What's the point?

Well, I have to admit, it's been one of those weeks again where you wish for nothing but the weekend, and when it finally comes, it's just as tiring as the rest of the week. I feel pretty beat - I've been sticking to a pretty strict diet where I don't eat late at night, and I'm eating about half as much as I did before. Sometimes it makes me feel great, other times I feel like I'm starving all the time. I thought it was kind of analogous to our spiritual lives. Sometimes it seems like the Spirit is really moving and you can barely keep up, and other times it can feel like things are stagnating and not really going anywhere. This week for me was sorta like the latter, but as always, God's message comes just when you need it. Here's what I read this week

Monday: Genesis 6 - Noah builds the ark
Tuesday: Genesis 7 - The floods rise up
Wednesday: Genesis 8 - The floods recede
Thursday: Genesis 9 - God's covenant with Noah, Noah's sons
Friday:
Saturday:
Sunday: Genesis 10 - Lineage of Noah's sons

Maybe the reason why this week felt so stagnant was because I missed two days... ;) At any rate, this week for me was a recap of a very familiar story of how God saved Noah and his family because they were righteous in a very wicked world. One thing I had never thought of before though was the amount of time that Noah had to wait to trust God's plan for him, and how he did it without second-guessing God's commands.

Imagine for a moment that you start building a giant ship in your backyard because God told you to. Think your neighbors might have something to say about it? What would you tell them? "Oh yeah, God's going to wipe out the earth with a flood, but he told me to build a ship to escape the cataclysm." They all probably thought he was insane. But what strikes me out of this story this particular time is that God didn't have to save Noah by telling him to build an Ark - He could have just magically transported him to the future and let him skip the difficulty of enduring the flood, or the insults of his fellow men, or any of that. But instead, God told him to build a boat to save his family, and it took years of hard work to finish it.

So many times, I fall into that line of thinking that if God was really sovereign and if He really loves me, why doesn't He just get me out of whatever mess I'm in and do it the least painful way possible? By this story, we can see that sometimes, God wants you to learn to trust him by working hard at fulfilling his plan. It may not make sense at the moment to build a giant ship in the middle of your desert home, or face some other seemingly-insane obstacle, but He's got a plan and it just so happens to be the very best plan anyone could ever make for you. Just like Jeremiah 29:11 says, God doesn't want to harm you, He wants to prosper you. This is definitely something I struggle with on a day-to-day basis, but I'm learning to do as 1 Peter 5:7 says and give my cares to God when things just don't make sense, because He cares for us.

So the next time you have a week where you just don't know why you're toiling away or working towards what might seem like a fruitless end, take some time to step back and ask yourself if what you are doing is because it's what you want to do, or if it's because what God wants you to do. If it's the former, then ask God to change your heart, and if it's the latter, ask God to give you patience to continue the work He's currently tasked you with. He will never ask you to do something that He knows you can't do, so consider yourself equipped for the work and press on!

That's all I have for now, talk to you next time!

Ben