Stand Up AND Stand Out!

“This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.

I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”

Genesis 6:9, 11-13

Noah was a “peculiar” man long before he started building an ark of Cypress wood. 

He stood out as a righteous man in a wicked generation.

As a matter of fact, we are told he not only stood out but he also stood alone as a righteous man.

He was probably mocked for being a “goody-two-sandals”.

God’s command, then, to build an ark was certainly not going to win him any new friends in the neighborhood. He couldn’t alienate anyone else with his backyard DIY (do it yourself) project because everyone else probably already considered him to have long ago gone off the deep end.

It got me to wondering how many other “peculiar” people may be

“AWOL” (Away With Out Leave”) in this generation.

  I am not advocating that you or I do “strange” things simply for the sake of doing strange things. But maybe, just maybe, there are some people out there God has spoken to but they are less than willing to stand out and stand alone in their obedience to God regardless of what others may say or do. 

We don’t mind being called “Christian” when Christianity is in vogue but please don’t ask me to do something “odd” or to be peculiar.

Remember how many people left Jesus after he told them that unless they drank His blood and ate His flesh they had no life in them? 

He spoke something they could not understand so they parted ways.

Noah, Abraham, Moses and countless others have heard God command them to do things that just did not make sense to them at the time.

But they obeyed God.

That may have made them “peculiar” in their generation but a “stand out” to God.

Are you willing to be a peculiar stand-out or God?

Will you do what He has asked you to do?