Naomi

P 3196 Connections.

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 I have had a number of disconnected relationships in my life. Because of that, I have had to put down whatever I would love to see happen, and leave those things with the Lord. I joke to my hubby that there are some people in this life where the only way anyone can ever love them – is to throw love over the very tall electric fence they have constructed – not to mention the rabid Rottweilers!  Writing about these things is hard for me, because I believe human beings were made for connection — with God and others. We can disconnect from Him, by our choices.

The thing is, talking with Jesus is a little like talking to a beloved family member on the telephone, all the time. He loves us so much He will never put His end of the phone down. He simply will not hang up on us. Jesus  waits and longs for us to meet with Him, purely because He loves us. He loves to hear from us. And the loveliest part is this, you cannot replace me, and I cannot replace you in His affections! Whatever we have done to break intimacy with Him can be cast aside the minute we turn our eyes and hearts even slightly back toward Him. Running home is always our best option.

What Jesus has done, and continues to do for us, is called devotion. He takes His role as our Saviour, Redeemer, and Advocate, far more seriously than most of us do. Love is not only His Name, it is the way He thinks and acts toward us. This is why we need not fear correction – anything the Lord does is done from LOVE.  At the same time any problem that might occur is always at our end. I am not defending the Lord’s  motivation. I am simply describing something that is clearly laid out through the length and breadth of the bible. His kind of love has no end, and even when He has had to let some people have their head, it hurts Him deeply. 

In the course of my life I have come to understand that our present generations are all extremely careless about the value of love. I think, BTW, that’s why the younger generation texts one another. It is much easier to break up with someone when you aren’t looking at the other person weeping their heart out. Instead they are simply represented by letters on a page, which can be misread or misinterpreted. Those words have no actual substance, but they do allow us to hurt one another from a distance. 

This superficiality has had a huge cost on our society, because human beings were made for connection – “Let us make man in our image.”… These words show us the Trinity was deeply connected before mankind ever took its first breath. We can blame whatever we like;  the past, our upbringing, current teachings — but the truth is this, many times we still choose to continue to make choices that hurt others. We desperately need His help to be discerning, but LOVE has to take precedence. We can even fool ourselves into thinking that we are the victims – but in reality, maybe our faith is small, and we would rather avoid connection because we think we are protecting our right to stay in the position we have chosen for ourselves.

My point today is a simple one. SomeOne loves you and I so much He took every evil, spiteful, careless, unyielding, unforgiving thought, word or action we did and it was nailed to a cross – in His own Body. Jesus had to daily live with many people misunderstanding His actions, theology and motivations. Yet He was the one to Whom evil was a theory, not a practice! When He chose to become our substitute – He did not do it for obligation, or to force us into compliance. Jesus Christ did what He did to “demonstrate His love for us while we were yet sinners.” (Romans 5:8) He did it to connect us with Himself, His Father, the Holy Spirit, and others.

Connections can be broken when we take what other people say and do, out of context. The way OUT of this is to pick up the ‘phone’ and talk to Him. None of us have enough experience or understanding of what has happened to someone else, in their private daily lives, or even where they are coming from now. Broken people hurt people. And it is way too overly simplistic to expect someone else to change the habits of a lifetime, when we have the Greater One living in us. Nor can we afford to claim our hurt is preventing us from walking the extra mile. Our love for Him is expressed in the way we love others. Let’s remember, the more we do something, the more it owns us.

We need to move on from there and allow our connection with the Lord to change the way we connect with other people. When we choose to follow Jesus we are saying the same thing Ruth said to Naomi. “And Ruth said, Urge me not to leave you or to turn back from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16. This connection Ruth had with her mother-in-law was so strong it changed her whole way of life. Our connection with the Lord Jesus is designed to do the same thing. 

We won’t ever look, sound, act, or react the same way we did before we met Him, because we have chosen to cherish loyalty to Him and His ways over any immediate benefits to us. Otherwise we may become like an old person who has lost their hearing aid … the words and the world around them, get more and more unclear. 

Connection is vital. God has not abandoned us, despite who we are and what we have done, try remembering that instead of going over and over someone else’s sin against you. Remember, love bears all things. Bye. 👋

P 3107 We bring Him joy.

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Our faith in God’s goodness is His joy – especially when we simply enjoy Who He is, no matter what is going on around us! He is looking for all His people to live by faith, believing He is always good. All through the Old Testament, our Heavenly Father repeatedly gave Israel opportunities to leave all their known and established routines behind them, and trust in Him to care for them. The majority of them refused, because they thought they could run their lives without Him. They only wanted rescuing when they thought it was appropriate … they did not want transformation. What are you looking for? “How can two walk together unless they be in agreement?” Amos 3:3.

In the bible we have real life examples of what God’s goodness looks like in other people’s lives. There are men like Abraham, who left everything behind because God told the man: ‘Come and walk with Me to a new place I have for you.’ And Moses, who saved his nation for a far better life than the one they had. And David, a king without a throne, fighting for his life almost daily, being led every step of the way by God Himself.

Plus there were women like Ruth, who left her own family and became a part of history. She adopted and was obedient to Naomi’s family, and their faith. Noah’s wife — the woman who watched her husband build an ark, when it had never rained! Then she went in to a contained space filled with wild animals … plus she actually took her kids! Then there’s Esther who risked death to save her nation. There are countless others I could name here. These people all illustrate what faith in God’s goodness looks like. It looks like action – it looks like being stretched – it looks like being in danger – it looks like being uncomfortable.

I believe the Lord is still looking for people who will voluntarily live out their knowledge of Who He is to them – day by day. These people will live their lives like they believe to the depths of their souls, that He is a good, good Father Who cares deeply about each and every life. Almighty God’s loyalty, and investment into mankind’s relationship with Him, cost Him everything. Almighty God showed His faith in us when He sent His Son here — and then we turned around and clearly showed our faithlessness – by killing His Son! But the obvious love of His never-ending loving-kindness can still be followed right through-out the bible. It stretches way before our beginning in this world and goes on marching into eternity. 

Let’s look at Genesis 1:26-27… It was not enough for Him to make just another species, God wanted the MAN He made to look like HIM! “Then God said, “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

And Revelation 11:5 illustrates what His ultimate goal is:“Then the seventh angel sounded [his trumpet]; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom (dominion, rule) of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.” Jesus came to this earth to restore an overabundance of the very essence of what Adam and Eve had given away through their disobedience. I think that God Himself wants that garden we carelessly gave away, back. He misses us, because each one of us is special to Him. The intimacy, the fellowship, the shared love, the fun! Meanwhile, AnyOne who can make the variety of species we enjoy on this earth has to have a sense of FUN. 

I believe our God wants us to usher in His kingdom for Him, right here and right now, wherever we are. We don’t have to be “ready” – we just follow our Leader and do what He says. So much time has been wasted with us trying to get ourselves ready to obey Him! As we walk through our lives we are to be His announcers, heralds, the proclaimers — and Jesus Himself gave us the power to do it! Because of what He did for us, now we have become the aroma of Christ in this world. We go from place to place releasing the sight, smell, sound, love, joy, peace, reconciliation of His kingdom everywhere we go. We bring this tired, angry, broken world glimpses of what is to come.

We can use our gift of sight, to see the lack in our lives – most of us have some kind of lack or other — OR we can choose to live in His kingdom now, in our little corner of the world. It is our greatest joy to be given the privilege of fellowship with God Himself, daily, as well as enjoying everything He made. We need to remember that He made all those people around us too – even the grumpy, disappointed, fearful, greedy ones! I can stick my hand up for all those responses – how about you?

Many Christians want to live in the book of Acts, but those men and women were set on fire by the power of the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t just a tiny little match that caught fire, it was like a huge forest fire that spread everywhere. It consumed those who were ambitious for themselves, but empowered those who were willing to die for what they believed. God loves our faith. Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God Who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” WE CAN  BRING HIM JOY! Bye. 👋

P 2856 Ruth.

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Yesterday, I realised something about the book of Ruth that I had not seen before…. Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi is worth looking into. “But Ruth answered, “Don’t ask me to leave you! Let Me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be My people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried. May the Lord’s worst punishment come upon me if I let anything but death separate me from you!” Ruth 1:16-17. 

Ruth is talking to her husband’s mother, and just look at her loyalty …it prevails to the death! …She is handing over her own life for… wait for it … her mother-in-law!  Ruth and Orpah’s loyalty was a highlight of their relationship with their husbands’ mother. After all the younger two women  were from another ethnic group – the Moabites. God loves loyalty, because He is loyal! I just want to add something interesting I discovered when I went looking for pictures of loyalty – practically all the pictures I found were of people with their dogs! What does that say about humanity eh?

Back to these two young women, who had travelled with their husbands, their father-in-law and mother-in-law to another place, then … after all the men died, they followed their mother-in-law back toward her homeland. Ruth refused to leave Naomi. We need to take note of the depth of her loyalty. Almighty God is loyal to US in an even deeper way than Ruth was to Naomi!

He has always been that way, every single thing He has ever done was for mankind’s benefit. He did these things at a horrendous personal cost. Let’s face it, after all the years of disobedience and heartache from the people the Lord called His own – He could have started all over again, with a new group of people! But He didn’t. He didn’t because He promised He wouldn’t!  And we have a rainbow to remind us.

The Lord gave His Word that the Israelites would be His people and He would be their God. Then, in the fullness of time, that Word from God which had been handed down from one generation to another, gave these people access to God Himself, through Christ. God’s Living Word. Jesus Christ manifested Himself in the flesh and came and lived among them. Meanwhile, Jesus’ great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandmother was Ruth! 

God promises in His word to visit His favour upon His people to a thousand generations. For all you and I know – we could be the great great great great great etc.etc. grandchildren of His promise too! Some of us may be from Ruth and Boaz’s line. What do they say nowadays? 6 degrees of separation between each of us and there’s a rumour that that has shrunk to 5 degrees, because of social media. Excuse me while I roll my eyes!!

So listen to what He says to YOU personally today, displaying His loyalty: 

“Let your character or moral disposition be free from love of money [including greed, avarice, lust, and craving for earthly possessions] and be satisfied with your present [circumstances and with what you have]; for He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!]” Now that doesn’t sound like the Lord plans on deserting ANY of us does it?

And BTW, for those of you who have legal minds and would like to check that out in the book … that verse is in Hebrews 13:5 in the Amplified Version and it appears in another form in Deuteronomy 31:8;  and in Jeremiah 31:3. The Lord’s loyalty to us is not just solid, it is eternal. Now that’s true loyalty. Let’s be loyal to Him the way He is loyal to us!! Bye 👋.

P 2476 Ruth.

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Ruth 1:9-17 “May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”Then she (Naomi) kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands?  Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” Then Ruth uttered one of the loveliest lines reported in the bible,  But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

Naomi did all that she could to send these two young women back to their homes… but logic wasn’t the tool of the day – FAITH WAS!  Orpah returned to her homeland, but Ruth chose to stay with her mother-in-law. That just blows my mind. Think about it… one person turns back to the familiar and the household of their birth, and the other is activated and presses on into faith. Every step Ruth took after her decision to stay with Naomi, was one of faith.

Everybody loves the book of Ruth, it is a brilliant, inspiring, redemptive story about the power of God to redeem every type of human condition, and transform difficult situations for everybody’s good. The stars of this story were quite clearly not anybody fame-worthy.  But God, took an older lady whose faith had taken a battering, and a younger one who didn’t have much to look forward to, and put them smack in the middle of His-story and they didn’t even know it.

Boy is that saying heaps!! This is what the Christian life is like, it is a series of choices and we cannot always see the results. And some of them don’t seem all that significant when we make them! But Orpah’s choice separated her from a totally different destiny. She leaves the story at this point, and we don’t know what came next for her. Maybe she married again too, and had a very nice life … but there is more to this life than safety! There is courage, and innovation and freedom and the future to be fought for and won.

Our heroine Ruth starts out by being poor and having to scrounge for food, but eventually she finds a new husband, by following instructions, and by using her faith! She even has a family, when she thought that opportunity had passed her by. And she ends up being Jesus great great great great great great etc.etc. GRANDMOTHER. This story is so rich in spiritual imagery. Ruth chose to follow Naomi and use her faith and love for this older woman to move on, she seized the adventure as it unfolded before them both. Everything Naomi told that young woman to do, she did – she trusted and then she acted.

I’m starting to believe a lack of inspiration to be spiritually mature, is part of the problem today, particularly with many Western Christians. Plus we’ve all stopped being pilgrims. We seem have lost our sense of adventure. Instead of striking out in our little boats for foreign shores … stretching our faith and watching the Lord protect, provide and lead us … we’ve become settlers.

Settlers can’t wait to have a family, get a house and earn a living! BTW, we don’t need more pastors – we need more missionaries, at home and abroad!  People who leave comfort behind to make sure that others find out about Jesus. Surely we were born again for bigger things than normal! Our biggest claim to faith, these days, seems to be whether the Lord gave us the spouse/car/family/job we wanted! 

Pilgrims and pioneers press on, always believing there is more. More to know about Him, more to learn about themselves and others. Meanwhile we don’t have to go to the darkest places on the earth to become pioneers. We can reach unreached people groups in the alleys and doorways of our own cities! Or our offices, or schools, or at the shops. Pioneers are people with more than a dream – they are people of action. Ruth made a choice and she did not turn back. After all, she was not Jewish she was a Moabite, and yet God provided for her … all because of her obedience and loyalty. 

The Lord loves loyalty. Loyalty is more than an attitude, it is the way we live. Ruth is a wonderful example of a woman who could easily have seen her life as being over … instead she decided to take her chances in an unknown land. Today I want to leave you with yet another one of my icky questions …where have all the home-grown missionaries gone? Bye 👋🏻 

P 2314 It’s a Redemption story.

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In the bible we have the clearest picture of our God and His desires for mankind. I can see redemption spelled out so clearly – over and over again. Destruction can and will overwhelm us, without our constant awareness of His glorious redemption. To women like Ruth and Naomi His redemption looked like Boaz. To the 2nd thief on the cross next to Christ, it looked like paradise was knocking on his door.  

In Exodus 35:4-9 there is another redemption story: “Moses said to the whole Israelite community, “This is what the Lord has commanded:  From what you have, take an offering for the Lord. Everyone who is willing is to bring to the Lord an offering of gold, silver and bronze;  blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair;  ram skins dyed red and another type of durable leather; acacia wood;  olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense;  and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breast-piece.”

So what are these verses in Exodus about? Are they about the local desert and wilderness ‘Stitches and Craft Show??’ 😳 These guys were formerly slaves – they were beaten, starved, and owned by somebody. So where did they get such incredibly rich and costly items? They were given to them by their captors the Egyptians, before they left Egypt. God gave the Israelites favour, so they were able to collect all these riches. 

The point is not the riches, it is what the Lord did with them! Let’s just think about this, those precious materials were used to build a temporary house for God and man to meet… now that’s redemption! They were booty. The spoils of their captivity. God took the fruit of their captivity and turned it into a place of worship. 🧐 Think about it. He will do that for you and I. He will take the places of our greatest pain and loss, and make something so incredibly beautiful out of them – we will fall on our faces in worship.

I have two more illustrations. When Abraham went up the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, at that place of potential sacrifice, there was already provision. God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice instead of his precious son. On yet another occasion God provided a whale to preserve Jonah’s life – even though it was Jonah’s sin and disobedience that put him in that position in the first place! 

My point today is this – do not let past failures, or circumstances, or even captivities, rob you of TODAY’S DELIVERANCE. Our God ALWAYS has a bigger plan. And don’t be surprised when the Lord takes whatever you give Him, no matter how decadent, destroyed or even wrecked it seems, and makes something glorious out of it! Just like the tent of meeting the Jewish people crafted, under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage and guidance. God had a purpose for it all – a place where He and mankind could meet.

He will take our failures, or exhibits of our captivity and destruction etc. and use those things we are ashamed of … TO BRING GLORY TO HIMSELF. Just follow the Holy Spirit’s prompts. JESUS IS A ‘BEAUTY FOR ASHES’ SAVIOUR! Those seemingly disastrous things become the places where our faith leads us on into further, deeper trust.

“For Yahweh is always good and ready to receive you. He’s so loving that it will amaze you— so kind that it will astound you! And He is famous for His faithfulness toward all. Everyone knows our God can be trusted, for He keeps His promises to every generation!” Psalms 100:5 TPT

Those scars that are still on Jesus’ body are not marks of shame —they are marks of redemption. Our whole bible is a redemption story. The whale in Jonah, and the ram provided for Abraham, show us He will do whatever it takes to bring about His purposes. Naomi and Ruth show us nothing is irredeemable. That tent of meeting shows us He will give us favour, but He has a kingdom purpose for that favour. 

All these things reveal His character to us. Our job in the face of defeat, despair and suffering is to not faint but to use any and all opportunities to learn TRUST. Love the bible – in its pages are incredible redemption stories. 👋🏻