He was grieved!

At a young age when I started to attend the church that my parents took me too I started to learn about God.  What I also started to learn about was the distance that there was between God and humanity.  I used to think that God was harsh and unforgiving.  That we suffered because in some way God was punishing us for our imperfections and sins. 

How I was wrong for so many years.  If only we would understand the deep love that God has for us.  I was reading about Noah tonight and most of us that have heard the story about Noah only remember that God ordered Noah to build the arc to store two of each animal and Noah’s family.  We also see how harsh God was by destroying all other people and animals existing at that time in the earth.  All why?

“Then the LORD^[b] saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  Genesis 6:5

The Bible describes something unique about God in the next passage “And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” Genesis 6:6

God was grieved!  He knew that there wasn’t anything that could change the heart of these people.  They were continually thinking and doing evil things.  This pained God, His decision wasn’t an easy one but one that came with grief because there was no other way to make these people change.  God never gave up on humanity, thousands of years after the flood that destroyed almost everyone and everything on earth, He gave His Son Jesus to die on the cross to give humanity another shot at  godly living. 

Unfortunately not much has changed since the time of Noah.  The same wickedness is overflowing in the earth and humanity.  People are selfish and full of evil intentions. Noah wasn’t spared from destruction because he was perfect or without sin but he was chosen because he was just and tried to please God in his everyday life. 

We can make mistakes but what God looks at isn’t the mistakes we made but the fear we carry in our heart to please Him in our everyday life.   Do not allow your past mistakes to set you back from your present walk with God.  Today is what determines who you will be tomorrow.  I wish there would be many things I could change about my past decisions, conversations and actions, but I cannot go back in the past to change any of it however I can make a difference with the decisions that I make today. 

Be like Noah and strive to be just in your daily life.  We cannot afford to cut corners with God because we will never know when the time will come that all that we know will cease to exist.