God has a purpose for you, and it will require you to be different. To be different, you must do something different. Different than what you’ve always done. Different than what everyone else does. Different than what is easy for you. If you’re willing to be different in the new year of life coming to you, then God wants to use you for greater purposes than you can imagine.
But if not – if you’re not willing to be different, then you simply miss it. You miss what could be. You miss what you could do. You miss the potential of things you haven’t even dared to imagine yet.
Genesis chapter 6 tells us of a world gone wrong and one man who was different. That one man was Noah. The world had gone wrong because Satan and his demons had contaminated the earth, literally. I never understood this until I really stated digging in and studying, but verse 2 says, “The sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.” What exactly does that mean? The sons of God are heavenly beings. They’re angels. But scripture also tells us that angels do not marry, so what angels are marrying the human daughters? Answer: The fallen angels.
When Satan rose up in jealous competition against God, he was banished from heaven and thrown down to Earth. The Book of Revelation says 1/3 of the angels fell from glory with him. Those fallen angels are what we refer to as demons. So, what has happened on earth here in Genesis, is Satan’s demons have married the women and they’ve infected the human population. Of course this was Satan’s plan. He wanted absolutely NOTHING good left here. If he had fallen from Heaven, he wanted to ensure no one else could be there either. As the women had the children of demons, the world got worse.
Genesis 6:5, “The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart.”
God’s heart is broken over the condition of his people. Evil was everywhere. So, God decided he had to destroy everything. BUT, one man was different. God saw that one man and knew because he was different, something different could happen for the future.
When we are different, we create different. When we are different, something different can flow from us. God is looking for different.
God saw something different in Noah. Verse 8 from the MSG translations, “But Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah.”
Noah stood out because he wasn’t willing to do what everyone else was doing. Noah wasn’t infected by the wickedness around him. He hadn’t settled for what had become normal. Verse 9 says, “Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.”
Was Noah perfect? No. The only perfect one to ever walk the earth was Jesus. Noah wasn’t perfect, but he was righteous and considered blameless. He sought to do what was right. His heart was pure. He sought God first and fully.
How did Noah do that when the world had become so wicked all around him? He walked in close fellowship with God. He had a relationship with God. He made space for God. He talked to God. He listened to God. And that is our very clear and simple answer for today. How do we navigate our way through a very fallen world full of things that have gone wrong? Answer: We have a relationship with God. We talk to him and we listen for him. Once again, we’re back to MAKING SPACE FOR GOD.
One week ago today we talked about the final 40 days of 2025. We declared we would make space for God in these final 40. How are you doing with that? Is God getting space, or has life naturally crowded him out again?