What do you fear most? Whose opinion do you most worry about?
Most of us would say we care about what God thinks above all. But have we kept silent when the Spirit was asking us to speak because we were scared of others’ responses? Have we bent our beliefs to look more like our community than how God has asked us to live? What is most important in our lives?
Recently, a couple of my kids and I have gotten into SCUBA. One of the most basic things they teach you in SCUBA school is to always mind your tank. Of course, I tend to get excited, so it’s no surprise that I nearly ran out of air below the surface during one of my first dives. Not good. It was terrifying, and I left the water thankful to be alive—and vowing never to let that happen again. Now, every time I dive, I check my air levels religiously every few seconds.
That kind of reliance is what we should feel on the Spirit of God. The way I feared running out of air beneath the surface, Noah feared being on the wrong side of God (cf. Hebrews 11:7). It’s not that Noah was terrified of God, as if God was capricious and violent. Noah simply realized that God’s words were a matter of life or death. I don’t quake with fear at the sight of my air tank, but I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is life or death for me on a dive. I never want to be separated from it.
This is how Noah felt, and how we should feel, about God’s presence in our lives. Hebrews 11:7 says, “By faith Noah … in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household” (ESV). Fear doesn’t always mean being terrified of something. In Scripture, particularly, it more often means recognizing how important and weighty something is.
What do we fear? Whose opinion carries the most weight in our lives? Is it that of our peers, who make fun of us if we bring up religious things? Is it that of our boss, who we desperately want to impress? Is it our spouse, or our kids, or our parents?
When Noah started building the ark, it would have looked bizarre to everyone around him. He was out in a desert, building a giant boat, with the sunniest skies above him. It would be like building an ocean liner in the middle of Kansas. Townsfolk probably asked him, “Noah, how are you even going to get that thing to the water? Is God giving you plans for an F-350 SuperDuty and a trailer too, so that you can tow that thing to the beach?” But Noah had a fear of the Lord—a deep, arresting respect for God, not only believing what God said, but making it the guiding star of his life. God was his air tank. No one else’s opinions mattered.
I confess: I like to be liked. It drives me nuts when people are upset with me. And I’m sure Noah felt that way at times too. But I know the day is coming when I’m going to look into the face of the One who made the stars, and in that moment I am not going to be thinking about what others thought about me.
From Hebrews, we can believe that Noah lifted his eyes up above everybody else and fixed them on one Person and thought, “If God’s happy with me, that’s all that matters.” That’s hard, because God is invisible to us right now. Following him requires faith.
Faith is the conviction that the things not seen are more important than the ones that are. Eventually, you see, everyone feared God like Noah did; it’s just that their fear came too late. Thomas Manton once wrote, “The people of the world did not tremble with fear until the water reached the rooftops. Noah had trembled in fear when God did but speak.”
Faith is living in a way today that we believe one day we’ll be glad we did. If you died today, what would you say is most important? Live that way now. As C.T. Studd said, “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”
