"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" John 1:12 ESV
Recently I was discussing with a dear friend about the gospel and communicating it to others. So I asked my friend to share with me her understanding of the gospel. As she began sharing she threw out biblical terms such as glory, fellowship, sin, wrath, judgement, redemption,God's righteousness, holy, grace,believe, receive, and repent. When I pretended I was a non-Christian and asked her what these terms meant, she had a great difficulty defining those terms for me. Now this is a seasoned, on fire, and godly woman. it came to me, if she had such difficulty defining her terms, what about the rest of the Christian community?
When sharing the gospel or anything pertaining to our faith, it is imperative that we know what we are talking about. Ignorance is not bliss and having wrong ideas of what the bible teaches can lead ourselves and others to false conclusions and convictions.
I was especially thinking about the term we use of "receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior". I have had so many tell me about so and so receiving Jesus into their heart or someone who was led to make a decision for Jesus Christ. Now the bible speaks of receiving Jesus, but what does that mean and what does it not mean? There are so many people who say they have received Christ and believed Christ who give little or no evidence that they are spiritually alive. We will often times say that because Fred once received Christ, even though his life demonstrates little or no evidence of change, that because he received Christ, he is in no matter what.
Last week I wrote about what it means to love God. The bible defines loving God in terms of treasuring Christ, savoring Christ, cherishing Christ, or supremely valuing Christ.
But what of those who are unresponsive to the spiritual beauty of Jesus? Who are unmoved by the glories of Christ. Who don't have the spirit of the apostle Paul when he said, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8)? This is not their spirit, yet they say they have received Christ. So to me it looks as though it is possible to "receive Christ" and yet to not " receive Him" for who and what He really is. Thus, we demean His worth and do not really "receive" Christ at all.
This is why I so strongly believe we need to add a new term in defining what it means for someone to become a Christian and receive Christ: Make Jesus Christ Your Supreme Treasure. I think it is much more helpful and forthright in clearly telling others what it means to love, follow, and receive Jesus. Treasuring God is the essence of loving God.
Let me describe why I think this is so important. One way to describe this problem is to say that when these people "receive Christ," they do not receive him as supremely valuable. They receive him simply as sin-forgiver (because they love being guilt-free), and as rescuer-from-hell (because they love being pain-free), and as healer (because they love being disease-free), and as protector (because they love being safe), and as prosperity-giver (because they love being wealthy). They don't receive him the way Paul did when he spoke of "the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." They don't receive him as he really is—more glorious, more beautiful, more wonderful, more satisfying, than everything else in this world, this life, and the whole universe. They don't prize him or treasure him or cherish him or delight in him.
Such a "receiving" of Christ is the kind of receiving that anyone can do. Any unregenerate, "natural" person can do this. This is very doable. This is a "receiving" of Christ that requires no change in human nature. You don't have to be born again to love being guilt-free and pain-free and disease-free and safe and wealthy. All natural men without any spiritual life love these things. But to embrace Jesus as your supreme treasure requires a new nature. No one does this naturally. You must be born again (John 3:3). You must be a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17; Galatians 6:15). You must be made spiritually alive (Ephesians 2:1-4). "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' [and mean it!] except in the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).
True saving faith is a receiving of Christ for who He really is and what He really is, namely, more glorious, more wonderful, more satisfying, and, therefore, more valuable than anything in the universe. Saving faith says, "I receive you as my Savior, my Lord, my supreme Treasure; and "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8).
There are profound and important reasons why Jesus said, "Therefore, any one who does not hate renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). Or "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). And, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field" (Matthew 13:44).
We need to see Jesus as compellingly beautiful so that we present Him as compellingly beautiful to others. We want others to receive Him in a way that He like the treasure in the field and has become so compellingly beautiful, valuable, and infinitely satisfying to them.
Jesus is infinitely valuable and infinitely satisfying. Saving faith receives this Christ.
"Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.My flesh and my heart may fail,but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever"(Psalm 73:25)
Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.(1 Peter 1:8)
Treasuring Christ above all things,
Pastor Bill
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
WHAT IT MEANS TO LOVE GOD
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36–39).
If you really want to know the will of God for your life and find out what is of supreme importance to Him, the best way to do that is listen to what Jesus, the Son of God has to say. He tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God. And Jesus says to do this with all of our heart, soul, and mind. What does this mean to love God this way?
I am very excited to try to help you really learn and understand what this means. When Jesus says, “Love God will all your heart, soul, and mind,” He means that our thinking and feeling and desiring should be wholly engaged to do all they can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.
There are two key things that will help us to understand this sweet demand from Jesus. First, “loving God” means more than anything else to treasure God. The other is that thinking (the mind), feeling (the heart), and inclining our desires (our souls) are the means to that end. In other words, loving God is an experience of cherishing, delighting, admiring, enjoying, and valuing Him. It’s not a thought, feeling, or desire about God or a work for God. It’s the sort of thing Paul meant when he said, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). It’s about treasuring the supreme worth of God. So, love for God is an affair of the affections. Ideas, feelings, desires, thoughts and thinking are crucial but they are not what love is. Thinking, feeling, and desiring is for the sake of loving God but it is not in itself loving God. It’s a means to loving. It’s not what love is.
Now what this means is that love is not a mere decision any more than your enjoying the beauty of a sunset is a mere decision. Could you imagine looking at a sunset feeling nothing than telling yourself to decide to enjoy it even though you don't. That is why I have said that where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead. You don’t decide to find beauty compelling to you. It happens to you. Decision based love breeds performance and hypocrisy and a duty based way of looking at love. Loving God means that God is of supreme value and worth to you; your supreme treasure and pleasure. We prefer above everything else to know Him and see Him and be with Him and be like Him.
Perhaps for some of you, you have never thought of loving God in these terms. May I suggest that because many don't understand what loving God means they end up focusing on means and ends and not love itself. So much I have read and been taught over the years focuses on means and ends and not on the love itself. Some focus little on the means and wonder why they struggle loving God. Others focus on the ends and struggle with loving people and obedience to God. So what I mean is how we come to love Him and the beautiful things that come out of our lives from this love for Him.
Loving God in the Great Commandment means most essentially treasuring God—valuing him, cherishing him, admiring him, desiring him. Therefore, loving him with all our heart, soul, and mind means that our thinking, our feeling, and our desires are not what does the loving, but what fuels the loving. Loving God with the heart, desires, and mind do all they can to awaken and express our treasuring God above all things.
Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:7 that "the object and purpose of our instruction and charge is love".(Amplified bible). Jonathan Edwards has charged me as a pastor to "raise the affections of my hearers as much as i can" when I preach the word. I wish every pastor would make that their goal when they speak, otherwise they have failed.
If we equate loving God with thinking and feeling rightly about God, we jeopardize the very reality of love. Let me use the analogy of fire. in order to have fire you need wood and kindling. but you would never call the kindling fire. When the fire burns you are not thinking about the kindling anymore, you enjoy the fire. So God has given us His word and the Christ exalting illumination of the Holy Spirit to be kindling picked up and engaged by our mind, heart, and desires in order to light a fire of love. I have often times said that the most important thing in our lives is to see Jesus for all that He is(that is the kindling) and to savor Him for all He is worth (that's loving and treasuring Him).
In the same light, fire produces two effects, light and heat. But we know that light and heat will not happen without the fire. When Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), He emphatically did not say that keeping His commandments is what love is. He distinguished the two and made commandment-keeping the evidence of loving Him, not the definition of loving Him.
And when Jesus says the second commandment (keeping God’s commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves), He emphatically did not say that the second commandment was interchangeable with the first one. It is like it. It is not it. Loving God is not defined by loving neighbor. It is demonstrated by loving neighbor. “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).
Or consider the way Jesus talks about the heart worshiping Him. “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me’” (Mark 7:6–7). In other words, external actions—even religious ones directed toward God—are not the essence of worship. They are not the essence of love. What happens in the heart is essential. The external behaviors will be pleasing to God when they flow from a heart that freely treasures God above all things.
In other words, just as a fire produces light and heat, love for God, will produce love in our lives. The fire of the Father's love will burn within our hearts producing love. Is it no wonder that John says, "This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3). There is a kind of commandment keeping that is exceedingly burdensome (without love for God out of duty or self effort) and there is a kind of commandment keeping that is easy (produced and released out of love). there is such a joyful freedom when love produces your behavior. No more decision, no more duty, and no more performance just a natural/supernatural outflow of what is in your heart.
So we cannot truly love God without knowing God; and the way we know God is by the Spirit-enabled use of our minds and hearts. So to “love God with all your mind and heart and soul” means engaging all your powers to know God as fully as possible in order to treasure him for all He is worth.
May you be free to know Him and enjoy Him forever. "Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy" (2 Peter 1:8)
THIS IS LOVE!
Pastor Bill
If you really want to know the will of God for your life and find out what is of supreme importance to Him, the best way to do that is listen to what Jesus, the Son of God has to say. He tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God. And Jesus says to do this with all of our heart, soul, and mind. What does this mean to love God this way?
I am very excited to try to help you really learn and understand what this means. When Jesus says, “Love God will all your heart, soul, and mind,” He means that our thinking and feeling and desiring should be wholly engaged to do all they can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.
There are two key things that will help us to understand this sweet demand from Jesus. First, “loving God” means more than anything else to treasure God. The other is that thinking (the mind), feeling (the heart), and inclining our desires (our souls) are the means to that end. In other words, loving God is an experience of cherishing, delighting, admiring, enjoying, and valuing Him. It’s not a thought, feeling, or desire about God or a work for God. It’s the sort of thing Paul meant when he said, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). It’s about treasuring the supreme worth of God. So, love for God is an affair of the affections. Ideas, feelings, desires, thoughts and thinking are crucial but they are not what love is. Thinking, feeling, and desiring is for the sake of loving God but it is not in itself loving God. It’s a means to loving. It’s not what love is.
Now what this means is that love is not a mere decision any more than your enjoying the beauty of a sunset is a mere decision. Could you imagine looking at a sunset feeling nothing than telling yourself to decide to enjoy it even though you don't. That is why I have said that where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead. You don’t decide to find beauty compelling to you. It happens to you. Decision based love breeds performance and hypocrisy and a duty based way of looking at love. Loving God means that God is of supreme value and worth to you; your supreme treasure and pleasure. We prefer above everything else to know Him and see Him and be with Him and be like Him.
Perhaps for some of you, you have never thought of loving God in these terms. May I suggest that because many don't understand what loving God means they end up focusing on means and ends and not love itself. So much I have read and been taught over the years focuses on means and ends and not on the love itself. Some focus little on the means and wonder why they struggle loving God. Others focus on the ends and struggle with loving people and obedience to God. So what I mean is how we come to love Him and the beautiful things that come out of our lives from this love for Him.
Loving God in the Great Commandment means most essentially treasuring God—valuing him, cherishing him, admiring him, desiring him. Therefore, loving him with all our heart, soul, and mind means that our thinking, our feeling, and our desires are not what does the loving, but what fuels the loving. Loving God with the heart, desires, and mind do all they can to awaken and express our treasuring God above all things.
Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:7 that "the object and purpose of our instruction and charge is love".(Amplified bible). Jonathan Edwards has charged me as a pastor to "raise the affections of my hearers as much as i can" when I preach the word. I wish every pastor would make that their goal when they speak, otherwise they have failed.
If we equate loving God with thinking and feeling rightly about God, we jeopardize the very reality of love. Let me use the analogy of fire. in order to have fire you need wood and kindling. but you would never call the kindling fire. When the fire burns you are not thinking about the kindling anymore, you enjoy the fire. So God has given us His word and the Christ exalting illumination of the Holy Spirit to be kindling picked up and engaged by our mind, heart, and desires in order to light a fire of love. I have often times said that the most important thing in our lives is to see Jesus for all that He is(that is the kindling) and to savor Him for all He is worth (that's loving and treasuring Him).
In the same light, fire produces two effects, light and heat. But we know that light and heat will not happen without the fire. When Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), He emphatically did not say that keeping His commandments is what love is. He distinguished the two and made commandment-keeping the evidence of loving Him, not the definition of loving Him.
And when Jesus says the second commandment (keeping God’s commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves), He emphatically did not say that the second commandment was interchangeable with the first one. It is like it. It is not it. Loving God is not defined by loving neighbor. It is demonstrated by loving neighbor. “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).
Or consider the way Jesus talks about the heart worshiping Him. “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me’” (Mark 7:6–7). In other words, external actions—even religious ones directed toward God—are not the essence of worship. They are not the essence of love. What happens in the heart is essential. The external behaviors will be pleasing to God when they flow from a heart that freely treasures God above all things.
In other words, just as a fire produces light and heat, love for God, will produce love in our lives. The fire of the Father's love will burn within our hearts producing love. Is it no wonder that John says, "This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3). There is a kind of commandment keeping that is exceedingly burdensome (without love for God out of duty or self effort) and there is a kind of commandment keeping that is easy (produced and released out of love). there is such a joyful freedom when love produces your behavior. No more decision, no more duty, and no more performance just a natural/supernatural outflow of what is in your heart.
So we cannot truly love God without knowing God; and the way we know God is by the Spirit-enabled use of our minds and hearts. So to “love God with all your mind and heart and soul” means engaging all your powers to know God as fully as possible in order to treasure him for all He is worth.
May you be free to know Him and enjoy Him forever. "Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy" (2 Peter 1:8)
THIS IS LOVE!
Pastor Bill
Monday, October 11, 2010
HOW GOD HAS BEEN CHANGING MY LIFE
Five months ago my life changed. After Pastoring for thirty three years, and twenty three years at my beloved church, I stepped down and have taken a pause in my life. I can truly say that it has saved my life. I had worked six days a week for all of this time and worked often even on my day off. I felt overloaded, overwhelmed, overworked. I was regularly depressed, grumpy, and lonely. Deep inside I felt that God did not love me, I was worried all the time, frequently discouraged, most of the time I felt like a complete failure, I was utterly disappointed with my self and my life, I was completely out of touch with my inner life and emotions, had constant feelings of impending doom, felt like I needed to perform in order to be loved by God and others, feared rejection, had developed a way of relating to Christ that was devoted, structured, disciplined, but not close and intimate with Him. I needed a "pause" in my own life in order to get on with the rest of my life and know the satisfaction, the sweetness, and the freedom of living in a deeply centered and reflective way before the presence of God. I needed to rediscover the Father's love in order to be freed to live a life of love and in love.
Now after five months I am happy to say that my old life is over, dead, and gone. There is no turning back. I am feeling closer to God than I have ever been. I am happier, calmer, and experiencing freedom from the tyranny of performance and others expectations. I will never live that way again or be that person again. I want to live in love, peace, freedom, and joy for now on. I want to live to magnify the Lord in my body whether i live or die (Philippians 1:21). I want to truly love God and others. I want to be free to BE who God made me to be as Bill Robison. I want to live a quiet, reflective, centered life. I want to do what the Father is doing and not my own agenda or for my own self enhancement.
That is why I wrote awhile back about taking "pauses' in your daily life in order to commune and fellowship with God. This is what has helped to change my life and to save my life. To "pause is to stop or cease from some activity in order to "start' spending some time with the Lord.
I was not calling all of you to quite your jobs and hang out in the forest all day or become monks; but I was challenging us all to take serious inventory in our lives. I was calling you to be courageous and honest enough to determine how much time we spend being busy and how much time we spend in communion with the Lord. I wanted to create in you like God did in me a "holy dissatisfaction" with anything less than a deep, rich, growing relationship with Jesus Christ. What does your life look like? Is Christ truly the treasure, joy, and satisfaction of your life? Does Jesus move you or are you bored with Him? Do you find yourself growing deeper and deeper in your love for Him and others? Do you have an insatiable hunger and thirst for god and the things of God? Do you love to read and pray the Bible? Do you care for others? Do you hate sin and love holiness? Does pleasing God matter to you?
My experience as a pastor has been that most Christians spend little time alone, little time in silence, little time in the Word of God, and as a result, little time with God. In short, we spend a disproportionate amount of time in the things of little or no value instead of the things of eternal value, the nurture and care of our souls. Think about this, that is the person we afflict upon our work, our spouses, our children, our church, and others around us!
The fruit of over busy lives is sin, stress, fear, anxiety, little inner peace and tranquility, distance from God, anger, bitterness, relational conflict, loneliness, emptiness, shallowness, selfishness, depression, sorrow, reacting instead of being proactive, lack of intentionality in what we do, thoughtlessness, foolishness, compulsiveness, wasted time and wasted lives.
The whole goal of taking a pause in your life is that you would love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and that you would love your neighbor as yourself. As my friend Ed Piorick says, "the end game is love." For love to come out of your life, the Father's love has to come into your life. Love has to master you inside in order to minister through you outside. The only way love is going to come into your life is when you drink from the well, the river, the source of love and get around the fire of love that produces heat and light.
So I challenged you to bring some balance into your lives and balance activity by embracing and integrating into your life silence, solitude, and contemplation or meditation. We are a doing people but I have learned that "being" is what produces "doing". We are called human beings not human doings. Doing does not produce being; instead, being produces doing.
I mentioned that the Muslims have five "pauses' in their day in order to worship and remember their God. Allah. The Jews regularly set aside times of the day in order to worship Jehovah. Jesus would take "pauses" from His busy and demanding life in order to be with the Father. After His resurrection, Jesus disciples continued to pray at certain hours of the day. The Roman Catholic Benedictine monastic tradition has many "pauses' in their day(Eight) called "the Daily Office". So, taking pauses in the day has been a regular practice throughout history. Pauses like silence, solitude, and meditation are means of grace that we can use in order to draw close to God and become lovers whether for five minutes or five hours.
So, for the next three weeks I would like to share how you can practically integrate silence, solitude, and meditation into your life. I pray that it would become a welcome "pause" in your day and that like me, it would begin changing and transforming you into a more loving person than ever before. Would you join me on this wonderful journey?
Enjoying the new journey,
Pastor Bill
Now after five months I am happy to say that my old life is over, dead, and gone. There is no turning back. I am feeling closer to God than I have ever been. I am happier, calmer, and experiencing freedom from the tyranny of performance and others expectations. I will never live that way again or be that person again. I want to live in love, peace, freedom, and joy for now on. I want to live to magnify the Lord in my body whether i live or die (Philippians 1:21). I want to truly love God and others. I want to be free to BE who God made me to be as Bill Robison. I want to live a quiet, reflective, centered life. I want to do what the Father is doing and not my own agenda or for my own self enhancement.
That is why I wrote awhile back about taking "pauses' in your daily life in order to commune and fellowship with God. This is what has helped to change my life and to save my life. To "pause is to stop or cease from some activity in order to "start' spending some time with the Lord.
I was not calling all of you to quite your jobs and hang out in the forest all day or become monks; but I was challenging us all to take serious inventory in our lives. I was calling you to be courageous and honest enough to determine how much time we spend being busy and how much time we spend in communion with the Lord. I wanted to create in you like God did in me a "holy dissatisfaction" with anything less than a deep, rich, growing relationship with Jesus Christ. What does your life look like? Is Christ truly the treasure, joy, and satisfaction of your life? Does Jesus move you or are you bored with Him? Do you find yourself growing deeper and deeper in your love for Him and others? Do you have an insatiable hunger and thirst for god and the things of God? Do you love to read and pray the Bible? Do you care for others? Do you hate sin and love holiness? Does pleasing God matter to you?
My experience as a pastor has been that most Christians spend little time alone, little time in silence, little time in the Word of God, and as a result, little time with God. In short, we spend a disproportionate amount of time in the things of little or no value instead of the things of eternal value, the nurture and care of our souls. Think about this, that is the person we afflict upon our work, our spouses, our children, our church, and others around us!
The fruit of over busy lives is sin, stress, fear, anxiety, little inner peace and tranquility, distance from God, anger, bitterness, relational conflict, loneliness, emptiness, shallowness, selfishness, depression, sorrow, reacting instead of being proactive, lack of intentionality in what we do, thoughtlessness, foolishness, compulsiveness, wasted time and wasted lives.
The whole goal of taking a pause in your life is that you would love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and that you would love your neighbor as yourself. As my friend Ed Piorick says, "the end game is love." For love to come out of your life, the Father's love has to come into your life. Love has to master you inside in order to minister through you outside. The only way love is going to come into your life is when you drink from the well, the river, the source of love and get around the fire of love that produces heat and light.
So I challenged you to bring some balance into your lives and balance activity by embracing and integrating into your life silence, solitude, and contemplation or meditation. We are a doing people but I have learned that "being" is what produces "doing". We are called human beings not human doings. Doing does not produce being; instead, being produces doing.
I mentioned that the Muslims have five "pauses' in their day in order to worship and remember their God. Allah. The Jews regularly set aside times of the day in order to worship Jehovah. Jesus would take "pauses" from His busy and demanding life in order to be with the Father. After His resurrection, Jesus disciples continued to pray at certain hours of the day. The Roman Catholic Benedictine monastic tradition has many "pauses' in their day(Eight) called "the Daily Office". So, taking pauses in the day has been a regular practice throughout history. Pauses like silence, solitude, and meditation are means of grace that we can use in order to draw close to God and become lovers whether for five minutes or five hours.
So, for the next three weeks I would like to share how you can practically integrate silence, solitude, and meditation into your life. I pray that it would become a welcome "pause" in your day and that like me, it would begin changing and transforming you into a more loving person than ever before. Would you join me on this wonderful journey?
Enjoying the new journey,
Pastor Bill
Monday, October 4, 2010
WHAT NAOMI DID NOT SEE Part 2
One of the scriptures that I tether my life to, especially when I do not understand what is going on in my life, is Deuteronomy 29:29, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever". God has been kind enough to reveal to us many things in regards to His will, purposes, and doings but He has also chosen to conceal millions of micro reasons for the why and what He is doing. This is where most of us have great difficulty when we are in the midst of prolonged suffering or when we face sudden, devastating catastrophe. Naomi sure did.
Naomi suffered relentless and devastating loss. First a severe famine, then a move to pagan Moab, then the death of her husband, next the marriage of her sons to foreign wives, then ten years of apparent childlessness for both of her daughters-in-law, and finally the death of her sons. Only those who have suffered severe loss in their own lives can begin to relate to She says in response to all of this pain, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?" (Ruth 1:20–21)
What Naomi does not see is that God is working even the most bitter providences for His good and glory (Romans 8:28; Genesis 50:20). She needed to open her eyes—the eyes of her heart—to the signs of his merciful purposes. Oh that when we see only bitter providence's in our lives like Naomi, that we would ask God to give us sight, light that would rise us to see beyond the darkness a wonderful, loving, kind, merciful, purposeful, sovereign God who works 24/7 (Psalm 121).
God’s providence is sometimes very very hard. You lose your job; your spouse or child dies; you are diagnosed with cancer; a friend betrays you; your spouse leaves you; a promise has been broken; a child leaves the faith that you raised him with. Most of us have experienced loss and all of us eventually will. It’s true, God had dealt bitterly with Naomi—at least in the short run, it could only feel like bitterness. It could only seem like utter darkness.
Perhaps someone will say, “It was all owing to the sin of going to Moab and marrying foreign wives.” Maybe so. But not necessarily, the text does not say so.
Psalm 34:19 says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament promises that believers will escape affliction in this life. “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). "For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him"( Philippians 1:29)“Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). The one who suffered most deserved it least: Jesus Christ. There is no sure connection between our suffering and our behavior. Never forget that dear reader. It is not at all certain, therefore, that Naomi’s affliction was owing to God’s displeasure with her.
But for the sake of argument and practical application, let us suppose that Naomi’s calamity was owing to her disobedience. There certainly are times where we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8) and whom the Lord loves He chastens (Hebrews 12:7-11). Then this makes the story of Naomi doubly encouraging because it shows that God is willing and able even to turn His judgments into mercies and to turn our sorrows into joys. If Ruth was brought into the family by sin, it is doubly astonishing that she is made the grandmother of David and ancestor of Jesus Christ. Don’t ever think that the sin of your past means there is no hope for your future.
Not only does God reign in all the affairs of men, and not only is His providence sometimes hard, but in all His works His purposes are for the good and the greater happiness of His people. Who would have imagined that in the worst of all times—God was quietly moving in the tragedies of a single family to prepare the way for the greatest king of Israel?
But not only that, He was working to fill Naomi and Ruth and Boaz and their friends with great joy. If anything painful has fallen on you to make your future look hopeless, learn from Ruth that God is at work for you right now to give you a future and a hope. Trust him. Wait patiently. The ominous clouds are big with mercy and will break with blessing on your head.
When you believe in the sovereignty of God and that He loves to work mightily for those who trust Him, it gives a freedom, boldness, joy, and courage that isn’t abandoned and cannot be shaken in hard times. Hope for the future gives us an amazing power in the present. Lose hope and you lose life; gain hope and even if you are surrounded by death, life and power comes to take you through whatever you are going through triumphantly.
“As a Christian is never out of the reach of God’s hand, so he is never out of the view of God’s eye.” Thomas Watson
Pastor Bill
Naomi suffered relentless and devastating loss. First a severe famine, then a move to pagan Moab, then the death of her husband, next the marriage of her sons to foreign wives, then ten years of apparent childlessness for both of her daughters-in-law, and finally the death of her sons. Only those who have suffered severe loss in their own lives can begin to relate to She says in response to all of this pain, "Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?" (Ruth 1:20–21)
What Naomi does not see is that God is working even the most bitter providences for His good and glory (Romans 8:28; Genesis 50:20). She needed to open her eyes—the eyes of her heart—to the signs of his merciful purposes. Oh that when we see only bitter providence's in our lives like Naomi, that we would ask God to give us sight, light that would rise us to see beyond the darkness a wonderful, loving, kind, merciful, purposeful, sovereign God who works 24/7 (Psalm 121).
God’s providence is sometimes very very hard. You lose your job; your spouse or child dies; you are diagnosed with cancer; a friend betrays you; your spouse leaves you; a promise has been broken; a child leaves the faith that you raised him with. Most of us have experienced loss and all of us eventually will. It’s true, God had dealt bitterly with Naomi—at least in the short run, it could only feel like bitterness. It could only seem like utter darkness.
Perhaps someone will say, “It was all owing to the sin of going to Moab and marrying foreign wives.” Maybe so. But not necessarily, the text does not say so.
Psalm 34:19 says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament promises that believers will escape affliction in this life. “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). "For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him"( Philippians 1:29)“Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). The one who suffered most deserved it least: Jesus Christ. There is no sure connection between our suffering and our behavior. Never forget that dear reader. It is not at all certain, therefore, that Naomi’s affliction was owing to God’s displeasure with her.
But for the sake of argument and practical application, let us suppose that Naomi’s calamity was owing to her disobedience. There certainly are times where we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8) and whom the Lord loves He chastens (Hebrews 12:7-11). Then this makes the story of Naomi doubly encouraging because it shows that God is willing and able even to turn His judgments into mercies and to turn our sorrows into joys. If Ruth was brought into the family by sin, it is doubly astonishing that she is made the grandmother of David and ancestor of Jesus Christ. Don’t ever think that the sin of your past means there is no hope for your future.
Not only does God reign in all the affairs of men, and not only is His providence sometimes hard, but in all His works His purposes are for the good and the greater happiness of His people. Who would have imagined that in the worst of all times—God was quietly moving in the tragedies of a single family to prepare the way for the greatest king of Israel?
But not only that, He was working to fill Naomi and Ruth and Boaz and their friends with great joy. If anything painful has fallen on you to make your future look hopeless, learn from Ruth that God is at work for you right now to give you a future and a hope. Trust him. Wait patiently. The ominous clouds are big with mercy and will break with blessing on your head.
When you believe in the sovereignty of God and that He loves to work mightily for those who trust Him, it gives a freedom, boldness, joy, and courage that isn’t abandoned and cannot be shaken in hard times. Hope for the future gives us an amazing power in the present. Lose hope and you lose life; gain hope and even if you are surrounded by death, life and power comes to take you through whatever you are going through triumphantly.
“As a Christian is never out of the reach of God’s hand, so he is never out of the view of God’s eye.” Thomas Watson
Pastor Bill
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