Noah预览

Diligence

Award-winning faith requires us to believe that God is benevolent and wants to reward those who diligently seek him.

Pleasing God requires that we believe that the benefit will be worth the trouble of diligently seeking His ways. Diligence means “careful and persistent work or effort.” That is what Noah did: He carefully followed God’s instructions and persisted in his effort.

Building our ark will take us an entire lifetime. It will be uphill much of the way. And it requires that we look beyond the horizon of anything we can see and touch.

The only way we will remain steadfast, diligent, and committed to the practice of building our lives according to God’s blueprint is if we trust that his ways are best. We must trust that in the end, our obedience will work out to our benefit—like it did for Noah, who spent a century building an ark precisely as God asked.

In reality, no one does anything unless they believe it will be of personal value. Even when we sacrifice, we expect a future benefit, like deferring spending as a way to invest in retirement. Trusting God is the best investment we can make because it has a guaranteed return.

Ark building is hard work. Our labors and pains would be quickly abandoned unless we believed that God’s promise would make it worth our while. The Apostle Paul says that what God will do for those who love him is beyond our capacity to comprehend.

Noah’s life provides an illustration for us to contemplate. His diligence in following God’s blueprint allowed him to escape destruction as it fell on those all around him. His obedience became a blessing to every one of his descendants on earth.

That is a great reward, and an excellent inspiration to diligently follow the path God has laid out for us.

Let’s pray and ask God for His strength to be persistent in following His will during our lives, that we may be faithful in doing any job He asks us to do, taking care of each detail. May we open our eyes to see others who began to build their arks, only to lose strength and direction. May the Lord use us to support and encourage them to continue their journey until the end. May we all keep our eyes on Christ and on His cross until the day of His return.

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