Tag: God at work

Little Decisions, Lasting Consequences

Ruth 1-2 and John 14

  Have you ever looked back on an event or person in your life that, at first seemed very inconsequential at the time, but when you looked back you realized that that person or event profoundly impacted your life?  I have.

            When I was about 16 my brother-in-law, Dale, who was a pastor but also drove a charter bus part-time asked if I wanted to go with him on a trip to the city.  He was bringing a group of young people from across the country on a Youth Caravan into nearby Washington DC to tour the national landmarks.  He thought it might be fun for me to come along and spend some time with other young people from the Church of God.  So I said, “sure”.

            This Youth Caravan had been together and had travelled cross-country for several weeks bonding and were coming to the end of their trip.  I didn’t know any of them well and I was a bit shy so I sat up in the front of the bus near my brother-in-law, Dale, while they sat in the back and visited with each other.  Then, one of them left the safety of their group and came up and sat next to me and we had a friendly chat.  We ended up spending the day touring the Smithsonian museums and other famous DC landmarks.  Making a new friend was nice but also nice is that through that friend I was able to make several more friends among that group.  After the day spent sightseeing they gave a concert at our church and then they headed out for their next caravan stop and I went back to my normal life and didn’t think a whole lot more about it, other than grateful for making some new friends who lived around the country.  This was before social media, texting, snapchatting etc… so staying connected wasn’t easy, but we did write a few letters via snail mail over the next couple of  years.

            A couple of years later this friend’s brother became my new pastor at my church.  This friend came to visit him at our Church and we briefly reconnected.  The friend was getting ready to attend Bible College and I was going to a local university.  By the following summer I made the decision to also attend Bible College and during National Church Camp I reconnected with that friend.  By the end of that camp we decided to be more than just friends and just over a year later my friend Karen and I were engaged and then married.  37 years later we have 11 children, 12 grandchildren and have served in ministry side by side in 4 states and two countries. 

            All those initial little decisions- to accept my brother-in-law’s offer to ride on the bus, her decision to leave the group and come up and talk to me, her brother’s  decision to come and be the pastor at my Church, my decision to attend Summer Church Camp and Bible College- and almost 40 years later the impact those initial decisions had not only on our lives but our children, grand-children and future generations.  Who knows how many lives will ultimately be impacted by those first little choices.

            Ruth is that kind of story in the Bible.  It starts with some little choices that were made- An Israelite man and his wife and two children are living in a time when there’s a food shortage so they leave their country to go to a place to find food.  They are refugees looking for a place to live.  They make the choice to go to Moab- outside of Israel.  There the sons make choices to marry women from among the Moabites- who are not their people.  The man dies and both of his sons die.  This leaves his wife a widow living with no family in a foreign land with no one to provide for her.  She makes the decision to go back home to Israel to see if her family will help her- another small decision.  She tells her two young daughters-in-law who are also widows to go back to their families and find new husbands while they are still young.  One daughter-in-law goes back home, but the other, Ruth, refuses to leave her mother-in-law.  She is steadfastly loyal to her deceased husband’s mother and will not abandon her.  Ruth makes the choice to leave Moab with her mother-in-law and go to Israel and she herself becomes a stranger in a foreign land.

            While in Israel an extended member of Ruth’s husband’s family chooses to be kind to her and makes sure that they have enough food and other provisions.  Again, a simple decision to be kind by Boaz. 

Where do all of these little decisions lead?  Ultimately, they lead to Jesus.  As you will see in tomorrow’s reading- Boaz and Ruth eventually get married.  Ruth becomes the grandmother of a man named Jesse who was the father of David who later becomes King of Israel, and eventually one of their descendants was Jesus (when you look at Jesus’ family tree in Matthew 1 you will see Ruth’s name).

God takes little decisions that at the time we might not pay much attention to, and uses them to make amazing things happen that have lasting consequences.  God is always at work, even in ways that we don’t see at the time or fully understand.  God is at work in ways that we sometimes don’t realize until long after the fact.  Trust that God is at work in the day to day choices you make.  Should I go to church today or stay home?  Should I talk to this new person or should I stay in my comfort zone?

In today’s reading from John 14 Jesus affirms that we should not “let our hearts be troubled.”  Jesus says he’s going to prepare a place for us.  Jesus is working behind the scenes getting everything ready for the day when he will bring to earth his father’s Kingdom forever and ever.  We don’t always recognize the importance of  our choices or events as they are happening in real time,  but if we trust God to be a loving Father and Jesus Christ to be a faithful savior and king, we can trust that they are working every day, often behind the scenes in seemingly small ways, to bring about a future when everything will be as it should be. 

-Jeff Fletcher

Today’s Bible reading passages can be read or listened to at BibleGateway here – Ruth 1-2 and John 14

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Same

2 Peter 2 21

For many of you, you have safely arrived at your post-FUEL destination.  If you didn’t or haven’t ever attend FUEL, chances are that you too, at some point this week, pulled into a familiar drive after a long day of school, work, a different camp, a workout, or a much needed break. You picked up food from the same spot you always do.  Enjoyed the same TV program you always watch. Laid on your bed in the same position as you scrolled through the same apps on your phone. Greeted by the same problems that you had hoped would find a way to disappear while you were gone. No matter how different we want to become, in just a matter of hours, days, or weeks, if the same things fill your life, or if they don’t have a new or confirmed purpose, it will not be long until you find yourself back to the same old, same old.

Wake up! STOP BEING THE SAME!  For the change to take hold that you have heard about, read about, thought about, or talked about, you have to IMMEDIATELY begin the transition from the old to something new because if you remain complacent, if you remain idle, if you remain THE SAME, you will continue to get THE SAME results.  Peter states it better than I ever could about those who are stirred by the Gospel message – its beautiful story, unexplainable joy, and its all-consuming hope – and then let the wake come to rest.

“If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.” – 2 Peter 2:21,22

Stop wallowing in the mud.  Stop returning to the vomit.  Start moving NOW and it is more likely that you will continue to move.  It’s straight up science – Newton’s First Law of Motion – An object at rest tends to stay at rest, but an object in motion tends to stay in motion.  This is also sometimes called the Law of Inertia, literally meaning “in”-not, “ert”- doing/being, “ia” – the state of – the state of not doing or being anything.  This means in the vacuum of space, a planet will continue on the same orbit, light will find its way across the universe, and an asteroid will continue on the same crash course unless acted upon by an opposing, stronger force.  Thank God he is working on us; that he is the opposing, ALMIGHTY force.

Put your b-u-t-t in gear.  If it means not finishing these last few sentences, so be it.  Stop wasting your time reading my words on how not to waste your time. Change your presets on your radio.  Set some boundaries. Apologize. Delete your bookmarks and browsing history. Give away or throw away the junk.  Grab your Bible. Call someone to pick you up for church. Set a date to be baptized. Host a Bible study. Invest in someone else.  Tell your testimony. God has provided the resistance, so don’t postpone change. It won’t happen if you delay, and you’ll be worse-off than ever before. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.  If there ever was a day not to do the same thing, it is today. Let today be different.

-Aaron Winner

Are You Opposing God – 0R – Facing Opposition for Him

acts 6 9a 10

Acts 6b and 7

Yesterday, we left off with the 7 qualified individuals being chosen to take a load off of the apostles. One is given more attention than the rest. We see that because the power that was once seen in Christ, started to be seen in the disciples and now has moved on to other believers. Stephen is said to be full of grace and power and he started performing wonders and signs among the people.
Again we see the religious leaders take offense and try to squash any threat to their power and authority. As they stood up to dispute Stephen they quickly realized they could not outsmart or outwit him. So, as with Jesus, when they were unable to come up with a way to take him out on merit they made something up. They lied – and created a plan with multiple witnesses aligned with a fictional story to take out their problem.
All of chapter 7 is Stephen giving a summary of a year’s worth of children’s Sunday school material. He gives the details of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. He shows how God was at work throughout time and the constant opposition that faced Him, and then Stephen throws these man into that group. Stephen calls them uncircumcised in the heart and ears. He then points out that again God has been at work and when the story is retold – they would be the bad guys that opposed God and further the ones that killed the promised righteous one!
And like Jesus – he was put to death. They raised up stones to kill him and also like Jesus he asks for their forgiveness. Wow – to stand in the face of opposition and talk with conviction. He didn’t back down when it got difficult.
Our Christian walk at times has become too easy. As Stephen’s speech indicated; all throughout history, whenever someone made a stand for God, they eventually faced opposition. If we are not facing opposition, maybe people do not know where we stand. In John 16:33, Jesus tells us we will face  trials, trouble, opposition, suffering, sorrows, tribulations (depending on your translation). Not a maybe or some will – instead a certainty that we will all face.  As we make a stand for what is right we prepare for opposition knowing we can have peace while dealing with it because the verse doesn’t end there. It continues to say “Take heart, for I have overcome the world”.
What I pull most from the first few chapters of Acts is this: God has given His spirit, His power, so that we will go out into the world with BOLDNESS proclaiming the truth with love.
-John Wincapaw

A Royal Mess

matt 1 1

Day 1 of your new Bible reading. You are psyched! You are committed. You brew a cup of coffee, clean off the kitchen table, and pull out a new set of highlighters.   You grab your large-margined Bible and you open up to your first reading:  Matthew 1. This is it. Your moment of great revelation, and then…you are instantly deflated. Genealogy. Blah. Wait…No…You are committed to do your reading.  You have new highlighters after all! Okay. Here we go. A couple verses down, and…still nothing worth highlighting. “Maybe I will just skim this,” you say to yourself, feeling a compromise is essential to keep up your determination.  The sea of names continues. Sigh. “I think I got the gist, I’ll just go to the end.” Although you made it through Chapter 1, you feel a bit defeated. No highlights; no underlines. You have made a royal mess of your reading.

 

So what is the significance of Matthew 1 anyways? Why not just hop into the Christmas story?  The answer: context. This genealogy of Jesus through his earthly father, Joseph, is to establish the pedigree pointing to Jesus as a descendant of the ruling class of Israel.  God’s so purposely positioned Jesus that there should have been no doubt remaining that Jesus is the Messiah or “The Anointed One”, the one who would reestablish the throne of David.  A fact made instantly clear upon the arrival of the Magi and Herod’s petitioning to and response from the scribes (Matt 2:1-6). As much as God was at work in these plans, He did so in spite of many actions taken by those who make up the family tree.

 

How did the ancestors of Jesus depart from the ways of God? A few quick examples. Abraham laughed at God. Jacob, and subsequently his son, Judah, both betrayed a brother.  David, God’s chosen King, is mentioned alongside his mistress (later turned wife), Bathsheba, and the man he murdered, Uriah. Among the other names are hidden even more wayward actions (idolatry, stealing, lying, etc.), culminating in Jeconiah, who did evil in the sight of the Lord (2 Kings 24:9), which leads to a curse that cuts off the line of David, seemingly forever (Jer 22:30).

 

If you only looked at part of their story, collectively, it would seem like a pretty hopeless lot.  Thankfully, many of the these men and women wrestled with, fought for, and maintained their relationship with God.  In the midst of sin, reputation, or nurture, they connected, repented, and praised God. They were a royal mess, a line of sinners seeking God and putting their hope in his promise of redemption and restoration.  It is no surprise that we find many of their names in Hebrews 11, among those who are waiting to receive their promise (v. 39,40) of a hope and heritage found in Jesus Christ.

We are equally “messed-up” and have fallen short of the standards set by our King (Rom 3:23). When we struggle with sin, our history, or circumstance, it makes us feel unworthy of the faith and hope we have. Don’t give in.  Remain Psyched. Wrestle. Fight. Maintain. You may be a mess, but you are a royal mess, an heir according to the promise, directly tracing your spiritual heritage (the only one that matters) to Jesus Christ.(1 Pet 2:9; Amos 9:11) Having these roots means, we receive a special connection to God through His Holy Spirit (John 14:16,17) and are covered by grace when we miss the mark (Eph 2:8,9).  Today, spend some time examining the stories behind these names a bit more closely, but also look at your own faith story. Whether you relationship is God is slightly disharmonious, somewhat distant, or completely disconnected, you are not disowned; your heritage is Jesus Christ. He will restore the throne of David, and He will restore any mess appealed in His name.

-Aaron Winner

God of Hope

Romans 15 13

One of my favorite sounds in life is that of rain. I love sitting under a metal roof or outside under a covering and just sit and listen to each individual raindrop. It brings a sense of peace to my mind. With this said I would like to say that God works in mysterious ways. I have been in situations where I was feeling stressed out and needed to calm down, but then all of the sudden it would start to rain. It was as if God was patting me on the back saying its okay, just calm down.

God will often intervene in our lives whether we see it or not. (Haha just caught myself making a pun on accident.) Romans 15:13 says that God fills us with joy and peace so we will hope. He knows we need him to fully be at peace regardless of our current situation. Good, bad or ugly, He is there for us trying to wave and say it’s going to be okay.

Look around in your everyday life for little things that seem to happen on accident, and you might find that God is right there with you. Have you ever seen God work in your life through something like the rain?

-Jesse Allen

The Rest of Ruth

ruth 4 16
When Hope Seems Lost – Ruth 4
Naomi at the beginning of Ruth acts as if she has no hope. She knew she wouldn’t have more children and had nothing to offer Ruth. She was bitter and would rather go back to her homeland to live out her days as a jaded widow. However, this was not at all God’s plan and we can see God’s redemptive plan in 3 major areas. The first starts with Ruth. She is adamant in her conviction to stay with Naomi—God had captured her heart in Moab and he was able to work out his redeeming plan for Naomi’s family through her. Secondly the preserving of Boaz for Ruth shows God at work. In an online article on Ruth from desiringgod.org the author states, “But all the while God is preserving a wealthy and godly man named Boaz to do just that. The reason we know that this was God’s doing is that Naomi herself admits it in 2:20. She recognizes that behind the “accidental” meeting of Ruth and Boaz was the “kindness of God who has not forsaken the living or the dead.” Lastly, Ruth was previously married for 10 years and bore no children. In God’s redemptive work once Boaz and Ruth were married he opened Ruth’s barren womb and she bore a son. In some of the most hopeless situations God chooses to work mightily for his glory and to make himself known. So many pieces had to align in this account that we see God’s hand at work. Make sure to be fervent in prayer over hopeless situations. You never know how God is planning to work—His ways are higher than our ways!
Lineage of David – Covenant Blessing
Family is very near to God’s heart and has been an integral part of the Jewish culture since antiquity. In the earliest prophecies we see allusions to lineage such as “the seed of the woman” in the first messianic prophecy in Genesis. The Abrahamic covenant is a blessing pertaining to the descendants out numbering stars in the sky and sand in the sea shore. Then we see the importance of the birthright blessing between Jacob and Esau. God works through families and heritage and blessing being passed through the family line is a very important aspect to Jewish culture. For this reason Naomi thought her line had ended and that she also had no immediate hope of being cared for by her family. However, God blesses this faithful and righteous family by including them in the line of David. The last verses of Ruth 4 may seem like an after thought but it is a monumental indication of God’s favor. We find that the child of Ruth and Boaz is the grandfather to David, one of the greatest kings of Israel and ultimately in the line of Christ—the awaited Messiah and Savior of the world. What an honor to be included in the line God chose to keep his covenant with Israel and the world! We may not be part of the lineage of Christ but we can be part of the family of God. As we continue pursuing God we are co-heirs with Christ to the coming kingdom of God. This hope and blessing to come has the power to keep us rooted and grounded in love, steadfast in our perseverance as we await the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
-Shelby Upton

The Underdogs

used by God

Moses is one of the most real people in the Bible. What I mean by this, is that in reading his interactions with God, often times, his responses are not ultra-spiritual, but rather down to earth and matter of fact. For example, when God tells him he has been chosen to free his people from Egypt, Moses tells God “nope, sorry! You’ve got the wrong guy! I don’t do public speaking, I’m shy…find someone else.” (paraphrasing Exodus 3). Moses does this time and time again throughout his story . What’s so great, is that God puts up with Moses. In fact, he made him one of the most famous people in scripture. That knowledge reassures me that God can handle whatever sass I may throw at him. That when I am angry and fed up with him, that I can be just as real as Moses was. That when I pray and talk to God, I don’t have to act like I’ve got it all together and sound super spiritual. I can just be me. God will not reject me when I doubt or complain. He may be a bit annoyed with me, but he won’t abandon me. I’ll never be too much for him. That’s the first lesson we can learn from Moses.

The second thing that Moses teaches us is that our weakness does not limit us in our ability to serve the LORD. Several years ago, a bunch of contemporary Christian artists got together to make an album called The Story with songs designated for each major Bible story. Bart Miller, the lead singer for MercyMe sings “It Must Be You” a song for Moses. Right now, go open up a new tab in your browser and type in “It Must Be You the story” click on the first video that pops up and listen to that song.

Moses’ life in itself is a miracle. He was supposed to die as a baby – murdered by the pharaoh, not taken in to be his ward. Moses was a stutterer and afraid. He wasn’t supposed to lead an entire nation – and yet, through God’s power, he did. God sees something in each and every one of us. Potential to do great things for him and through him.

I know this because I see God at work in my own life. You see the chorus to that song “It Must Be You” is my life’s anthem. I wasn’t supposed to succeed. In second grade I was diagnosed with ADHD and tourettes. In fifth grade, I was diagnosed with OCD. My OCD and tourettes were so bad, I was taken out of public school and homeschooled. I could hardly go into public places without freaking out. I was scared of germs and scared of soap. It was completely debilitating.

But somehow by the grace of God, I recovered. I defeated tourettes, I learned how not to let it control me. I graduated high school seventeenth in my class of 586. I went to college on a full tuition scholarship. I picked up a minor in speech communication and found how much I enjoy and how good I am at public speaking. I recently graduated with high honors. Now the little girl who would freak when a stranger touched her arm has plans to attend the Bible College this coming August.

The story of Moses teaches us that with God there are no limitations. In fact, we serve a God that invites the challenge. When we succeed, he wants to ensure that people know it was because of him. That’s why he picks the underdogs, the Moseses. It’s why he’s chosen you.

-Emilee Ross

 

 

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