I’m convinced that saving faith is not believing that God exists. According to the Bible, even Satan does that. No, saving faith is more like trust. We are invited to believe not only that God exists, but that He loves us and has our best interest foremost in mind regardless of our life situations at the time. More than anything else God wants us to trust Him. I don’t think we do that very well as a whole. It began in the garden of Eden but the Bible is full of other examples of how we don’t trust Him or His promises. After the mighty devastation of the “world wide” flood, we see what might be another illustration of man’s failure to trust God and His promises.

After the flood God set the rainbow in the sky and made a promise that He would never again destroy the world with a flood. My son got flooded out of his home in Waterloo just a couple weeks ago but thankfully, I lived on higher ground and he and the grandsons had a place to stay. Even now he’s cleaning up and trying to set up housekeeping once again on the same land. If that had been a  universal flood we’d all be in big trouble, huh? But that can’t happen. Why do those flooded out want to rebuild? Aren’t they afraid of another flood? Maybe, maybe not, but they have a promise from God that there will always be dry ground somewhere to run to.

After the flood in Genesis, the descendants of Noah decided to build a tower into the sky. I’ve always wondered why? Could it be that they didn’t really trust in the promise of God not to destroy the world with water again? It does seem to fit the context! They said to themselves, “let us build a tower so high that everyone will know who we are” and when it rains again they will know where to come to escape the carnage. If you look at the ancient civilizations around the world, you will see evidence of high structures: pyramids, the La Danta Temple in Guatemala, Inca temples, just to name a few. They all appear to have some religious significance. We can’t trust God to keep His word, so we must save ourselves! This is the birth of “religion.” The works of man’s hands designed to save himself.