When you feel your heart racing and you know that God is leading you to pursue something; do you go after it with the perseverance of a kid chasing an ice cream truck or do you get stuck in analysis paralysis? I think we often get stuck in a cycle of questioning whether it is really the Holy Spirit moving within us or just a great idea we cooked up on our own. The first question always needs to be whether it is in alignment with God’s word. If there is any debate about this, then it is not God’s will. It is not of God if it is contradictory to the Bible. Then we get swept up in the emotions of whether it is the right timing, the correct avenue, corporately or individually, etc. which begins the analysis of every possible detail. This can cause us to paralyze any movement forward. Welcome to analysis paralysis. The devil has you right where he wants you – in limbo, powerless and unable to move forward. Let’s find a way to break through over analysis.

You might be thinking, how can we really know if it’s God’s will? Short of a lightning bolt knocking us to the ground, analyzing every last detail doesn’t seem to be such an unsafe road to travel. We are just making sure we haven’t overlooked anything, right? However, if it is causing you to be too debilitated to act on what God has placed before you then it isn’t faith, it is over analysis. Let praying replace analysis paralysis. Praying should be our first course of action, which we dig deeper into in Is It God’s Will or My Will? 

Noah is an amazing story of doing what God asks of us WITHOUT QUESTIONING.  (Genesis 6-9). Noah and his family were spared because…

Genesis 6:8-9 Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.

About the rest of mankind….

Genesis 6:5-6 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ⁶ And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

God gave Noah the plans to build an ark to save his family and the animals…

Genesis 6:18-19 But I will establish my covenant with you [Noah], and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁹ And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

Leading biblical scholars believe that it may have taken Noah and his sons 50-80 years to build the ark. It is hard to imagine what must have been going through Noah’s mind during the building of the ark. If I am honest I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Noah and his family to diligently work on this “God ordained project” year after year while living in a culture that did not honor God and was surely mocking them for their faith. The ark was ENORMOUS; it wasn’t like he could hide it in his garage and retreat from any embarrassing conversations. The Bible doesn’t give us any information on what interactions with his fellow society may have looked like. There may have been many mocking him and his family or maybe Noah kept to himself and had little contact with the a culture that did not honor God. Regardless it is hard to imagine plugging away at such an enormous project – created solely for only their own survival – for years on end while all the neighbors thought he was nuts. Can you imagine if your neighbor started builing an ARK in his backyard where there was no body of water to float it in? You would think he had lost every last marble in his head! There is little doubt in my mind that this is the same reaction that Noah got from any passersby. It didn’t matter though, Noah continued day after day, month after month, year after year to fullfill what God had commanded him. There is no record of Noah questioning God or trying to negotiate with God over the OUTLANDISH plan of building an ARK which would fit TWO OF EVERY CREATURE!

I have been asked to do so much less and have still responded in reluctance or feeling incapable at times. Surely Noah felt humanly incapable of buidling the ark, but it didn’t matter it was commanded by God and so he went straight to it until it was complete. Keeping Noah’s perseverance in mind, why do we question, stammer, analyze, procrastinate, etc? Nobody I know has been asked to build an ARK and yet, we still hesitate to do what God tells us. Do we feel so inferior and incapable that we can’t fulfill God’s commands for us? The Holy Spirit is within us, we need not fear. Is the enemy’s voice louder in our mind than God’s? If so, why are we listening to it? So let’s be like Noah and lose the analysis paralysis. We are to be about God’s business. If you are certain that God is moving your soul then he is with you, so let’s get after it. 

Romans 8:31 If God is for us, who can be against us?