How Did the Women of Noah's Ark Protect & Prepare for the Storm?

Bible, Women & Bathrobes Episode 19

Women of the Ark, Part 1

Summary

Women in the biblical account of Noah's flood played crucial roles in preparing for the coming storm. Tamara Anderson, Bonnie Randall, and Amy Johnson talk about the women of the ark from Genesis 6. They emphasize the importance of prioritizing God in family and marriage, and building refuges of love and obedience to God's ways. They discussed the challenges of teaching children to stay true to God in a world filled with evil and violence, and offered practical insights and examples from Biblical accounts to illustrate their points. The speakers emphasized the need for women to stand true to God in a day of corruption and wickedness, just like Mrs. Noah and other faithful women of the past.

Main Takeaways

• From Tamara, Regarding the Women of the Ark, “they were women of faith and courage, despite everything that was going on around them. And they, they probably had to be very conscious in their choice to follow God when wickedness was just so rampant.”
• From Amy, “I never know when the rain is going to start in my life. I never know when the storms are just going to start flooding in every aspect of my life, and so what am I doing to prepare an ark that will protect me, and keep me doing it his way, even though the rain is threatening to destroy me?”
• From Bonnie, “My prayer for all of you ladies today is that you will know how to build at your own arks, and how to build that place of refuge in your home and that your homes will become a place of safety. They will be a safe haven where all who enter feel the love of Christ and they feel I can breathe here. I can be here. I can be me, I can find God in this place. And I know that as we study the Scriptures, we'll know the path ahead.”

Today’s Podcast Hosts & Guests

Tamara K. Anderson

Tamara, founder of Women Warriors of Light, is a dynamic speaker, award winning author, and a podcaster. She is driven by her Christian faith to inspire faith in Jesus Christ. Alongside her husband, Justin, she navigates the joys and challenges of parenting four children with autism, ADHD, and mental health hurdles. You can find out more about Tamara on her website: https://www.tamarakanderson.com/

Bonnie Randall

Bonnie Randall is a wife, mother, trainer, speaker, actress, copywriter, heart centered life coach and has also been a business and marketing consultant for over 20 years. Her real passion is to help people grow as individuals and teach them how to resolve limiting beliefs. Bonnie enjoys teaching about mental health, abuse prevention and recovery classes. She runs a trauma recovery support group and YouTube channel called, Come Off Conqueror, which helps survivors of abuse find Christ centered healing. Find out more at: https://www.youtube.com/@comeoffconqueror

Amy Johnson

Amy is a member of our Women Warriors of Light Advisory Board. She is a leader of women, a homemaker, and a licensed cosmetologist. Amy enjoys nurturing women through betrayal trauma to becoming a beacon of support and inspiration.

Transcript

If you would like to read the transcript of today’s episode, you may find it on our website:

Bonnie Randall  0:01 

What do we know about the women of the ark? The women during the time of Noah, his wife, his daughters in law, and what can we learn from them? There isn't a whole lot in there, but we've decided we're going to tackle this anyway. So stay tuned and see what you too can learn from them.

Tamara Anderson  0:23 

Welcome to Bible, Women and Bathrobes the podcast where faith meets comfort. Join us Tuesday and Thursday morning. As the gals from Women Warriors of Light and their guests, Don bathrobes and dive into the inspiring stories of women in the Bible, and the teachings of Jesus Christ. From Esther's bravery to the Sermon on the Mount. We explore it all with warmth, laughter, sisterhood, and maybe even a few sleepy eyed moments. tune in live or at your leisure as we learn lessons from scripture which empower women today.

Tamara Anderson  1:04 

Welcome to another episode of Bible, Women and Bathrobes. I'm your host Tamara K Anderson. And joining me today is my co host, Bonnie Randall. Good morning, Bonnie.

Bonnie Randall  1:15 

Good morning.

Tamara Anderson  1:16 

And also Amy Johnson. Amy, thanks for being on this morning.

Amy Johnson  1:21 

Good morning it's my pleasure.

Tamara Anderson  1:23 

And today we're going to talk about the beginning of this story of the women of the ark, that's what I'm going to call them. Unfortunately, we do not have their names. And so I'll refer to her as Mrs. Noah and her daughters-in-law. And they lived in a time of great wickedness and violence on the earth, and very, very tough times. And so we're going to kind of dive into this.

Tamara Anderson  1:56 

We're going to cover Genesis chapter six today. And then we'll just keep going next week with the story of these women in the ark. But we'll start off here in in the beginning, in verse one, it talks about how men were multiplying on the face of the earth, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, and they were fair, and they took them as wives, and all that they chose. And so I know, Amy, you wanted to comment briefly on that verse. Why don't you go ahead and share what you were thinking there.

Amy Johnson  2:36 

I just, I'm always amazed by the choices that we make. And these these sons of God were the righteous that had been born in the covenant, as we talked about, as the Bible talks about quite a bit. And then they chose to marry outside of their faith outside of the covenant, and choose those who hadn't made that covenant. And I think this is a really interesting lesson about how when we are trying to build a family, and we're trying to do it on different planes, marriages, I think tough enough. And and raising people, raising children up in a world that's very polarized is difficult enough. But when you mix the covenant and the non covenant, I think that's when you really realize how tough life can be. Because it's really, it's really important that if you're going to raise children up to God, you both choose God first.

Tamara Anderson  3:50 

Yeah, and that's tricky. That's really, really hard. And we can see that I mean, we are many out, you know, Adam is no longer alive at the time Noah was born, even though they lived for like, I don't know, 900 years. I mean, they live for centuries, right? So what we see is that because this has happened, that people were falling away from following God.

Tamara Anderson  4:24 

And yeah, in verse three, the Lord said, "My spirit shall not always strive with man." And, and that is, you know, he's, he's realizing these people have fallen away. They're not listening to God or people who I mean, it talks, you know, in just the previous chapter that like Enoch walked with God, you know, and then he was so righteous, He was taken from the earth basically.

Tamara Anderson  4:53 

But in verse five, we see, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." And, boy, if you want to find evil today, you can find it with a touch of a click of a button. And so, we have this same challenge in our day today that the women of the Ark had, how do we teach our children to stay true to God? How when when evil is so prevalent, when violence is so prevalent, and that's what it talks about in this chapter.

Tamara Anderson  5:35 

Because God was just so appalled by what he was seeing on the earth that he's like, and I'm repenting from repenting being I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I made man on this earth, and I'm going to destroy them. It's just gotten so so bad that I don't see that this earth is going to be able to make any progress. Because everybody is turning out so bad.

Tamara Anderson  6:01 

And then we come to this point where "but Noah," in verse eight, "found grace in the eyes of God, and he was a just man, perfect in his generation, and Noah walked with God." And so we have an example of righteousness amid all this evil and violence and corruption. And corruption is another word that is mentioned in verse 11.

Tamara Anderson  6:26 

And, and so God said, Okay, we're gonna, we're going to wipe the slate clean, and we're going to start over. And if you're going to do that, you're gonna have some good people to take with you. And as I've been praying and pondering about Noah and his wife and his three sons, and their wives, the, I'm sure God watched them for a while to make sure, are you going to stay true to me? And, and he saw that they would.

Tamara Anderson  6:59 

And so he chose them to be the ones to carry on. So I think that says lot right there about the quality of people that he is saving to continue civilization and life with is that he chose good, solid people.

Tamara Anderson  7:19 

All right, let's kind of talk about that really quick. Bonnie, any thoughts on Mrs. Noah and the type of environment they lived in, and how what we can glean from their examples of just staying true during a time of wickedness and violence.

Bonnie Randall  7:41 

I, this chapter has really stumped me, I had to do a lot of digging, and a lot of praying and asking for clarity, because we don't know a whole lot. And there's, I was telling these guys earlier, but for the benefit of the listeners, there are other books that were not canonized in Christianity that do talk more about who these women were. And while it was interesting, I did feel like I needed to stick to what was canonized, and which then led to more, even more prayer, because I'm like, Well, how do we, What do I learn from these cute women that are nameless in this book.

Bonnie Randall  8:35 

And one of the things that really stuck out to me, which I think is similar to Amy is that this idea of equally yoking myself to my husband, and being united in our faith and united in our efforts to teach her children and to stay on the path of righteousness. And stay with God and not be led astray by the giants of our day and are the men of renown of our day. And I thought a lot about my own life, what am I doing? Am I being I guess, or am I being led astray by these giants?

Bonnie Randall  9:26 

So the first question was, well, who are the Giants of my day. And I got me thinking about like, Instagram influencers and YouTube influencers and movie stars. And, you know, there's a certain singer that came to my mind that everyone's obsessed with and they have a whole culture surrounding her. And you know that, that gal she's actually not, we don't listen to her music in our home, because I felt a very distinct impression when One day when one of her songs came on, and I thought, this is not appropriate for my little kids, it's going right over their head. They're not understanding what she's saying. But I knew what she was saying. And I felt the Spirit shift in our home. I thought, Okay, I've got to, like, watch that. So I guess, like, one of the big things that stood out to me was was those few things.

Tamara Anderson  10:31 

Oh, I really love that it's, it's true that we, we mothers and wives can be guardians of our home. And we can influence at least when they're younger, we can influence what they're watching and what they're hearing. And, and teaching them to follow righteous when there is so much wickedness around. Because they had to they had to do that. Noah and Mrs. Noah had to teach their sons. And their sons had to pick good wives among all this wickedness going on. I had to pause and think about that. I'm like, that was probably hard to do as well. If there was so much wickedness around how do you choose somebody that is good? You know, it's tough. It's really, really tough. Amy?

Amy Johnson  11:25 

I think not only do we have to be guardians of our minds, I think, as a woman, as a person, but especially as a mother. It starts with being a guardian of your own mind, if you're going to be a guardian of your home. And so in verse five, where it says that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, that's that starts in your mind and what you're spending your time doing and what you're thinking.

Amy Johnson  11:55 

And, and as a woman, I find that for me, a woman who's trying to follow Jesus Christ, trying to do what's right, I find that the imaginations and the thoughts of my hearts are false beliefs about what my spouse is thinking about me, or why my children are motivated to do what they're doing or it but it's these false beliefs that destroy my peace. And if we shift back up to verse three, I think I've experienced where you watch somebody, mentally, they're just letting their thoughts just run rampant, and have these negative thoughts all the time.

Amy Johnson  12:45 

And then you shift back up where it says, "My spirit shall not always strive with man for that he is also flesh." Which I love that! Thank you for the disclaimer that you recognize that you put us here in the mortal body.

Amy Johnson  13:01 

But he that word strive. One day when I was studying really bothered me, like, what does that mean? Because often when we think of strive, we think of strife in a relationship, right? But I looked it up and one of the definitions was "make great efforts to obtain." And I've thought a lot about that how the spirit will make great efforts to obtain me. And that matters to me--that somebody is trying to help me, stay by the Lord, and do what he would have me do. That, that matters to me.

Amy Johnson  13:42 

And so as I've noticed that as I, as I shut down the untrue, negative thoughts about me and other people, that have a tendency to be so easy to grab, hold up, as I shut those down, I find the spirit has an easier time striving with me, and seeking to obtain me and making great efforts to obtain me. So I really, truly believe that if we're going to be guardians of our home, we have to be guardians of our mind first.

Tamara Anderson  14:13 

Oh, I really like that. And you pause and think about these women raising children and just living in such a time where there was great wickedness, we they had to have God's help. They had to have His Spirit striving with them, you know? Because we're so imperfect, you know, here in mortality, we need God's help. And that's probably one of the biggest lessons we can glean from these women is that they had to seek after God and keep Him with them in such a time of wickedness.

Tamara Anderson  14:52 

You know, oh my gosh, they needed God more than ever, and that we can pray for and and have God be with us, just like these women of the ark that we need God, we need his spirit striving with us in such a time of corruption and wickedness and, you know, false idols and people standing up and, and saying this, that and the other. that. Monitor the content you're allowing into your mind and heart and home and soul. And also take time to teach your children the importance of these principles as well so that they too, can hopefully see that choice more clearly. You know.

Tamara Anderson  15:39 

Bonnie you, you look like you wanted to say something,

Speaker 1  15:42 

Well you just made me think about back to that scripture, or says, "but with thee, I will establish my covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, thy sons, thy wife and thy sons wives with thee, and of every living thing of all flesh two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark and keep them alive with thee. And they shall be male and female," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he does and then further, you know, you are more, we'll talk about that in the next episode, but the covenant was established, I will establish my covenant. And that scripture stood out to me because I don't remember there being, I didn't remember there being a covenant before Abraham. Honestly. Yeah, and this is like Miss nonscriptorian over here reading the scriptures again. Like I'm reading them for the first time. I swear, I've read these before, but things different things stick out every time you read it, right.

Bonnie Randall  16:44 

And and that made me think like, the covenant, what is the covenant? And I'm like, Okay, well, what is the Abrahamic covenant that will be a men, he'll be a man of many nations, right? That his son, and he'd have all this posterity, and he hadn't had kids yet when all this was established. And so I thought, well, that it's probably pretty similar that they're talking about the seeds. And Noah is right? His kids do repopulate the earth. And he starts over with a clean slate with these people who are now righteous.

Bonnie Randall  17:21 

And I'm like, Well, where did we go wrong? And if you look back, just in chapter five, where they're talking about Cain and Abel, and how Cain slew, Abel, and because he slew Abel, maybe it was actually chapter four. After Cain, slays, Abel, he gives Eve, another son, Seth. Because we needed the other side of the coin. Cain has already gone off the deep end and made some really poor choices. And we know his posterity continues down that that way. And Seth's posterity creates a righteous lineage, which is Methuselah and Lamack. And then we get Noah, right? And so on and so forth.

Bonnie Randall  18:15 

And that really brought me to this idea of okay, what is the legacy I'm leaving behind as a mom? And what is my lineage? And am I staying true to my baptismal covenant? Like I baptized, I was baptized, right and agreed to follow Christ? And am I staying true to that commitment to him? You know, and am I teaching that same thing to my children and making our home an ark, a place of refuge and a place of safety? And those things and again, like examining all the things that I'm doing as a mom, and trying to be careful, because I do feel like, right now, while they're little, I do have the influence that you've spoken of, right? Like I can dictate what is allowed in my house and what is not allowed to my house. And I'm seeing the fruits of that labor. And not to make my kids out to be these little judgy people, but they will point out things that don't fit in our, Well, home culture.

Tamara Anderson  19:34 

Yeah,

Tamara Anderson  19:34 

Is th eay to say that and it actually makes me really proud. Right, and it's like, I'm glad that you're recognizing that these things are not for us. And they, and we talk about how I don't think that this wickedness while it happened fast, it was still over the course of Many hundreds of years that they became this violent. And we think about how how do you get that bad, right? I don't really think that it happens overnight. It's a very gradual process.

Tamara Anderson  20:13 

And it does start in the mind, like Amy was saying right in your heart, so we can course correct it early on. And if early on, we're teaching our children good principles, and staying close to Christ and being able to recognize Satan subtle, very, very, very subtle tactics, they will start to recognize when things are a little degrees off, and we bring them back when they're just a little bit off, we don't wait until they're off the deep end. To course, correct. We start that earlier on.

Tamara Anderson  20:55 

As you were talking about that, I just started thinking of the symbolism of this ark that Noah was instructed to build by God, and, and how much time it must have taken this family and, and it was something that could unite them. I will say that if you live in a world of violence, if there's something that can unite you as a family, and you can work towards a goal, I'm sure that helped keep their focus on, okay, we're building this ark, it's going to save our lives, it's going to save the lives of all these animals.

Tamara Anderson  21:30 

And but what what are we doing to build our own ark that will save us? You know what I mean, and it's going to require work. It's not something that you can just snap your fingers and, or push a button and Haha, I've got an ark. You know, this is something they had to build by hand, that they had to cut down trees and labor and insulate from the water. You know, they had to make it so that the water wouldn't get in.

Tamara Anderson  22:00 

And I think there's a lot of symbolism there for our lives and our homes. What are we doing to insulate, you know, and build a home that evil can't, you know, come through the cracks? And probably being very vigilant, you know, very vigilant of, of how we protect not only ourselves, but our families. Amy, thoughts?

Amy Johnson  22:27 

I, as Bonnie was talking, it's funny, because I also saw the ark. And I saw the and I, I pictured this little tiny home that they were building that they had to go into. And then I love how the Lord says, You're gonna take the animals and keep them alive. Like in my brain, I'm like, oh, that's See, that's the hard part. I can take the animals and I can guarantee their survival. But what then started to formulate in my brain was, and in my heart was, this is what we do with our family, we keep them alive. And we know that Christ is the living water, and we know that he is all things alive.

Amy Johnson  23:07 

And then we know that the adversary brings death and destruction, and chaos and all the things, right? And so we have this opportunity to no matter how big or how small, our little ark/home is, we have this opportunity to bring in who the Lord will, and keep them alive in Christ.

Amy Johnson  23:34 

And I thought that was such a cool, parallel. And then you circle back to verse 12, where it talks about corruption. And the last sentence says, "for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." And I think that when when you start talking about the cracks in the ark, and you know, making sure there's no, that's that's what I saw was when you have corruption coming in to your home, and you're taking

Amy Johnson  24:06 

And and I really believe the adversary is a beautiful example of corruption. He counterfeits everything good. We take something out true doctrine of pure principle, and he counterfeits it. So he takes love. And he counterfeits it. And he says, Well, you don't really have to live the covenant that I've set out or the principles I've set out. Just it's okay. We'll still love you. And it's true. We will. But we we if we want to progress and we want to get somewhere we have to be true to the Lord's Way. We can't just go corrupt in it. And so I did I saw this little home and they all get in and they all have to stay alive in Christ. because they have to do it his way, and not corrupted.

Tamara Anderson  25:03 

I love that. Wow, what I think these women must have had such an important part in. As we wrap up this chapter is the building of the ark, that it wasn't just the men working, this was a big job the women helped to, but also think about gathering food. And, and preserving food.

Tamara Anderson  25:32 

And there's a spiritual side to that, you know, that we women can also help with gathering and, and nourishing our families, both physically and spiritually. And so these women were an important part of that portion as well, that they were gatherers that they helped, they worked alongside with their husbands to make this a reality, you know, to make this ark come into being.

Tamara Anderson  26:00 

And I think it's cool that first of all, they had faith to follow Noah, and and know that he was being inspired by God, I'm sure that these women were women of faith and character. And that they were hard workers. And they had testimonies of God and His plan, even though they lived in such a world of wickedness.

Tamara Anderson  26:29 

And so I I'm, I'm amazed, I guess that's probably my take away from these ladies is that they were women of faith and courage, despite everything that was going on around them. And they, they probably had to be very conscious in their choice to follow God when wickedness was just so rampant. Anyway, takeaways, ladies? Amy, we'll start with you. And then Bonnie, you can wrap us up?

Amy Johnson  26:57 

Well, it just keeps going through my brain is I never know when the rain is going to start in my life. I never know when the storms are just going to start flooding in every aspect of my life, and so what am I doing to prepare an ark that will protect me, and keep me doing it his way, even though the rain is threatening to destroy me?

Tamara Anderson  27:25 

Oh, that's deep. I love that Bonnie.

Bonnie Randall  27:29 

She just made me think of the song build a boat by Colton Dixon. And I'll save this for next episode. So it's a really good song. And there's a lot of parallels here. And he talks all about the ark and how to prepare for those storms of life and that song.

Bonnie Randall  27:50 

But for today's biggest takeaway is this idea for me. And I think that's because of where my husband and I are at with this big decision that we've got hanging over our heads. This idea of being equally yoked together. And being on board with big things,. It had to have been a crazy revelation that Noah received. And his wife was like, what I can only imagine the conversations that must have happened around the dinner table for those two and for, their sons and their wives. And their sons getting on board and their wives getting on board, and then kids getting on board, this idea of us all coming together in Christ, and using our abilities to pray and to receive answers and promptings and weaving them into a beautiful tapestry of life.

Bonnie Randall  28:50 

Because my husband will receive answers, and I'll receive answers. And sometimes they seem like they're odds with each other. But really, they're just different pieces of the puzzle. And when we start to put them together, it creates something beautiful. And so, for me, I wonder, I just wonder, because you know, this isn't in there. But I wonder how much of the actual doing and the building the preserving of the food and different things was dividing up the roles and who was doing what and just this idea that it's not the men doing everything, ladies, right?

Bonnie Randall  29:29 

We have the opportunity to step up and also serve God. And we do that, our biggest role is in the home and creating those Ark so safe haven havens, those refuges right where our children can grow and learn and we have a duty and responsibility to teach them of the ways of God. Because there is so much wickedness all around us. It's scary. Our day is so much like what Noah went through. And that's terrifying for me. My kids are really little, my youngest is five, my oldest is 10. And it's only going to get worse. And so I have to guard my little ark, my a little family. And I have to keep myself steady and hanging on to my covenant that I've made with the Lord. And make sure that I'm not veering off course and going off for the men of renown and the giants of my day, and I'm sticking to the only one that really matters, right?

Bonnie Randall  30:48 

So my prayer for all of you ladies today is that you will know how to build at your own arks, and how to build that place of refuge in your home and that your homes will become a place of safety. They will be a safe haven where all who enter feel the love of Christ and they feel I can breathe here. I can be here. I can be me, I can find God in this place. And I know that as we study the Scriptures, we'll know the path ahead.

Tamara Anderson  31:25 

Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us today. And may God bless you and inspire you to know how you can stand true to God in a day of corruption and wickedness just like Mrs. Noah and Mr. Noah, and all those who stayed true to God in that time of the ark. Thanks for joining us.

Tamara Anderson  31:48 

Thanks for tuning in to Bible. Women and Bathrobes hosted by Women Warriors of Light. We've loved exploring the stories of remarkable women or the teachings of the Savior today with you. If today's episode brought someone special to mind, be sure to spread the word. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a moment of inspiration and sisterhood. Just a friendly reminder, all opinions we share are entirely personal as we are trying to decipher and apply Bible teachings just like you are. Until next time, stay faithful. And may Your journey be blessed and illuminated by God's love.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai