Which voice will we follow into 2020, human reason or our own hearts?
RUTH Chapter 1
This chapter has a dramatic and maybe drastic beginning, three men died and three women were left alone. Sometimes God has to bring things in us and in our lives down to to death before He can get us onto His path for our lives. It wasn’t just one or two who died but all the men, there was nothing left. No hope of rebuilding anything. All was gone and that may be God’s place of new beginnings for us, when nothing of the old is left.
The three women, Naomi(means pleasant), Ruth and Orpah(both Moabites) had to decide what to do next. Naomi told the younger women to go back to their mother’s home, she could promise them nothing. Orpah eventually listened to the voice of reason and left, Ruth clung on to Naomi with a powerful pledge;
V16,17 Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go(wherever you go), and wherever you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God(total future commitment). Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried(for life). The old missionaries to Africa used to take their coffins along with them to the mission field, their commitment was for life.
Ruth followed a deeper call and like Abraham, the father of the faith, went out not knowing where she was going. Ruth’s destiny was now with Naomi, it didn’t make sense but she had bound herself inextricably to her Jewish mother in law, her people and their God.
Orpah followed reason and never saw Naomi again(Naomi/pleasant, a type of the Holy Spirit). Ruth followed her heart and we presume never saw her people or her home again. There is a cost to following the Lord, take note! He doesn’t usually ask us to give up everything at once but there will be sacrifices to be made. With the sacrifices comes freedom, a freeing of our lives from unnecessary things and relationships to go on with Him. Sometimes we have to have our hands emptied so that He can fill them again with the things of the Kingdom.
We may not be able to explain why we are taking a certain path, but then it’s only between us and and the Lord. No one else needs to know or understand.
May we, like Ruth, walk with our loving Heavenly Father in this coming year, embrace His ways and go forward boldly into all that He has for us.
God bless you.