{"id":51,"date":"2025-04-13T20:38:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T00:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.arkchurch.ca\/?p=51"},"modified":"2025-05-09T23:20:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T03:20:43","slug":"lesson-5-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/lesson-5-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 5: Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Ark speaks\u2026SERVICE.&nbsp; What we do?&nbsp; We are God\u2019s people.&nbsp; Like Noah, we witness God in our community.&nbsp; We live for this to share Good News of Jesus Christ.&nbsp; We are The Ark people in our generation.&nbsp; How can we serve our neighbours?&nbsp; How can we influence our community?&nbsp; From Noah, we can simply gain two serving principles of how to have a positive influence among our friends and neighbours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First is having faith to depend on God even the task seemed to be not possible like in Noah\u2019s case.&nbsp; God commanded Noah to build an ark, a huge cruise which Noah neither has any electrical tools to help out nor sufficient manpower to construct, not mentioned he was not an engineer nor a professional ship builder.&nbsp; The task was beyond his imagination.&nbsp; And in fact, it was not logical.&nbsp; First, the Ark has to be built on dry land, a couple hundred kilometres from the nearest coast.&nbsp; If I were Noah, how can I put it in water once it had been built?&nbsp; Second, it was never rain (not only in southern California, just a song\u2026but also\u2026) on the whole earth up to the time of flood.&nbsp; Noah had never been experiencing rain.&nbsp; What is rain?&nbsp; Noah couldn\u2019t understand.&nbsp; Third, how Noah could bring all animals into The Ark and let them live together harmony?&nbsp; Only just imagine would make him crazy!&nbsp; To Noah, all these doubts and worries condensed into a single key: faith.&nbsp; \u201cGod, I don\u2019t understand.&nbsp; I want the whole picture behind.&nbsp; I would do it and obey You, God, but You let me know Your whole plan and what the future looks like.\u201d&nbsp; The Bible says Noah didn\u2019t question God.&nbsp; He projected his faith not to himself but God.&nbsp; I don\u2019t know all but God knows all.&nbsp; It\u2019s not possible on my own, but God can.&nbsp; Noah depended on God even the task was hard and unimaginable huge.&nbsp; He responded: God, whatever you want me to do, I\u2019ll do it. &nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Genesis 6:22&nbsp;<\/em>says this,<em>&nbsp;\u201cNoah did everything that God commanded him.\u201d<\/em>&nbsp; Even it surpassed his intellect, Noah took action to obey what God commanded him to do.&nbsp; The Bible didn\u2019t say Noah asked God why?&nbsp; Faith is obeying God even when we don\u2019t understand, even it doesn\u2019t make sense and even we don\u2019t know why.&nbsp; We don\u2019t know what the next will be but God knows the whole picture.&nbsp; Our human part is to believe in God and take courage in faith to depend on Him to follow His command.&nbsp; The rest leaves in His hand.&nbsp; It is God\u2019s business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What next we learn from Noah how to serve is his persistence.&nbsp; Noah never gave up.&nbsp; He insisted, persisted and refused to throw out white towel.&nbsp; The Bible says Noah took 120 years to build The Ark.&nbsp; Can we imagine how we can maintain passion for such a long project or ministry that take us 120 years?&nbsp; Moreover, in the building period, Noah was under unfavourable pressure tempted him to give up.&nbsp; No one supported his building project.&nbsp; No church, no fellowships, no friends to give helping hands or cheer him up.&nbsp; Instead, you can imagine his neighbours teased him, laughed at him that oh Noah, you don\u2019t enjoy life?&nbsp; Come on.&nbsp; Go and take a pretty girl or running around beautiful women.&nbsp; But Noah didn\u2019t.&nbsp; He knew God\u2019s judgement would certainly come.&nbsp; He wasted no time and took the opportunity doing God\u2019s work.&nbsp; May be sometimes he felt lonely.&nbsp; He\u2019s fatigue.&nbsp; He&#8217;s ridiculed continuously.&nbsp; Even he hadn\u2019t seen any result, he demonstrated a model of persistence and faith and determination.&nbsp; God loves this kind of people to serve.&nbsp; And why Noah has such extraordinary persistence?&nbsp; The key is&nbsp;<em>\u201cNoah walked faithfully with God.\u201d (Genesis 6:9)<\/em>.&nbsp; Noah and God were close friends.&nbsp; It was not one time shot.&nbsp; The Bible tells us it was a continuing daily practice of Noah walked genuinely, closely connected with God.&nbsp; Even though there was no sign of flood at time of building period.&nbsp; Noah believed God.&nbsp; He built The Ark and saved his family.&nbsp; His belief in God was in direct contrast to the disbelief of the world in his time.&nbsp; Noah\u2019s belief condemned disbelief of his generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Noah served God in difficult moments.&nbsp; Anyways, any time we serve God is difficult.&nbsp; Noah demonstrated two significant serving qualities &#8211; faith to depend on God and persistence to refuse give up.&nbsp; Why God still put you here on earth?&nbsp; Your greatest task is to share Good News of Jesus Christ to your family, friends and neighbours.&nbsp; Invite them in Jesus Christ, just as Noah on one hand built The Ark, the other hand preached to invite people join The Ark to enjoy God\u2019s saving grace.&nbsp; A car bumper reminds us, \u201cDon\u2019t leave the earth without Jesus.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ark speaks\u2026SERVICE.&nbsp; What we do?&nbsp; We are God\u2019s people.&nbsp; Like Noah, we witness God in our community.&nbsp; We live for this to share Good News of Jesus Christ.&nbsp; We are The Ark people in our generation.&nbsp; How can we serve our neighbours?&nbsp; How can we influence our community?&nbsp; From Noah, we can simply gain&hellip; <br \/> <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/lesson-5-service\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-ark-speaks"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkchurch.ca\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}