A Different Perspective Official Podcast - Radical Faith // By Faith, Part 4

Every now and then, God calls us to do something that’s totally counterintuitive. Something we wouldn’t do, if we weren’t listening to God. In fact, the more we listen to Him, the more we hear Him calling us to do things that are, frankly, downright risky and scary sometimes.

Hey, have you ever felt God asking you to do something that's so radical, so counter intuitive that you think you're going mad? Hey, I have on more than one occasion and as I speak with great men and women of God, as I interview them, as I get to know some of the giants of the faith that I go to Church with, I work with, here's what I've discovered listening to their stories.

The more open we are to God, the more time we spend in prayer, the more we take God’s Word to heart as though it's true and as though it's actually meant for us the more God asks us to do crazy things. I have a friend who against every personal desire and aspiration that he had for himself and his family moved sheer across to the other side of the world to take on a job for four years that God had called him to do.

Now most days were a struggle, most days he was homesick, most days he didn't really understand why God had called him to be in that place. But four years on as he was heading back home again, can I tell you the impact that his presence and his skills and his wisdom and his insight and his energy and his persona has had, not just on the organisation that he worked with but in the lives of thousands and thousands of people the organisation ministers to, it's been enormous.

The more we listen to God the more we're finding Him asking us to do crazy things, radical things, things we wouldn't consider doing if it was left up to us and that's exactly what happened to Noah. We're looking today again at faith in this series that I've called, "By Faith". That's a phrase that you find a lot throughout the Bible and nowhere more so than in the New Testament Book of Hebrews chapter 11.

It's a chapter that talks all about faith, the sort of faith we need to make it through the trials and the temptations of life. The sort of faith we need to see the big picture, to get life into perspective. The sort of faith we need to please God because without faith, without the assurance of things hoped for and the rock solid evidence of faith in our hearts of things we can't see it's completely impossible to please God.

Now, I want you to put yourself for a minute in Noah's shoes. You're living a happy life, okay the world around you is corrupt but hey there's nothing new or surprising about that.

You, your wife, your family, living a great little life and God says to you, "Hey Noah, I know you live miles and miles and miles away from the nearest ocean or lake but I want you to build a honking great big boat, a big sucker, we're going to call it an ark because I am going to flood the world, I'm going to kill everyone and you and your family and two of every species o