Welcome to Facing the Giants – Interviews with the Heroes of our Faith
Today we have Noah in the interview chair. Let’s jump right in.
LA: Welcome, Mr. Noah. It is nice to have you here.
Noah: Yessiree, with all that rain outside I felt like I needed an ark to get here, but that metal contraption I traveled in got me here safe and sound.
LA: Funny you should mention an ark, sir. Let’s talk about your ark. How did it happen that you built the ark?
Noah: Strange story, it is. One day I had just come in from worship service and I hear this voice telling me that He was pretty fed up with man and was going to destroy the earth. I looked around to see if someone was playing a practical joke on me, but discovered I was alone in the house. It took me a minute to realize that God was talking to me. He told me to build an ark. He gave me the exact measurements and what kind of wood to use. Just as I was about to ask why I needed such a thing, he told me that He was going to bring a flood on the earth that would completely destroy all living creatures.
LA: What did you say?
Noah: Well, I expect that I had a blank stare on my face. A flood? What’s a flood? Rain? We had never seen rain. This was kinda like your modern story of that fella Paul Revere riding through the village yelling, “the British are coming, the British are coming,” but you don’t have any clue what a ‘British’ is. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. None of it made sense to me.
LA: What did you do?
Noah: I began building. And I built and I built and I built. For years I built. My neighbors thought I was crazy. None of them knew God and so they certainly could not understand why God might talk to me, much less tell me to build an ark. They made fun of me and cursed at me. They tried to damage the ark. They even went so far as to try to have me put in prison but I wasn’t doing anything illegal. Still, I built.
LA: It is hard to be the object of ridicule because of your faith, isn’t it, sir? How did you get through that?
Noah: It was hard. It was hard on me and on my family. However, I knew that God had always been faithful to me. I knew that He was righteous and holy. Things had gotten so bad in the world. I had often wondered how and why He tolerated it. I guess He had just got a holy belly full of it and said, ‘Enough!’. I had always followed God and trusted Him. I had to believe that whatever He asked me to do was for my ultimate good, even if it was difficult in the present. I just had to trust Him.
LA: God was right, wasn’t He? It happened just like He said. Wow, I bet when that water started flowing you were glad you trusted Him by faith. You have a legacy of faithful perseverence. Thank you for joining us today.
MEDIATION MOMENT: When God asks us to do something that causes us to be the object of ridicule, what steps can we take to assure that we will persevere in faith?
