Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Let me ask you a question.
[00:00:03] Would you continue to build for a hundred years if everyone around you thought you were crazy?
[00:00:10] What would it look like if you valued obeying God instead of valuing the opinions of others?
[00:00:18] This, ladies and gentlemen, is what Noah did. And we're going to talk about it here in today's podcast. God doesn't design us to fit. He designs us to be impactful.
[00:00:28] Hey, welcome to Shifts and Ladders. It's Ryan.
[00:00:32] Been on this journey of talking about faith. And, you know, we've been really in Hebrews. We kind of took a break last time, but we're in Hebrews chapter 11, and today's gonna be a short one, but I want to for us to anchor on specifically verse seven. So Hebrews chapter 11, verse seven.
[00:00:56] And this is what it says.
[00:00:59] By faith. Noah divinely warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark to save his family, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
[00:01:15] Very easy. Now, if you haven't known or don't know the story of Noah and the ark, I implore you, I encourage you to go to the beginning of the Bible, specifically Genesis chapter. I want to say it's 10.
[00:01:33] Let's. Let's do it right now.
[00:01:35] Genesis chapter 5 through 10 will give you a bit of a story of what Noah was going through. So this is the thing, guys.
[00:01:44] Noah.
[00:01:45] God goes to Noah, and essentially, because he found him faithful, he found him righteous because he believed God, he was a righteous man in the time where there was no righteousness to be found.
[00:01:59] And essentially God says, look, I'm going to start over. Bible says that he was so saddened by the fact that he was seeing all of this sin and disruption and just stuff that he didn't intend. So he's like, I'm just going to start over.
[00:02:14] And he flooded the earth, right? But before he did that, he gave Noah instructions to start building an ark.
[00:02:22] Now, might I add you, no one has seen water fall from the sky. They've only seen water bubble up from the earth.
[00:02:33] So what they're saying is, and what Moses, what Noah was preparing for was something that no one had seen.
[00:02:41] On top of that, he was building something that no one saw a need for.
[00:02:47] So the question then becomes, how has your faith and how does your faith stay resilient when there's no proof, there's no evidence, and people are doubting you from jump. Okay, so we're going to go through a couple items here in this to really talk about how you can build resilient faith. Okay, first thing the scripture breaks down for us is resilience. That first of all, God warned Noah of something that hadn't been seen yet. Resilience requires you seeing something that you can't see yet and anchoring yourself on that no matter what the opinion is. In fact, that's the epitome of faith, is the substance of things. Hope for evidence of things not seen, not just for the things that you are wanting. Most of us get faith kind of mixed up because we think that that is only works and activates with the things that we want. It also activates with the things that we have been told and we believe.
[00:03:54] So the only way you know you only you have faith or unshakable faith is if it comes into turbulence with opposing thoughts, opposing opinions.
[00:04:08] That's when we find out how strong your faith is. Because what you see, what you experience are two different things. And unfortunately not everyone is going to see what you have been believing in until they happen to see it.
[00:04:28] There's a quote that Michael Todd says, he's the pastor of Transformation Church, if you haven't heard of him, he has these books called Relationship Goals. Crazy Faith Damaged but Not Destroyed. All New York Times best selling books, good books to read.
[00:04:43] Maybe we'll put a link in the, in the description here. But one of the things that he says is like, it's crazy until it happens.
[00:04:52] As he says crazy. I got, he said I got crazy faith. They call me crazy until it actually happens.
[00:04:59] Right? So I think that is one of the most important things.
[00:05:03] Obedience. This is number two. Obedience causes us to trust God. So it's a healthy fear of God or reverence of God that requires us to move and trust on what he said.
[00:05:19] Noah was found righteous because he believed God. Just like we know about Noah.
[00:05:24] Anything or anyone who has been found righteous in the eyes of God believe that God is who he said he is and they believed him.
[00:05:37] So if you believe someone's word, you automatically have, I'm saying not automatically, but you have a healthy respect and reverence for that person.
[00:05:50] And clearly God gave this man some instructions to do. So when you get the news that, hey, I'm about to wipe everything out, I need you to prepare beforehand to take care of your family and to take care of all of the, the, the animals and creepy crawly things of the earth. I'm gonna need you to start now and doing it for a hundred years.
[00:06:15] Imagine just showing up to work for a hundred years.
[00:06:19] Doing the same thing, waiting for the day when it happened. I'm telling you, this, this. This slides into number three a little bit, but could you imagine all the people walking and seeing Noah just building an ark? Just, you know, my man's old too, so he's. He's hammering.
[00:06:47] He's putting pieces and things together in order to make sure that it's all right.
[00:06:55] And these folks are looking at him like, what do you think you're doing?
[00:06:59] Like, well, listen, it's going to rain. Like, I mean, God told me I'm just going to be. I'm being obedient.
[00:07:06] And they're like, what's rain, dude? You're making this stuff up.
[00:07:11] And then those like, well, it's rain. Rain, water from the sky.
[00:07:16] That's what God told me. God told you, huh?
[00:07:19] So what do you do in the face of adversity?
[00:07:24] Are you gonna pack it in or are you gonna stay strong?
[00:07:31] And this is the thing. He doesn't have to fight.
[00:07:35] All he has to do is stand.
[00:07:41] He doesn't have to fight. All he has to do is stand.
[00:07:44] Simply because standing lets individuals, lets our enemy of our soul know that we will not be broken down by circumstances.
[00:07:57] Some negative situations, some very negative people, and words that people are saying that they don't even understand because God has given us the strength to stand on his word.
[00:08:12] And his word, the Bible says, will not return unto him void, but will accomplish everything that it is sent out to do.
[00:08:20] So Noah really doesn't have to defend himself, but number three, he does have to prepare.
[00:08:32] And resilience is not a passive activity.
[00:08:36] It takes action.
[00:08:38] We said, we know this all the time. You probably heard this as faith. Faith without works is dead. Yeah. Being alone.
[00:08:46] So your faith has to make you move in action when there is no one applauding you.
[00:08:53] There's no claps, there's no bow, there's no nothing. It's just you and the work in God.
[00:09:01] Okay, so I'm a challenge you. This is going to be a short pod. It's going to be a short pod today.
[00:09:09] What's the ark God told you to build in your life?
[00:09:13] And have you stopped because you haven't seen the storm yet?
[00:09:20] What promise did God whisper to you that you haven't taken action on?
[00:09:27] Are you waiting for. Here's a big one. Are you waiting for confirmation, or are you willing to move with conviction for the thing that God has already told you to do?
[00:09:40] Y', all, this is when I get these. These hit me just as much as they hit you. But I will tell you, faith, particularly in this season, is challenging, particularly for me.
[00:09:55] I'm in a season in my life right now where I don't know what is gonna happen.
[00:10:02] But I do have to remember what God said.
[00:10:06] I have to recall what he's called me to do.
[00:10:11] And am I going to be so convicted to start the work instead of looking for confirmation and affirmation from people that don't even know what I'm called to do?
[00:10:28] I'm challenging for that today.
[00:10:30] So if you haven't done this build, you pick up a hammer and start building in faith.
[00:10:38] I'm a close with this. What's funny about the story about Noah is that for a hundred plus years Noah is working on the ark and people were thinking and telling him that he was crazy. But what ended up happening is when it did start to rain, everyone started running to the ark and wanted a place and a space on that because they knew that they were going to die.
[00:11:03] The entire earth, by the way.
[00:11:06] And the Bible says that when it started raining, says the Lord shut the door to the ark, basically saying that nobody's getting in.
[00:11:19] When God shuts the door, he shuts it.
[00:11:24] And all the people who thought Moses, not Moses, all, all the people that thought Noah was crazy were like, my dude was right and they drowned.
[00:11:36] They drowned because they chose not to believe someone, that they, they drowned because they could not trust that an individual was that resilient to stay anchored to a hundred plus year promise.
[00:12:04] They couldn't believe it.
[00:12:06] They wouldn't believe it.
[00:12:10] But you see what happened.
[00:12:15] So are we going to be Noah? Are we going to be those people that doubted him until it actually rains?
[00:12:24] So this is your challenge for today.
[00:12:27] The resiliency of faith and how it shows up in your life.
[00:12:31] All right, Share this with somebody who needs it.
[00:12:34] I am going to be sharing and you'll be seeing this in the next week or so on YouTube. We are going to be doing several lives talking about decluttering your soul. Faith also talks about the things that we need in order to be a healthy, functioning, spiritual, emotional being.
[00:12:58] And a lot of us have so much baggage that we have to deal with this. So you will see. Subscribe. Set the alert. We're going to be having our first.
[00:13:10] Well, actually we're having it. We had it yesterday, on Thursday, but make sure that you stay live. We're going to do Tuesday and Thursday. Next week we're going to be doing several lives on that, on decluttering your soul and what does that process look like? And what does God say about it?
[00:13:26] Because if we don't make space for him, he's going to find a way. But we're also going to.
[00:13:33] It says that we're saying we value other things.
[00:13:38] Over with the word of God has said in our lives, so keep it locked, be blessed. We'll see you in the next one. Peace.
