- A few years ago,
my husband Kris came home with a pretty shocking statement.
He walked in and he said, "That's it, I'm done.
"I'm finished.
"I'm starting my own business."
And I looked at him and I said, huh
"Really, 'cause we have three small kids,
"and last time I checked, we had $52 in our bank account."
And Kris said, "I know, but I just know
"that this is what I'm supposed to do right now."
As I stood there in the kitchen,
listening to Kris share with me
about his determination to start his own business.
He explained to me
that he had just read a book that had increased his faith.
He was frustrated with feeling
like he was giving all of his work to other people.
And he knew that God had spoken to him,
and it was time for him to start his own business.
As Kris was standing in the kitchen of the house
that we lived in at the time,
there was this blue sign standing behind him,
and it had a Bible verse on it.
And immediately my eyes were drawn to this Bible verse,
and it was Psalm 27:7 that says,
"Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
"but we trust in the name of the Lord our God."
And as I looked at the sign and as I looked at Kris,
he said back to me, "Well, are we gonna do this?"
And I said, "I guess we are."
And he said, "Okay, well,
"I'm actually gonna need $50 of that $52
"to go get my business license, and we need a name."
As I took a second to just kinda exhale
and let the reality of this big decision settle in,
I looked at him and I pointed to the sign and I said,
"It's gonna be called Trust Electrical."
That was over 12 years ago.
And since then, my husband, Kris,
has been working really hard to build his business.
But here's the thing, just because we listen
to what God is doing in our lives and leading us to do,
doesn't mean that everything
is just gonna instantly fall into place.
I can tell you a dozen stories
of times where he's come home and he's had to admit
that he made a really bad business decision
or somebody gypped him out of some money
or he had another frustration of having to find help
with the projects that he was working on.
Listening to God is sometimes really complicated
and really hard.
But as I look back on Kris's journey
to starting Trust Electrical,
I think about how different life could look
if he hadn't listened to God in that moment.
I don't know that we would be here right now
on the Fixer Upper Farm.
I don't know that he would have had
some of the opportunities that he's had
through his business to do ministry
for churches right here in our own city.
And I don't know that we would be able
to be at the place in our lives right now
where we're at today, had Kris not obeyed.
I think Kris is actually really similar to Noah,
but don't tell him I said that, okay?
He is just a guy who sometimes
just has to figure things out.
And I don't know if you're anything like myself,
but I need a plan, and I need to know A, B and C.
And then if A, B and C doesn't work out, what is plan D?
But sometimes we just need to have that faith
just to jump right into that assignment
and trust that it's all gonna fall into place eventually.
Well, if you have your Bibles,
turn with me back to the book of Genesis
because we're gonna pick back up and see how Noah
became a man who really had to listen intentionally
to the instructions that God was giving him.
In Genesis chapter 6, verse 14, this is what it says.
"Make yourself an ark of gopher wood,
"make rooms inside the ark and cover it
"inside and out with pitch.
"This is how you are to make it,
"the length of the ark, 300 cubits, its breadth, 50 cubits
"and its height, 30 cubits.
"Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above
"and set the door of the ark in its side.
"Make it with a lower, second, and third deck."
Now, I don't know about you,
but as I'm reading this and I'm hearing
these very specific instructions that God is giving Noah
to build this ark, I'm thinking, well, you know what,
if God would just speak to me that way, I could obey Him.
And I could follow through
with these really hard assignments.
And sometimes listening to God feels a little bit strange.
It feels a little bit weird.
And we're gonna talk next week
about how to push through your own personal doubt
of listening to God,
but today I want us just to lean in for just another minute
and listen to some of the instructions that God gave Noah
but then I want you to see what happened, okay?
So going back to verse 17,
we really start to see the severity
of this assignment that God was giving Noah in this season.
He starts to tell Noah that he's gonna bring
a flood of waters, and it's gonna cover the earth,
and it's going to destroy all of the flesh
and everything that has breath that is not in the ark
is going to be destroyed.
Now, when I was reading this,
I kinda had a little bit of a gut check for a second.
I've heard Noah's account a dozen times
and I'm sure you have too.
But when I started to think about
what that would have been like to really comprehend
that every living thing would be destroyed,
I started to think about how Noah may have felt
about his friends, his family, his animals,
that maybe were not gonna be on the ark,
the children that he would pass
in the market on the weekends.
And when you start to really think about
how severe this was going to impact Noah's community,
his life, and the future of the world,
we can start to look at this
and maybe we might to say, this just feels like it's mean.
And in this story, in this account of Noah,
we can either see this as God's meanness,
or we can see it as God's mercy,
because really God could have made the decision
to just completely wipe out humanity.
He could have said, that's it, I'm done with these people,
I'm fed up, I'm finished,
I'm just gonna wash it all away and be done with humans.
But He was merciful in this moment
because even though this assignment was really hard,
and it was really messy and it was really complicated,
God's still showed His mercy by allowing Noah
and his family and all these animals to come into the ark.
And because of that mercy, you and I are here today
and we have the opportunity to continue to listen to God.
So in the next few verses, God continues to go on and say,
"Noah, you're to bring your sons', your wife
"and your sons' wives with you.
"You're to bring all flesh.
"You shall bring two of every sort
"into the Ark and keep them alive."
Like that feels a lot right there
just to keep the animals alive, right?
Sometimes on the Fixer Upper Farm, I think, oh my goodness,
if I just have to feed one more animal
and if I just have to keep one more person alive today,
I mean, my animals are not people,
but you know what I'm saying.
It feels like a lot.
And then God continues to say,
"You also need to take up the food and store it,"
like think about what this would have been like.
And at this point, Noah really doesn't have a timeline
of how long they're gonna be in the ark
and how long is the water gonna really cover the earth?
So it's this massive big assignment,
but then we arrive in verse 22.
And this is where we see Noah make the second decision
to listen to God.
It says, "Noah did this.
"He did it all that God commanded him.
"Noah did this.
"He did all that God commanded him."
You know, one of the things that feels a little frustrating
to me is that we don't have any dialogue
to study with Noah, right?
Like, there's no wrestling with God
and there's no being angry at God
and talking to his wife and talking to his kids.
But we see this pattern not only in this chapter
but in chapter seven as well, God commanded and Noah obeyed.
Remember, we talked about how obedience
stems from an action, and an action stems from a decision.
And so we have to keep making the decision
to walk with God and to listen to God.
And that's gonna help us move
into our next decision next week to rise above the doubt.
But we gotta stay here this week,
we gotta let God speak to us.
So here's two things I wanna leave with you
before we wrap this up, okay?
Because I know you're like, but Nicki,
how does God speak to me?
How am I gonna know
that this is actually God telling me to do this?
How did Kris really know in that moment
that he was really supposed to start that company?
How did you have that confirmation?
Well, here's what I would tell you.
You don't always know,
and we're gonna talk about that next week.
Sometimes we do get it wrong.
But having faith is really about taking a risk.
It's about taking a leap,
jumping in and doing the hard thing,
not knowing what the outcome is gonna be.
Kris had no idea
that that business was gonna do what it's done today.
It was a risk, it was a jump,
it was a leap of faith, but he did it.
Okay, so two things I wanna tell you.
Number one, if it feels like God is quiet in your life,
it is time for you to get quiet.
It's time for us to get quiet.
And I know when we're wrestling through doubt
and when we're going through hard stuff, guess what,
I wanna call my friend, Kristi,
I wanna call my friend, Elle,
I wanna call Kris,
I wanna call somebody to tell them
what is happening in my life.
But what happens is, when we start to bring
all of this noise inside of us and around us,
we start to hear a lot of opinions.
And God is not really concerned about opinions,
He's concerned about obedience, okay?
So there is a time to listen to wise counsel.
And we'll talk about that in the next few weeks,
but there are times when we just need to get quiet with God,
and we just need to be still
and listen to what He is saying to us.
But the second thing I want to affirm over you
is that sometimes God will ask us to do things
that make no sense.
This assignment that He had given Noah,
it did not make a lot of sense to a human mind.
Kris walking in and telling me about this business
and telling me he needed to take the $50
out of our account and leave us with $2,
it didn't make a lot of sense in the moment.
But faith doesn't have to make sense for it to work.
And so as you continue to listen to God
and you decide that you are gonna follow through
with these hard things,
I want you to also remember this.
God will never tell you to do something
that goes against His Word.
And you're gonna study all about that this week.
He will affirm what he's doing in your life
through this book right here.
So I believe that you can walk with God
and you can listen to God.
And it's a decision that you can make
again and again and again.
And it's gonna lead to a life filled with obedience.
All right, next week, we're gonna be back
as we talk about this third decision to rise above the doubt
and we're gonna wrestle through some of those naysayers
in your head and some of those places
where maybe you just aren't sure
you should keep moving forward.
I'll see you next time.