God loves to walk with us! God looks for people who will believe Him so He can work together with us to perform His miracles and His wonders on the earth. Even more than that, God enjoys our friendship. Let’s see what the Bible says about Noah’s testimony. “Noah was a just man, perfect in his generation. Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:9
God walked with Noah side by side and face-to-face. We know that Noah wasn’t a flawless man, but he believed God. He and God had gotten to the point that they walked and talked face-to-face.
Several people who truly walked with God made it into the Bible. Noah, Moses, and Enoch all have the testimony that they walked with God. God went so far as to call Moses his friend! “So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” Exodus 33:11
Enoch walked with God for years, side by side and face-to-face, until one day Enoch walked up the mountain with God and right off this earth and into the kingdom of heaven. “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” Genesis 5:24
I love to study each person who walked with God, but it’s fascinating to look at the life of Noah, especially when you consider that Jesus said in the last days the world will be like it was in the time of Noah.
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
—Luke 17:26–27
Noah was not flawless, but he walked with God and was mature in his faith in God. Most of us know the story of Noah, beginning in Genesis 6. Can you imagine what Noah went through? How long did Noah work on the ark? Some people say it took sixty to seventy years to build the ark, and others say up to 120 years. Let’s say it was sixty years. Back in the days of Noah, it never rained. The earth was watered in the mornings by the dew. And here is Noah building a boat on dry ground. The first week, Noah’s neighbors come by and say, “Noah, what are you doing?” “I’m building a boat.” “Cool! What’s a boat?” Noah preached to the people in his neighborhood. In fact, in 2 Peter 2:5, Peter calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. Noah is building this huge boat with his sons, and he pauses to warn the people, “It’s going to rain. It’s going to pour. It’s going to flood. You’ve got to get ready. Get your heart right with God!” But then a month goes by. Two months go by. A year goes by. The neighbors walk by and say, “Hey Noah, how’s the rain coming?”
Ten years go by. Twenty years go by. Fifty years go by, and Noah is still sawing away, hammering away, and building this ark. Talk about patience! Why did Noah keep building an ark? Noah does not know what rain looks like, and he keeps preaching to everyone to turn to God because rain is coming. Noah doesn’t know how God’s going to do it or when God’s going to do it, but he knows that God will send rain because God said it. This kind of faith pleases God. Even though the world was wicked and violent in Noah’s time, Noah believed God, walked with God, worked with God, and in essence restarted the human race. How? By faith in God’s plan!
My Early Life with God
I want to share with you a testimony of faith that happened during my early walk with God. Before Tiz and I were married, I was in a church in Flagstaff, Arizona. As a young disciple of Christ, I remember sitting in service when suddenly God spoke to me. At the time, I loaded trucks and drove semis for a living. The church was having a revival, and since I worked the evening shift, I took my lunch hour and came over to be in church, all dirty from work. I had just gotten paid. As I sat in the service, they took the offering, and God spoke to me and said, “Put the whole check in.”
Remember, Jesus’ mother, Mary, said, “Whatever He tells you to do, do it.” To Joshua and Caleb, God said, “Walk around the wall seven times.” They walked around the wall seven times. If God says dip seven times, dip! If He says, “Speak to the rock,” then speak to the rock! It doesn’t make sense, but that’s OK. Just do whatever God tells you to do. Right? I got paid every two weeks, so this check was fairly substantial for me back then. I thought, “God, I can’t do that. I have rent on Monday.”
Put It All In
Flagstaff is a college town. The house I was renting was owned by a guy who was notorious for being shrewd. Everyone knew that if you didn’t pay your rent at the very moment it was due, he would take your deposit and rent out your house to someone else because people were lined up in a college town to rent a house. I said, “Lord, I’ve got rent.” God said, “Put it in.” “Lord, I’ll put it all in but fifty dollars because I need the fifty dollars to add to what I have to pay the rent.” God said, “Put it all in.”
So I signed a check and put it all in. Now, I would love to tell you that I went back to work and finished my night shift and the boss said, “Hey, you know what? I was just walking along, and I feel like I need to give you a hundred dollars.” God can do that, but He didn’t do it. I have to admit, the next day I got up, went to the mailbox, opened it up, and went through all the mail—and no money was there. I was thinking, “OK, Lord, when I go to church, you’re going to speak to somebody at church, and they’re going to walk up and say, ‘Larry, I was praying, and God told me to give you fifty bucks.’”
Waiting for Something to Happen
I went to church on Sunday and nothing happened. Monday morning, I got up, went to the mailbox, and nothing. My rent was due at three o’clock on Monday, and I was still fifty bucks short. And I knew this guy—he was notorious. He was going to take my deposit, I was going to be out on my ear that day, and he would have my home rented by the next day. I also worked in a school right across from my house, and I happened to be working that Monday at the front desk. I never worked at the desk, but for some reason, they put me at the front desk that day.
So I’m thinking, “Lord, come on. What are you going to do? Come on. I’m fifty bucks short.” At about noon the mailman comes by and drops off the mail. He says, “Hey, Larry. How are you doing?” He leaves. I know his mail route. He goes up the hill and then comes back and hits my house at about 4:30, which would be an hour and a half too late for me to pay my rent. About a minute later the mailman comes back and says, “Hey, I’m running kind of late today. I just saw your mail in the back of my bag. You want it now?” I said, “Yeah.”
He gave me my mail, and I opened it up. There’s a letter from my Aunt Helen, the one who prayed me into the kingdom of God. She’s the one who didn’t look at the drugs and the drug addiction and the police record. She didn’t look at any of that. She just believed God was going to save me. The letter came from St. Louis to Flagstaff, so it had to be put in the mail at least a day before I obeyed God. My aunt said, “I was praying, and I felt you needed this.” Inside was a check for fifty-five dollars. Now, I needed fifty bucks for my rent, and the check was for fifty-five dollars. I needed fifty-five because 10 percent of that check belonged to the Lord! Let patience have its maturing, perfect work, and walk face-to-face with God, knowing that He is Almighty God.
I know that those early tests and miracle provisions were God’s way of training me to learn faith and faithfulness, which has continued to this day, forty-seven years later. My step of obedience and faith then put me on a path that has grown and multiplied beyond my wildest dreams and cemented into my core that we cannot over-trust or out-give our God! Life presents continual opportunities to choose to trust God and His promises and see and experience His endless realms of supernatural.
