends walked by and wondered what he was doing. Those were his friends, but what about the people who did not know God. They must have thought Noah was just plain crazy. However, when God say’s build a boat, Noah took God for his word and built a boat, and for a very good reason.

Genesis 7: 11-12

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

What kind of boat is God asking me to build? Well, first it is to lead and raise a Godly family, centered on the Love of Christ, something that is becoming rarer in these days. Often people look at Godly family’s and try to figure out what they are doing, and wonder why they act or do what they do. When was the last time a TV show depicted a Godly family?

Also, God is calling me more and more to lead. Where he wants me to lead, and who is very much up in his hands; But, I know that me being a God made man is rare, and I hope that my relationship with Christ can shine and lead other men to the Jesus that I know.

1 Thes 4: 11-12 Make it your ambition to lead a quite life, mind your own business, and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders, and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

Dig...

Mark 2: 4-5
4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." (Emphasis added)

We have to dig through the grime and dirt of our life to see Christ. Faith should drive you to do what ever you can to be close to Jesus. So much faith that you will dig through what ever barrier stands in your way to get to him.

MV for the week:
1 Thes 4:11-12
Make it your ambition to lead a quite life, minding your own business, and working with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders, and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

This is just to neat... Enjoy....

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/470445/jesus_painting/

The Fall and Sin of Man ruined God's perfect plan...

I look at the effects of all SIN this way...

In the Garden of Eden before the fall there was no Rot or Rust, and God walked daily in the Garden with Adam and Eve. The Garden was God's perfect dwelling place on earth. After the sin we were separated from God, and the rot of sin, and the rot of nature entered the world, once it became about "ME" and "US" and not God.

God by his Grace gives us a way to escape the Rot of sin... but we have to leave ALL things that God calls sin behind…We need to seek that personal relationship with God, it is by God's grace alone that we leave sin behind.

Also it is not up to us as Christians to judge a person’s actions, God’s is the judge of our faith and sin. All we can do is point out in love what sin is, pray that God opens the eyes for the sinner to see their error, do our best to live as an example using Christ as our model, and let God sort us all out in the end.

II Tim 4:21 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

Romans 12: 1-2 Therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God...This is your spritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform anylonger to the paterns of this world, but be trasformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to approve and test what God's will is. His good pleasing and perfect will.

Evolving God?...No..Loving God?... Yes

The not so new fight to remove God from our lives continues, with the evolutionists. This article in the NYTimes tries to lay out an argument that our need to believe in God evolved from a need to believe in the supernatural or something greater than ourselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

The fundamental question in the article is this:

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?

My answer: God created us to love him, and gave us the ability to have faith in him because of the love he shows us. I do not believe it to be an accident, nor did we adapt to need it.

Yes it is a simple answerer... But Faith as simple as a child is what Christ taught.

Mark 10:15
15I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."


And also in the article is this…

And one prominent member of the byproduct camp, Justin Barrett, is an observant Christian who believes in “an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God who brought the universe into being,” as he wrote in an e-mail message. “I believe that the purpose for people is to love God and love each other.”

At first blush, Barrett’s faith might seem confusing. How does his view of God as a byproduct of our mental architecture coexist with his Christianity? Why doesn’t the byproduct theory turn him into a skeptic?

“Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people,” Barrett wrote in his e-mail message. “Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?” Having a scientific explanation for mental phenomena does not mean we should stop believing in them, he wrote. “Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me — should I then stop believing that she does?”

Whether proven by science or not, God made this earth based on his own design and plan. We are made to seek him, and build a relationship with him; Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

The more I listen to what is going on in the world the more I realize it is not God’s plan. Evolution is a product of the world view that does not want to give God the credit for this beautiful world we live in, and wants to remove God and therefore morality from our lives. It is the ways of the world that are leading us further and further from the will of God. Paul when writing to the believers of Rome said:

Romans 12: 1-2 1 Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God...This is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the plans of this world, instead be transformed through the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve God's will, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

God wants us to live our lives through him, and what better way to live in this world than through the God who made it and us.....