The Book I Didn’t Intend to Write

And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood.” Genesis 6:13-14

As you likely know, in 2020, Tristan Publishing released – Freedom in the Fight – a book born out of this blog. I’m thankful for the opportunity, but that wasn’t the book I’d originally planned to write. Several years prior, I’d begun working on a very different book on Christian theology, which had nothing to do with addiction. The problem was that at that time I was still intermittently struggling with my addiction. I wanted to be a good Christian. I wanted to do great things for God. But I was hardly in any position to write a Christian book. Still, when I was sober for even a little while, I wanted to write, contributing that which I thought was important. God, however, had a completely different book for me to write – a book about faith and recovery. I just had to actually find recovery first. I had one idea about obedience and God had a very different idea.

I’ve got to wonder if Noah had a very different idea of obedience too. This involves a lot of speculation on my part, but I imagine that when God told Noah that he was going to use him to save humanity, Noah was excited. Everyone wants to be a hero, right? Finally, everyone will see that my faith isn’t a joke. When I save the world, they’ll all finally bow before God. Then, however, God informed Noah that everyone else was going to die in a flood and that Noah had to build an ark for only himself and his family. To top it all off, this ark would take years to build, during which time, Noah would further alienate himself from everyone around him.

We’ll hopefully never have to build an ark. If we claim to follow Christ though, we have some inclination that we’re supposed to be obedient to him. Our idea of obedience is usually something we find palatable or enjoyable. Maybe I could win the lottery and give lots of money to the church. God then, simply asks us to go be kind to that one neighbor that no one really likes. Hmmm… I don’t want to do that God. That’s weird and uncomfortable. Obedience if often very different than what we think it should be. God often asks us to do the uncomfortable. Loving our neighbors isn’t always easy. Ultimately though, we should be concerned not with what’s comfortable or what we want, but with what God wants. We don’t have to worry about results or reactions. We just need to do what God asks of us, finding our contentment in obedience.