“For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” Genesis 7:4
Getting older is a sobering experience. There are limits imposed on us, whether we feel ready or not. The end of life beckons us to consider eternity, yet people we know still cling to their freedom to deny the truth. The nearness of death doesn’t always soften hardened skeptics.
After many decades of labor, the ark was finished. Noah had endured the ridicule of an unbelieving audience. But now something amazing was happening for all to witness. Animals were approaching the ark, entering in pairs. Creation was responding to the Creator’s voice. Evidence of God’s existence and of His grace was right before their eyes. Judgment was imminent. Mercy still provided an open doorway, yet no one outside Noah’s family even considered seeking refuge.
An unbeliever often approaches eternity with the same indifference. Death should be a sober awakening, yet for some, it changes nothing. That’s because sin does more than corrupt behavior; it distorts spiritual perception. Repeated resistance to truth hardens the heart until even the most compelling evidence can be dismissed. Without the intervention of the Holy Spirit, a dead heart will never awaken to its need for salvation.
What, then, should I do when someone I love is growing old, approaching eternity, with no visible desire to come to Jesus? I must accept the painful limits of persuasion. I cannot argue someone into the kingdom. Apologetics may challenge their objections, but only God can dismantle their rebellion. And while there’s still time, God has placed something powerful in my hands. Scripture!
“Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” Jeremiah 23:29
Scripture penetrates where my most passionate pleas cannot. I pray it, speak it, and share it with the one whose heart seems so unreachable. Like strategically placed dynamite, the Word and the Spirit can begin to implode the walls of unbelief. What appears impenetrable to me is no obstacle to the divine hammer. I should not confuse years of resistance with the impossibility of redemption.
Noah’s ark had a door. So does salvation.
Father, where unbelief has built its walls, let Your Word become the hammer. Amen
