Can you imagine the ridicule and persecution Noah had to endure when he was building the arc? God had given him the exact dimensions and implicit instructions for the project which did not include a rudder or a sail. When the arc was completed and Noah’s family and the animals were aboard, God shut the door! The incessant rain descended, the arc was afloat, no rudder, no sail, just shut in safely, abandoned to the overshadowing of Almighty God. At the appointed time, the floods dissipated and God sovereignly opened the door of the arc.
God created us for Himself, even though He gives us a free will, He desires us to respond to His unconditional love for us. God wants to be wanted. We were created in His image, so we understand His longing for relationship with us. In that relationship He wants us to trust Him for our every need. We were never meant to have control of our lives independent of Him. We came into this world with nothing and will leave with nothing. A child growing up in a loving family feels secure and is able to trust his parents implicitly. He has no cares or anxieties regarding his needs because he has learnt to trust and experienced provision from his father’s loving hands. Jesus said, “…Except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” Matthew 18:3. Jesus is referring to child like faith and trust in our Heavenly Father without having to understand everything. Our security is in knowing who our Father is. To know Him is to love Him, to love Him is to trust Him.
Jesus is our “Arc”. When we surrender our will to His and abandon control of our lives, we are “shut in God’s Arc”…..no rudder, no sail of our own making, but safely “dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, abiding under the shadow of the Almighty”, (Psalm 91). At the appointed time, God will open the door and direct me by His Holy Spirit to the pathway of His choice.
A victorious life is a yielded one, with the resurrected life of Jesus flowing out, demonstrating His character. Jesus became the Man of Sorrows and went to the utter depths at Calvary to prove that which is born of God cannot die. The power of Jesus’ resurrected life is in every Believer. My self will, lack of surrender and humility are the obstacles of my own making that prevent the power of that life coming forth in me.
I cannot expect change when I continue to do the same old things in the same old way. the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth! Is it time to exchange some of my wrong believing for God’s truths? God is willing to work with me and make me willing to do His will for ” It is God who works in you both to will, and to do, of His good pleasure,” Philippians 2:1. As I surrender my will to His, God works with me and I find that His good pleasure becomes mine! His is all the glory! As I yield, His enabling power is released in me!
“Let me lose my life and find it, Lord, in Thee,
Let all self be slain, my friends see only Thee,
Though it cause me grief and pain, I will find my life again,
When I lose it, Lord, and find it all in Thee.”
