The Genesis Preppers: Noah

I believe that preparing for the future, come what may, is both wise and biblical. In the days to come, we will launch a series of blog posts that we call Proverbs for Preppers which highlight Scripture’s teaching on making yourself ready for a variety of future events, but today we want to turn our attention to a great role model for preparedness from the book of Genesis — Noah.

Noah was a uniquely righteous man who lived in a time of extreme violence and sinfulness. Of all the people on the earth, only Noah found favor with God. God spoke to Noah and revealed His plans to him. He was going to bring destruction on the entire earth. God instructed Noah to build an ark that would shelter his family and the animals for the duration of the coming flood, and to store an adequate supply of food. Nothing was going to be left on the earth. I could just see Noah on Doomsday Preppers: “I’m preparing for a cataclysmic flood that will destroy the entire planet.”

Can you say TEOTWAWKI? (The End Of The World As We Know It.) Noah had to pack away enough stuff to prepare for starting civilization from scratch.

Many Bible scholars believe that it had never rained on the earth prior to the Flood. Genesis 2:6 talks about how water came out of the ground to water the plants on the surface of the land. Noah was preparing for rain (and lots of it) at a time when rain had never happened. Is it any wonder that his neighbors considered him to be a mad man? So it is with many of us who prepare for future calamities, especially unprecedented ones.

Note that while God revealed His plans to Noah and instructed him to prepare for disaster, God didn’t do the work for him. Noah had to build the ark. Noah had to gather and store the food. Did God take care of him? You bet He did! But God didn’t hand it all to him on a silver platter. Noah had to do the work himself. And so it is with us today. God reveals Himself to us. He reveals His plans to us. He gives us impressions and convictions from the circumstances that surround us. And then we have to do the work. We pray and seek God through the whole process, but we work while we pray. We’re like Nehemiah’s construction crew, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem to prepare for the Israelites to return from the Babylonian captivity. They worked with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other hand. They prayed and they took action. They had faith in God to protect them and they armed themselves for war.

There are many Christians who don’t prepare, but instead look to their faith in God to provide for them. Noah had more faith in God than anyone in his time, and his faith was proven by his actions. God was calling Noah to take action. If he had refused to do so and simply relied on God to “take care of him,” it would have been disobedience and sin.

God hasn’t spoken directly to me as He did to Noah, but I believe that God is prompting me through my observation of the signs of the times (Matt. 16:2-3) to get prepared. Since you’re reading this, I suspect that you might be in the same boat as me, or at least beginning to consider it. My prayer for you is the same as it is for myself: that you would hear God clearly, that you would take appropriate action at the appropriate time, that you would be thoroughly equipped and trained to be able to thrive through any difficult circumstances that may come your way, and that out of the abundance of God’s provision and your faithful stewardship that you would be able to meet the needs of your family and to be a blessing to many others.