Unreasonable Obedience

Have you ever read through 1st and 2nd Kings in the Bible?  You read over and over in the history of Israel how when this king was in power and did what was right and Israel walked with God, the nation prospered and then this other king comes into power and does what is evil in the sight of God and the nation fell on hard times.  It didn’t just happen once or twice. It consistently happened.

When the Israelites walked with God they lived in victory, freedom, and peace.  When they went their own way they lived in defeat, bondage, lack, and unrest. It is no different for us today.  In this stressful world, we all like the idea of peace and God gave us a very clear history lesson in the Bible of how to achieve it as a nation and as an individual…walk with God.

The Hebrew word for peace is shalom and it means “nothing missing, nothing broken,” or “to be whole.”  Sounds like a pretty good thing to have, right? Peace is a natural result of a close walk with our Father.  We’ll walk in peace and victory when we hear Him and obey His word. That’s all He asks us to do. He doesn’t ask us to do any miracles.  We just do what He says and He does the hard, impossible, miracle stuff.

I was thinking about Noah.  Can you imagine what it must have been like for Noah to build the ark?  This might be considered unreasonable obedience. The Bible says that Noah was "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God." (Genesis 6:9) He was the only one on the planet that found favor with God because he was the only one walking with Him.   Well, that just goes to show you that one righteous person can make a difference in their vote, their prayers, their willingness to not compromise and honor the one true God.  Do you ever feel like you are the only one on the planet (or at least your workplace) who won’t lie, steal, or cheat? Noah was literally the only one. Although he’d never seen rain before he was willing to do something outlandish for God like build this tiny little boat that he could hide in his garage.  Oh, wait a minute, no, that’s not how it goes. He built this huge monstrosity of an ark out in full site for everyone to take field trips to come to see over the years that it took to build and come laugh at him and make fun of him. Did you catch that? It took years to build the ark. (Some estimate that it took 55-75 years to build the ark!) Noah stayed with this hear and obey theme for years!

Side note: As we read the account of the flood, it can seem like such a terrible thing God did killing everyone, but actually God waited as long as He could to take such a big action because of His love for people.  And when it came down to the last man that would serve Him, He couldn't wait any longer or He would have lost everyone.

So, as I was thinking about Noah, I thought if I am the only person on the planet that believed God’s word for healing in my body (and I'm not! 😊)and if I had to stand on that word in obedience for years, I would do it.  If I never saw it happen in anyone else’s body or in my body before, if God said it in His word, I would believe for it. Noah never saw rain or a flood before and yet he didn’t go with what made perfect sense in the natural (to spend his time doing something more worthwhile than building a boat he was never going to use and to be the laughing stock of the neighborhood).  If Noah had told anyone else about how he felt God was telling him to build an ark but that he just wasn’t sure if he should do it and if he asked them their opinion, I’m sure they would have said that is unreasonable for God to ask you to do that. Noah, you must have heard that wrong. God must have meant something else. Maybe he wants you to build an ark spiritually, this is just a metaphor.

The entire time Noah was building the weather remained dry.  It’s not like he started to build and to help his faith along a little it lightly rained, or a trickle of water started to sweep across the backyard.  The entire time he was building it looked like nothing was going to happen. You can pray for healing and it can look like nothing happened. If you give up and quit believing God’s word at that time, you’ll not see the end result.

I believe that results will come quicker and quicker the more we get this into our soul. The more we renew our thinking to how much God loves us and that there is not a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for us.  And not only that but that He said we were healed by Jesus’ stripes. If He said it, we can believe it. And when we win a few hard-fought victories that take a while but transform our hearts and minds, then the next battle is shorter and easier to win.

Let’s be sure to not walk by what this world considers reasonable and right.  They even think evil is right and normal because they are in darkness. They don’t have the light of God in their lives to show them what is truly right.  But you do. And once He shows you, you grab on to it with unreasonable obedience and you walk out the other side hand in hand with your Father in victory and peace.