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.