Maranatha Messenger

WHAT TO DO
WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
(Believe God Pt. 4)

FAITH IS BELIEVING IN THE UNSEEN

1. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? You believe God! We must remember the Christian life is a journey of faith! Sometimes our individual lives appear to be like a broken puzzle scattered into a thousand pieces. We just can’t see how the pieces are going to fit together. This is where faith comes in!

2. We must remember that God works from the vantage point of omniscience. He can see the completion of the puzzle! As He begins to work in my life one piece at a time I must believe in His sovereign plan. This is why Paul told the Corinthian believers that they should “walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Even though we cannot see the completion of the puzzle we can believe that God is putting the pieces together according to His plan. This is the walk of faith!

3. How often have you heard this philosophical mindset? “Seeing is believing.” Probably thousands of times. Yet on the other hand, biblical theology teaches believing is seeing. Let me explain. The writer of Hebrews defined faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). In other words, faith is believing in the unseen!

4. For instance, Hebrews says, “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house” (Hebrews 11:7). When you read this text you must defined the meaning of the phrase “things not seen as yet.” Does it mean Noah and his family had never seen rain or even a local flood? German scholar, R.C.H. Lenski says, “The divine communication certainly also concerned things that were not yet seen, namely the rain, the flood, the devastation of the world.”[1] Likewise, John Phillips says,

“When God first spoke to Noah about the building of the ark more than a hundred
years before the Flood, there was no sign that such a catastrophe would take place.
For a full century things on earth would continue as they were, with evil men and
seducers waxing worse and worse. If, as some believe, it had never rained before the
Flood, then the Lord’s pronouncement must have seemed all the more unlikely of
fulfillment.”[2]

5. Although Noah had never seen rain, he believed God and built the ark. Day after day his sons would question him, “Daddy, why are we building this ark?” Noah would respond, “Son, because God said it is going to rain forty days and forty nights.” I can hear Shem, the oldest son; respond by saying, “Daddy, what is rain?”

6. Keep in mind that Noah built the ark on dry land. He wasn’t even near a large body of water. Furthermore, it cost him a great deal of time and money to complete this project. Some even believe it took him one hundred and twenty years to build the ark. Picture in your mind as this preacher of righteousness was interrogated day after day while he was constructing this huge boat. Imagine the ridicule he received from his neighbors in the community. Nevertheless, Noah kept building because he believed God! In Noah’s case he believed and then a decade later he saw the flood. For Noah, believing was seeing!

Are you confused? Things kind of seem foggy in your life? Do you feel like you’ve lost your spiritual equilibrium? Perhaps you just don’t know how to get back on track? What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Simply believe God! Believe in a sovereign Savior who is in control of “all things” in your individual world. Believe Him when you are tempted to ask, “why?” Believe in the omniscient God who is orchestrating the events in your life for the ultimate purpose of Christ-likeness. Even though our lives are surrounded by the dark clouds of doubt or our circumstances are stormy at best. May we continue to believe God and walk with Him by faith.

Discussion

1. Why is faith so important in our Christian journey?

2. What does it mean to walk by faith and not by sight?

3. How does the author of Hebrews define faith?

4. When God warned Noah about the catastrophic flood, had Noah even seen rain?

5. How long did it take Noah to build the ark?

6. What motivated Noah to stay by the stuff?

[1] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of The Epistle to the Hebrews and The Epistle of James, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1966), 387.
[2] John Phillips, Exploring Hebrews, (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2002), 154.