By Jim Kaseman

Hebrews 11:6,7 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him … and he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by thee which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”

As we look at Noah or any of the other men in this chapter of Hebrews, notice that it always says by faith. Every one of these men of God in the Old and New Testaments lived by faith. They believed God for
everything they had, and this is something you and I must learn to do.

Without a strong faith, you will not receive answers to your prayers, healing for your body, and victory in the everyday affairs of life. So let’s look at some characteristics that accompany strong faith, using Noah as our example. I believe if you will develop these characteristics in your faith life, you will have a strong faith that will produce results and give glory to God.

Walk With God

Genesis 6:9 says this about Noah: “These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” The only way your faith will be strong is for you to walk
with God. You can’t live an unholy life or a life of serving the Lord part of the time and expect your faith to be strong.

As you study the great men in the Bible, you’ll find that they gave their lives totally to God. This is the condition for a strong faith. Many Christians do not have strong faith because they do not have a
consistent walk with God. They walk with Him for a while, then quit, and they wonder why their prayers are not being answered.

Walking with God means staying in fellowship with Him. Our relationship with God may be stable now, but it can be broken because of sin. Any relationship that remains in fellowship is a good one. My
wife and I have a good relationship, but if we get out of fellowship a little and she gives me the old silent treatment, or I give her the old silent treatment, there is not much love involved and faith cannot work.

In the same way, when we’re not in harmony with God, our faith will not become strong. I can tell you all about faith, but if you do not walk with God in harmony and unity, your faith won’t work-it will not become strong. You can’t walk in victory every day unless you stay in harmony and fellowship with God. You can’t live an abundant life unless you stay in harmony and fellowship with God. Strong faith always
fellowships and walks with God.

Recognize God’s Voice

Genesis 6:13 says, “And God said unto Noah…” Here we see God speaking to an individual. You must realize that you are going to have to hear God Himself. The Lord could give you some directions through the ministry of a prophet in prophecy, but it should be a confirmation of what you have already heard from God Himself.

If God wants me to do something, He’s going to let me know, Amen? If God lets someone else know, that is good, but I can’t act on it until I have heard for myself.

The devil is putting so many things in the minds of people today that they can’t hear God. Many things are crying for your attention, whether you’re a homemaker or a businessman.

You need to take time to close out all of these voices. You need to take a little time out for Jesus! Take a little time out to meditate upon the Word so you can hear God. It’s difficult to hear from God if you are busy doing other things.

Strong faith hears God’s voice above the many other voices that are trying to gain your attention daily.

Never Bring Faith Down to the Human Logic and Reasoning Level

God told Noah that there was going to be a flood. According to the Scripture, there had never been anything but mist to fall upon the earth prior to Noah’s time. Noah did not know what rain was, God said to him in Genesis 6:14, “Make thee an ark of gopher wood…” Genesis 6:22 says that Noah did all that God told him to do. Therefore, you can follow God, love God, be sincere, stay in communion and fellowship with God, and hear what God tells you to do. But you are going to have to obey God regardless of human logic and/or reasoning. Don’t you know it didn’t make any sense in Noah’s mind to build an ark? He didn’t even know what rain was! His human logic and reasoning told him he was wasting his time, because this didn’t make any sense at all. You are going to find that obeying God will require you to go contrary to human logic and reasoning many times. However, if you listen to human logic and reasoning, you -will never walk upon your problems and difficulties. You will never walk in victory. If you listen to the voice of the world about divine healing, you’ll have to use man to get your healing when God is available anytime.

Listening to the voice of the world will never help you live in victory every day. Your mind, logic, and reasoning say that you are going to have low days, grumbly-mumbly days, and bad days. If you go by human logic and reasoning, that is exactly where you will live. But if you go by the Word of God and listen to God, you can live in the spiritual land where God desires you to live high above human logic and reasoning. The choice is yours.

Another area is speaking in tongues. It didn’t make a bit of sense to me when I first had the experience of speaking in tongues. Human logic and reasoning said “There is nothing to all this foolish talk.” Human
logic and reasoning said “You can’t understand it, so why do it?” The answer is simple: God said it! Stop and think: If you had gone by human logic and reasoning when you came into the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, you would never have received it. Man wants to figure everything out in his computer. However, spiritual truths will never fit into a natural, human “computer”.

Strong Faith Will Set You Apart

Anytime you have a strong faith, it will encourage you to follow God, and this will bring the world against you. If you have brothers and sisters who are not believers, you love them and appreciate them, but
you’ll not be able to communicate totally with them anymore.

They have had one birth, and you have had two births. They have had the natural birth, but you have had the Holy Spirit birth which brought you into the Kingdom of God. You also have the spirit of God living
with you, and you have changed. You don’t talk the same anymore. You don’t act the same anymore. They can’t understand you any more than the people of his day could understand Noah. The opposition Noah faced was tremendous. Things happen when you say, “I’ve decided to follow Jesus.”

You may appear to be all alone. And many times you will be alone. But with a strong faith, you will do whatever God tells you to do. God led the people of Israel out of Egypt because Moses believed God. And God will lead you to victory if you will believe and obey Him, even though you appear to be all alone.

Noah was the only person who was trying to build a boat until his sons and their wives began helping him. One plus God is all that is required. That is a majority. One man or woman yielded to God is all
it takes. However, if you go by you natural senses, it won’t work. The Lord’s work may begin with one man or woman who is yielded to God. Then there will be two. Next there will be three who are yielded to
God. Then there will be four, because one person yielded to God won’t remain just one. When a person is yielded to God and is doing what God says, multiplication begins to take place.

Genesis 6:3 says, “…his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Now, in effect, God spoke to Noah and said, “Build a boat, for I am going to destroy the earth. it’s wicked.” God gave mankind 120 years in
time.

Noah was certainly a faithful man. He remained faithful to God for 120 years. No one before him had been faithful to God for so long. Sometimes when we are the only one in our family who is going on with
the Lord, we stagger at being faithful for a month, six months, or even a year. But a strong faith goes on in the face of opposition.

Many have faced opposition today. For example, with the baptism in the Holy Spirit, many have been faced with opposition from their spouses, children, society, and church. But a strong faith will go on and on. Imagine Noah and his family building a boat when there hadn’t been a boat like that before, and there was no water anywhere around. I can picture the ridicule they received. Brothers and sisters, blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness sake. Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and God blessed him because of his faithfulness to preach the Word of God.

If you will be faithful to God to preach the things you know, such as salvation, baptism, healing, deliverance, and strong faith in God’s word, God will bless you, too. You can be sure, however, that you are going to face opposition. Who cares when you are serving Almighty God-the very One who created this whole world in the first place?

II Peter 2:5 says that Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and Noah preached righteousness in spite of all the opposition he received from the wicked people of his day. You and I, as New Testament believers,
have been commanded to go into all the world and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Gospel declares that man has right-standing with God because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

You and I are to preach righteousness. You and I are to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ boldly, uncompromisingly, and make the “comfortable Christians” uncomfortable. We ought to teach the word and preach and live it so that the comfortable Christians will get to the point where they will do one of two things: either go all out for Jesus or go the other way.

God Himself declared in Revelation 3:16 that He would rather that man be cold or hot. God said, ” if you are lukewarm, I’ll spue you out of my mouth.”

o even if the message of righteousness is unacceptable where you may be living and working, preach it anyway! It may appear that you are alone, but even as Noah did not end up alone in the ark, you will not
end up being alone for very long. As a result of preaching the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord
will add to the church daily.

Strong Faith is Always Rewarded

After many years, the rains came, and the ark began to float. Don’t you know that Noah and his family began to have a shouting time inside when the ark began to rise! Man said he couldn’t do it. But God said, “Noah, you do it and I’ll back it up.” A strong faith will always see answers to prayer.

The world tells us that we are stupid, crazy, and illiterate. But there is coming a day when the trumpet will sound and the world will be just like it was in the days of Noah. The door is going to be closed again.
Jesus will say, “You had your chance. You had your opportunity. The message was preached for thousands of years, but now it’s too late.” The dead of Christ and the living shall rise to meet Him. These words sound just as foolish to the person who doesn’t know God today as when Noah preached them long ago. They thought Noah had gone crazy!

When you start telling people today that the trumpet is going to sound, that the dead of Christ are going to rise and it will be too late for them, they’ll just look at you and laugh. There is coming a day when
the smile and laugh will be on the other side, because a strong faith will always be rewarded. I praise God that we’re learning more and more about the Word. I praise God that we are learning truths we’ve
never seen before. Through the grace of God, our faith will produce and bring forth an abundant and godly life in us that we might be instrumental in reaching others for Jesus Christ.

Be diligent in seeking God, and He will reward you as your faith grows and becomes strong (Hebrews 11:6). And remember as you walk in strong faith, God will receive glory (Romans 4:20).

This article is from: Jim Kaseman Ministries, October, 1994, Vol. 20, No. 10.

Christian Information Network