Persevere

I wrote this nearly a year ago on July 15 2021. I was broken and depressed and felt so lonely. I had been trying to earn God’s love and kept failing over and over again. I couldn’t be perfect. In desperation I fell to my knees and let my forehead touch the floor. In that moment I surrendered my all to Jesus. I came as I was and I pronounced my wretched estate to the Most High. I was the prodigal son coming home in this moment. He didn’t care about the sin. Love showed up that night. I got up from my knees and had this urge to write flowing through my mind. Noah. God used this Sunday School narrative to forever change my life and perspective of Him. I hope you see His love shining through this letter.

Do I at my core truly follow and believe the whole truth of the Bible. As I searched my own heart, I found that I often neglect the truths of scripture, a fact that is often negatively reflected in my actions. So, I asked myself, how am I going to persevere through the challenges of this world. To fight against the sinful desires of my flesh. Will the truths of scripture truly help me persevere?

All of present day humanity is a descendant of Noah. Not a single person alive can deny that they have his blood running through their veins if they truly believe the truths of scripture.

Picture your life and imagine that you had no other Christian friends or peers aside from your family in the entire world. Then try and picture within your own life trying to live a life for Christ in this world laden and dying with sin. Now, Noah was a man of God and when commanded by God, had the faith to spend 100 years of his life building an ark as commanded by God. Isn’t that crazy, I go to work for four months of the year while I’m not in university and by the time three months come around, I want nothing to do with work anymore. Now imagine Noah doing this for one hundred years, unpaid. That’s twelve hundred months in a row of strenuous labor working on the Ark. The enormity of the ark would have made building the hardest and most challenging architectural feat ever accomplished in history. With only a Father and his sons building it; remarkable.

Noah was hated by the world who cursed he and his God. However, Noah believed God and chose to build the boat while facing the ridicule of the world. He chose to walk the path less traveled and follow in the footsteps of God, not man. He had the strength to choose, in a world ridden with sin to be in the world, but not of the world and to build up his treasures in heaven rather than amassing trophies on this earth that will blow away as chaff in the wind. He chose to place his joy and hope in the palms of God rather than in the temporary materialistic pleasures of this world. This man had the will to persevere through twelve hundred months of labor to obey and follow the commands of his God. With sons and daughters who also chose to follow the Lord! Rather than indulging in the pleasures of adolescence such as sexual immorality, popularity, money, appearance, pride and complacency. They made the conscious choice to glorify God rather than themselves. How did God repay these acts of faithfulness? The Lord saved his servants from the wrath he would unleash upon his entire creation. A creation that God created perfect. Without blemish he created the mountains and the fields and the eagles and doves of the air. The animals and landscape he spoke into being with a single breath. From the lions and the turtles and the dolphins in the sea to the beautiful daisies wafting on a lush mountain side he created them. All this perfection blemished, by the very creature he created in his own image. Yet, instead of condemning his whole creation and starting again. He chose a man, a man who was our forefather, to bestow his kindness upon due to his faithfulness to him. A man who recalled the faithfulness of God to his forefathers and Chose! To glorify God rather than the world.

The result of this choice was Noah being scorned, ridiculed and ultimately rejected by the world. However, he was lifted up above all else for his actions as God chose him and his descendants to be with him upon a new earth, a new world and a new beginning. Now I, as a Christian am living in a world splattered with sin, with temptation and worldly desires surrounding me.

However, I need not fear. For I have chosen as a Christian to take up my cross, as Jesus already did for me. To live in the world but not of it. To choose not to indulge in the youthful lusts and passions of the world such as sexual immorality, popularity, money, appearance, pride and complacency. For I know! That God will lift me up one day, just as he did for Noah and his sons, to glory, to be with him again forever, in perfect splendor where we will walk on streets of Gold. With crowns of Jewels upon our heads we will enter his court and look upon his majesty. We will look upon the one who chose to become a man just like us. We will look upon Jesus! Who came to our rescue and took upon all of our sins on his shoulders. All the sins that had destined us for death and destruction and a worthiness to burn in the eternal fire. All these sins taken upon him, the punishment and righteous justice of the Father towards us was borne by him.

Why?

That reason I cannot fathom, it is incomprehensible the love that Jesus has for me. How could he love me that much be able to have nails driven into the bone of his hands and feet, to have a crown of thorns pierce his brow and to be jeered and rejected by the very world he created and to say, “Lord forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”

Jesus paid it all for me. The wages for my sin had strung me into a debt I could never pay, but I don’t have to, for Jesus took all my wages, he took all my sexual impurity, all my idolatry, all of my sin upon his shoulders to punch my ticket to Glory. Choose to receive his love every day rather than the appreciation of the world, choose to rest in the comfort of his promises rather than my own selfish desires. Choose to be the man he called you to be! To be a Noah in today’s world. To choose to obey God’s plan for my life, to be patient, selfless, loving, humble to pursue a life pleasing to God but not this world. This will be a hard road to walk but I can still live it joyfully. With the knowledge that at the end of my journey, at the end of my trek through the struggles of this life, I will have eternal glory waiting for me with my savior as I will be standing in his court, wearing my crown of Jewels upon my head. Yet, I will not want my crown, for I will remember that my savior once washed my feet; became the lowest of the low for me. And I will not want my crown. No, I will bow my knee and place my crown at his feet as I am humbled by the love, he could have for wretch such as I.

So, as I remember all of this I am in disbelief and wonder at the love Jesus could have for me. How can this love be true. Yet, I recall that I can believe the entire Bible to be true, and to be a living word that is useful for all teaching, rebuking and reprimanding. I believe that the stories of Noah and the resilience he and his family showed in a world more rotten than my own are true. We know for certain that God shows faithfulness to those who serve him and love him. We can take heart in the love of God and know that he is coming again one day for us. To receive all of us, who chose to place our hope in His Love! To reign with him for a thousand years in a world he will rule and then be with Him forevermore. This is why I choose to persevere each day. For what a wonderful day that will be, when all the struggle through sexual temptation, lust, idolatry, complacency, pride will be ripped away and I will recline in the overwhelming, always seeking, reckless love of God. Forever!