Faith Like Noah

After a trip to see the Ark Encounter with our three youngest kids, I have been contemplating the faith it took to do something as crazy as build an ark for 75-100 years in preparation for a world wide flood that God said was coming.  God accentuated the faith theme when soon after our visit, my son came to ask about how to react when we ask God for something and have faith that He can do it, and it doesn’t happen.  Huh, I have the same question, so what’s the answer?  There have been many things I have prayed about over the years with seemingly no answer, which I have interpreted the answer to be “no” or “wait”. This is what I was taught and heard others say is the reason for unanswered prayer, which can be true at times.

But a different answer suddenly popped into my head this time, after asking God how to answer my son, which means it is God’s answer, not my attempt to figure it out once again.  An answer I had never considered.  In Hebrews 11, the hall of faith in the Bible, it is commending different people for their faith in varying circumstances.  All these people encountered God themselves and heard Him speak and knew what He wanted them to do, no matter how crazy.  Like Noah.  That was an amazing amount of work to do while getting ridiculed over a long period of time for possibly nothing.  And to believe that the animals would show up and a flood was coming?  Noah heard God speak and did what He said, believing what he couldn’t see just yet.  He believed God and his actions followed through with that belief, which is faith.  

So all the things that I ask for that seem to go unanswered, are they what I should be asking for?  What I have been seeing in my own life is that God gives me the things I should be asking for in the midst of my trials, that I haven’t been asking for, because I am too busy asking to get out of the trial my way. He reinterprets my request through the lens of love, always for my good (Rom. 8:26-28).  Instead of fixing my trial and pain the way I think He should, He gives me Himself and transforms me to be more like Him.  He gives me grace, mercy, patience, love, peace, and all the depths of His character to help me know Him better and to shape me, if I will let Him.  Those seem to be His answers to the requests that don’t seem to get answered the way I think they should.  He also says that we don’t get what we ask for because we are asking with wrong motives (James 4:3). 

But I have also been challenged to consider what faith is.  It is hearing and knowing what God says, whether it is written in the Bible or something that God says to us, and then believing it to be true and acting on it.  That’s the whole list of people in Hebrews 11–they heard God, believed Him and followed through with what He said to do.  I’d see a lot more answered prayer if I was asking for the things that were needed, in order to do or be what He asked me to do or be. It seems like I’m usually coming up with my own ideas and requesting specific outcomes, asking God only for what I want Him to do.   

I read in Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster that if prayer isn’t working the way God says it should in His word, then the problem isn’t God.  The problem is me and my understanding.  God says that my faith can move mountains (Matt. 17:20). But I first need to know that God said to move that mountain and believe Him.  And then ask Him to move the mountain.  I usually come up with the idea first of moving a particular mountain, and then ask God to move it.  But does He want it to move?  It was my idea, not His.  So if it’s my idea, no true faith is required because I’m not believing any words of God.  I believe God can do something, but will He?  That’s the question.  Does it line up with His kingdom purposes?  So it seems like I should find out what God is up to and do that when He tells me.   That is faith.  I think that’s why there can be no faith without works (James 2:20).  Usually I am asking God to build my kingdom instead of His.

So it appears that I need to focus on knowing what God says (written or spoken) and then acting like what He says is true.  Many people in the Bible heard God in their circumstances and knew enough of His character to believe Him.  There are many things God has said in His word that I still don’t truly believe, even if I say I do, because I don’t act like it.  Like one of my counseling professor said to my class, “If this is true, how should it change me?”  I think that’s a better question to sit with than why God isn’t going along with my ideas of what my life should look like.  Believing what’s true will stretch my faith, like Noah.