Favor - The One Year Praying through the Bible for Your Kids

The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. And the LORD said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. . . .” But Noah found favor with the LORD. Genesis 6:5-8

HUMANITY had become thoroughly and pervasively evil. There was no goodness, no kindness, no joy—just never-ending selfishness and never-enough indulgence. This is the world Noah was born into and the nature he was born with. Noah was born a sinner like everyone around him. The same selfishness came naturally to him, and the same debauchery tempted him. But Noah was not like everyone around him. Noah’s life was not guided by his environment and inherited tendencies. How do we know? Noah found favor, or grace, with the Lord. Or perhaps it would be better to say that grace found Noah.

It’s not that God looked over humanity and found the one person who sought to please him, thereby granting Noah favor and providing him salvation in the ark. The grace came before the goodness. Noah did not earn this favor from God. It was a gift, pure and simple and undeserved. In fact, God’s favor is never something that can be earned or purchased. It is always a gift. The grace that found Noah changed Noah. In fact, it shaped everything about his life and identity. Though he was surrounded by evil and perversion, the grace at work in Noah’s life implanted within him the desire to keep himself pure and uncontaminated.

Lord, may ________ find favor with you. Would you grant him your grace that cannot be earned through good behavior and therefore cannot be lost by bad behavior? And may the grace that finds ________ change him so that he might, like Noah, be a blameless person in his generation, one who walks in fellowship with you.