How Noah Felt

I work with a friend of mine and 8 or 9 ministers at a Christ-centered recovery house for men. The house is overseen by a volunteer staff of Serenity's house director, pastoral staff director, house manager and staff pastors and ministers. Many of these men of God credit Christ Jesus for their own complete deliverance from drugs and alcohol. Other Christian men from the community are also actively involved with mentoring the men in the recovery house.

This post is a tremendous encouragement given to us from God during an especially desperate season in this ministry.

It's about how we sometimes feel as Noah must have felt as God was using him to build the ark. Perhaps it will speak to you as God builds what He is building through you.....

While many may see the house as a recovery house, it is actually much more. While the addictions which plague our residents must be effectively and permanently eliminated from their lives, Serenity House does not simply purpose to "get men clean." The purpose of Serenity House is to help men to learn how to live personally, financially, and spiritually responsible lives as men of God and disciples of Jesus Christ.

A two-fold message is going out to the men of Serenity House; that one can see their lives effectively and permanently changed in every way through Christ Jesus, but that we are personally helpless to effectively and permanently succeed in any way outside of Him. By the plain Truth spoken in genuine love, some of the precious men of at this house are hearing, believing and living the understanding that inner peace, liberty, true manhood and eternity lie in Christ Jesus alone.

Operating such a house is a challenge in more ways than I can possibly share here, and yet we see God provide what is needed at every turn. There have been many times when things “looked hopeless,” but God has stepped in every time to bring about His further glory. This process of being taken down to the seeming last day, the seeming last moment of existence of what God had birthed within our hearts and hands at this house has been a purifying, transforming experience.

During one such season, we were down to one man in the house. It didn’t “look” like any more were coming soon, and it “looked” like we might have to close the house. And in the midst of this, God began to pour Himself out through a new manual for the house that had the potential to dramatically improve our outreach. As I sat in the office, the words poured out from God’s Spirit onto my computer screen, and I sat back and marveled at what He had created.

As I sat and rejoiced, a thought struck me.

“What for?”

I mean, it was a bit silly to be filled with joy and gratitude to God when there was only one man in the house and it looked like it might be closing at the end of the month. Yet I was so filled with excitement at what I was seeing before me, considering just how much this could be used by God in transforming men’s lives.

“What for?”

And then our Lord spoke to my Spirit and said, “Now you know how Noah felt.”

You see, my friend and I and a number of the ministers on staff at Serenity are delivered addicts, but none of us are trained drug counselors. God gave us a mission and, in spite of our lack of ability, He has given us the grace to trust His ability to fulfill the mission He gave us. It seems as though many times God has said to my friend and I and the ministers serving at the house, “Now you know how Noah felt.”

This man Noah was called to build an enormous ark. He was not a builder. He was a farmer. He wasn’t a weatherman. He was a righteous man. He had no special credentials other than his faith in God. It had never before rained upon the face of the earth, and yet God said the whole earth would be flooded. Noah had no hope other than his trust in God. The people hated him and mocked him for the 125 years that it took him to build the ark. He had no other encouragement other than the love of God. God speaks to us all as we consider these things, “Now you know how Noah felt.”

Noah was not a missionary. And yet, were it not for Noah and his successfully completed mission to build the ark, we would not be here today. We would not have received the 10 commandments from God through Moses. We would not have received salvation from God through Jesus Christ. Were it not for Noah, we would not have received from God the promises of the New Testament, promises that we see today springing forth in our hearts, in our lives and in our world today. We have come to live in the greatest of days, because an ill-equipped, unprepared, disrespected non-missionary named Noah heard a call from God, and decided to obey Him in spite of all that.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus told Peter in John 21:18, “when you were young, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted to go, but when you become a mature adult in Christ, another will dress you and take you places that you don’t want to go.” When we finally and obediently answer the true call of God upon each of our lives, chances are we won’t want to go there and do the things He‘s called us to do. Chances are, our human nature will want to do otherwise, wanting to avoid that call of God or to leave it up to someone else. God says to us all, “Now you know how Noah felt.”

Noah wasn’t a missionary. He was a everyday, righteous man whom God had called to do something, and he did it. God has called us to the same.

Oh, our mission - if you will - won’t look like everyone else’s on the block. Chances are, it will be a bit odd. Chances are it won’t garner much positive attention or personal praise for us - only glory for God. And chances are, there will be days that - even though we’re assured of our calling by God to that work - spiritually, emotionally and physically we will fall exhausted at the feet of Christ Jesus, pleading for His mercy and the strength, and wisdom and divine grace to carry on for another day. And He will give it to us again and again - He will give it to us - everyday righteous people, like He gave it to Noah.

No matter the different calls that each of us may have upon our lives, they will all lead us to one place - outside of the church walls, out of our comfort zone, out to the uncomfortable places that Jesus called “the highways and the hedges,” to places where the broken, and blind, and rejected people are found.
But we know this......

We can be uncomfortable so that the comfortless can know the Comforter.

No matter the different calls that each of us may have upon our lives, they will all be given to us for one purpose, the same purpose that our Lord Jesus Christ gave to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. His words to Paul are His words to us:

“Now get up - and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to the power of God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”

This is the single purpose of all of our callings from God.

Noah was not a missionary, but he had a special mission given to him from God. So do each and every one of us. And if you’ve not begun work on that which He’s called you to do, or if you’ve stepped back from the work for a moment because of the pain and discouragement that sometimes accompanies it, or if you’ve been considering quitting in the midst of the work, you must know that the time remaining to start or resume and finish God’s work is growing short. You see, Jesus tells of His return, saying, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

These are the days of Noah, my brethren. Look about us. Sin abounds and it gets worse every day. There is no turning back. The end of this world is coming. But God has already provided an ark for this day. Not an ark like Noah built, a man-made vessel of wood. God has prepared a greater ark.......His own Son, Jesus Christ. Our mission from God, our calling from Him, whatever it may be, will find us leading - not animals - but the redeemed souls of men into the refuge of our loving King; safe from the deluge to come, sealed unto eternity within the ark of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.

Just as God promised Noah that, after the flood there would be a new world beyond the one he had always known, God has promised us a new world beyond this one. In spite of Noah’s own inability, in spite of the rejection of men, in spite of the seeming impossibility of what God had called him to do, Noah believed and he got up - and he stood on his feet. He answered and fulfilled God’s call, as He is calling us to do this day.

What relief, what excitement, what joy unspeakable and full of glory Noah must have felt when he first saw the dry land appear, just as God had promised.

If we believe and obey, in spite of our own inability, in spite of the rejection of men, in spite of the seeming impossibility of what God had called us to do, there will be a day when God’s promise to us comes to pass as well. If we believe and obey, there will be a day when the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and we will all be gathered together with Him to spend life evermore in His presence.

What relief, what excitement, what joy unspeakable and full of glory Noah must have felt when he God’s promise to him come to pass. And on that glorious day when we too behold God’s promise to us come to pass - on that day when we behold His coming with relief, and excitement, and joy unspeakable and full of glory, we will all surely say......“Now I know how Noah felt.”

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