Revisiting the story of Noah

It's a story Christian's heard since he was two.

He knows all about Noah, how the animals came two by two and how it rained for forty days.

But this time it took on new meaning.

As we read Genesis 6:5-9 I could tell he was thinking...

" The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God."

This is the part of the story we usually skip. We start right at the part where the animals start showing up because that's the fun part...but the big lesson is in those four verses above.

Wow, God was so upset with how man was acting that he wished he had never made them?? That's major!

You mean everyone in the whole world was doing the wrong thing, except for Noah???

That means that even when everyone else in your class or everyone else on the bus or everyone else on your team is doing the WRONG thing...you can still choose to do the right thing like Noah.

Then we talked about how when you choose to do the right thing God can use you to be a part of his plan. God always has a plan and it's always an AWESOME plan, but we miss out if we sin all the time. We talked about the awesome things that Noah got to do because he was blameless. Then we talked about a guy in our church that we know who's a missionary right now (making a real life connection for Christian) and how he is having an amazing adventure telling people about Jesus in Guatemala because he is choosing to do the right thing.

And Christian said, "Wow, that makes me want to be really good!"

Bingo! That's what I want...I want him to have a desire to make good choices not to please me, not because he's afraid of discipline, but because he wants to please God and doesn't want to miss out on what God has planned for him!