“Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God” (Gen. 6:9, NIV). Noah was right with God when everyone else was wrong. Noah was blameless among the people of his time when every other person was to blame for every kind of evil. Noah walked with God when the entire world followed in Cain’s rebellious footsteps and ran away from God. Yet Noah’s attitude seemed to be so confident it was as though he considered the whole world to be crazy while he was the only one who was sane! Surely he received much-needed strength and encouragement from his wife and three sons, but his confidence came from listening to what God had to say.
Noah listened to God as he walked with God, cultivating the awareness of His Presence. Are you a good listener?
God is not a man, that He should lie,
nor a son of man, that He should repent.
The Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. § Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.
The faithful God … keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. § All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies. § Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God … who keeps truth forever.
Num. 23:19; James 1:17; Heb. 13:8; Ps. 91:4;
Heb. 6:17–18; Deut. 7:9; Ps. 25:10; 146:5–6
If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. § My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. § He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him. § The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you.
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.
For every … priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God … He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray … So also Christ … Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey. § Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Prov. 24:10; Isa. 40:29; 2 Cor. 12:9; Ps. 91:15;
Deut. 33:27; Ps. 69:20; Heb. 5:1–2, 5, 8–9; Isa. 53:4
During the days of Ezekiel, God poured out His heart and shared what He wanted to do for His beloved people. Then He revealed an astonishing fact: “I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them” (Eze. 36:37, KJV). God was waiting to be asked!
My mother said that if there are any tears shed in heaven, they are going to be shed over all the answers to prayer for which no one ever bothered to ask! What blessing is God waiting to give you, but you haven’t asked Him for it?
Why does He wait for us to ask? Maybe He wants us to acknowledge our need of Him. Maybe it’s one way of getting our attention. Maybe it’s the only way we will know when the answer comes that it comes from Him, and we don’t credit ourselves or someone else for it.
As He who called you is holy,
you also be holy in all your conduct.
You know how we exhorted … and charged every one of you … that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. § You may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. § Being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. § Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Peter 1:15; 1 Thess. 2:11–12; 1 Peter 2:9;
Eph. 5:8–11; Phil. 1:11; Matt. 5:16; 1 Cor. 10:31
Ask Me of things to come concerning My sons;
and concerning the work of My hands, you command Me.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes.” … Thus says the Lord God: “I will also let the house of Israel inquire of Me to do this for them.”
If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.
Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have what- ever he says.
Isa. 45:11; Ezek. 36:26–27, 37; Matt. 18:19–20; Mark 11:22–23
Cain had been created by God. He had been created with life from God. He had been created for God. And now he was separated from God. Unconfessed sin and rebellion makes a person so miserable in the presence of a holy, righteous God that the sin must either be confessed and cleansed or the sinner must leave God’s presence.
Cain’s tragic life illustrates the hard lesson that guilt is our friend if it drives us to God. However, if we refuse to turn to God in repentance and confession, guilt will drive us away from God to our own destruction. Cain’s bitterness that was rooted in resentment and rebellion bore wicked fruit in his family for generations to follow. Cain’s sin, left to take its own natural course, intensified with each generation until the entire civilization of the world in his day was ravaged by it.
What sin in your life – if left unchecked – will ravage the life of your children?
