BE BOLD! BELIEVE AND TRUST GOD
BE BOLD! BELIEVE AND TRUST GOD!
Thank God for all our wonderful children!
The promise of God in Isaiah 8:18 shall be our lot always and always, Amen. Here is what it says: “Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts,, which dwelleth in Zion.” Isaiah 8:18 KJV Let us believe this with every fibre of our being.
Recently my son was watching the bible story of Noah’s Ark in animation and though I was busy doing something else, I was listening. The sound effect was simply awesome. The whish whosh whoshing of the waves crashing against the ark when the wind, the storm and the flood began was phenomenal. However, the cries of the people in the ark as it kept tossing back and forth in the storm and the flood was what caught my attention more. How did these people feel? Did they know how this journey was going to end? How did they ever agree to be locked into the ark?
And what came to my mind was that “Trusting God requires boldness.” How can you not be bold? As I began to meditate on this, I also began to search the scriptures.
I looked at Noah’s story again and saw how he was completely obedient to what God commanded him to do. Without any doubt naysayers would have laughed at Noah and even mocked him. Some people would have tried to talk him out of building the ark. And as he would have been telling them to repent they would have laughed him to scorn and carried on whatever they were doing. It was recorded in Matthew 17 that : “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man: People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.” Matthew 17:26-27 NIV
You see we were told that God had spoken only to Noah and it was Noah’s responsibility to convince members of his family to key into God’s instructions and plans. We are talking of adult men and their wives. Did they not question their father? Were they not afraid of this thing their father was doing? Would their wives be willing to leave their families behind? We only know that when it was time, they went into the ark with Noah.
Here is what we were told in the book of Genesis: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. “ Genesis 6:9b NIV. Noah was described as a righteous man. His sons must have been seeing him in a relationship with God to such an extent that they had no reason to doubt or fear going into the ark with their father, if it was this God that commanded it. But my goodness, when the door was being shut only the bold could have been tempted not to run back out. The bold, who were ready to face whatever lay ahead.
Abram, a descendant of Noah, was also described as a righteous man. “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:6 NIV
God had told Abram, an old man at that time who had no children at all, that his offspring would be as countless as the stars in the sky. Abram did not doubt this and because he believed God, it was counted as righteousness.
Trusting and believing God is not for the faint hearted, the fearful or the timid. It is only for the righteous and according to Proverbs “the righteous are as bold as a lion.” Proverbs 28:1 NIV
The issue of believing or trusting God would normally arise when everything in the physical points in the opposite direction of what to believe or trust God for. (For example, a barren woman inspite of years of infertility may be asked to believe God for a child even when tests have revealed that she has a problem.) God had warned Noah that He was going to destroy the earth because of man’s evil and wicked ways. God Himself shut them into the ark. And Noah just had to believe that God would preserve and keep his family throughout the fierce flood that lasted for forty days.
Dear friends, it is time for us to be bold about God’s promises to us because God has given us a gift of righteousness and we have now become “the righteousness of God in Christ.” By God’s standards every believer is already righteous. So we can act like it by being bold. It does not serve us well to live in doubt and fear. Enough of being anxious about everything. It is boldly that we are asked to approach God in order to receive mercy and help. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16 KKV
LET US TAKE GOD AT HIS EVERY WORD, TRUST AND BELIEVE HIM BOLDLY AND WATCH HIM DO WHAT HE SAYS HE WILL DO.
OLUYINKA EGO-MARTINS ©