June 3

Genesis 6:9
9 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.

Hebrews 11:7
7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

Noah built the ark in faith. "He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before." (Hebrews 11:7a NLT) How did he believe these things that had never happened before would actually happen?

Because Noah could hear God! So how do you do that? You say, "I want to trust God, but I don't hear him.' To hear God you've got to get near God. You don't hear God when your mind is filled with a thousand other distractions. You've got to get alone with God and be quiet.

The Bible says, "Be still and know that I am God." That means sit down and shut up. That's how you hear God and get near to God. You got to sit alone and just be quiet with your Bible, and say, "God, is there anything you want to say to me'? You read God's Word and you talk to him about what's on your heart.

Pray -- God, I want to listen to you, not the voices of doubt. I want to hear you, and I promise to then obey you. I want to be one of the people that you can use and bless in the next ten years. I want those years to be a decade of destiny for me and my family.

I think one underlining idea from this devotional was that "To hear God you've got to get near God."

I guess one thing I can get from that is to be reminded that; The comparison between Praying to hear God and Praying for God to help hear Him is the same as the comparison between Asking for $10000 and Asking for a job. We're putting our mind to it, but not adding physical effort, and in short; not bringing in that other 50%. In retrospect, this relates pretty heavily with the Walking With God idea. You'd have to Walk with God to Talk with God. This would mean physical and mental devotion and a lot of time spent dedicated to getting to understand God and his will for us.

It's so difficult to talk to God when we're so pre-occupied in our everyday lives. I can't even shower and have a conversation with him myself. I think that God did have a purpose on keeping us so distant from Him. It was to truly see our desire for Him and it would only be granted if we did our part to the fullest. He'd insist upon having a full committed relationship rather than a second-option relationship. We devote so much time into things that are so pointless, with no true meaning or incentive. Lately, it has been getting better, as I'm not satisfied when I don't have my time with God. But consistency would slowly turn it into a habit, until it becomes a part of my everyday life, literally becoming my "daily bread".

Seek him, and he will answer.
Thats a verse that I remember from a while ago. God will always be there to listen and answer back. But how much I out heart is open for him? If our lives are already filled up with many other things in this world, how will we have space for God's word? We can sometimes feel alone since God has not responded back. But he has...we just need to be able to hear him.
I've always asked myself this question:
How is Noah able to hear so clearly from God? How close was his relationship?
I think it is because he has lived his life fully with God. He continuously meditated and conversed with God.
For us, we do have many things that may like up (exam days are close) but that should not be something that will get in your way of your spiritual growth. Keep on feeding your spirit with the word of God, or we will be in a state where doubt takes over and we slowly wilt.

That's all, good night!
~Audrey~

We have so much going on in our lives that can lead us farther from Christ! We have to balance school, friends, family, church, etc and with all these "distractions" it's so easy to forget about God even though he always has us in his mind. Having something likes devos, is really good because it gives us some time away from the world to focus on God and only God. But even with devos the distractions never really do go away!

Sorry I haven't been on top of things guys

To hear God, we must let him draw near to us. To do those things, we need to focus on him and I find that the only way to do that, is to remove things that distract us from him. 9/10 those things will be something that is pleasing to us which makes it that much harder to give up. Noah was able to give up everything and God had blessed him for it. Noah heard God because he always had his ears open. It's not about God being quiet, it's about us being observant.

The main message was that we must get close to God before we can hear God.
However, the problem with this is that our lives are fulled with so many other things unrelated to God that we are distracted with. We should always be at or try to be at 100% with God all the time. Either by taking some time off of our schedule and having quiet time, or by just praying to him whenver you are alone and doing nothing such as when you are about to sleep.

I dont remember who it was but i remember someone saying that praise members are usually at like 80% on Sundays, than slowly drop 10% everyday so Monday to Friday that is 50% but we practice for Saturdays on Friday so it goes up 10% so it would be at 40% than on Saturday we would practice and the % would be at 50% than on Sunday it would go up to 80% than it would repeat. But instead of doing this, we should always have it at 80% by having quiet time during the week.
I think that this is the most difficult task, finding time to talk to God and just a thank you for this and that but actually listening to God.