Category Archives: SPIRITUAL INTEREST

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What We Learn from Naomi’s Story

People often face situations in their personal lives they didn’t expect. Those times when life fails to deliver what they are aiming for, have planned on, and worked towards. Circumstances can change our future in ways we did not anticipate. Some of these events are quite painful.

Butte Creek CanyonWe learn who we are as we come to major forks in the road, when the job ends, the divorce happens, the child rebels, the illness side-lines, the business goes belly-up, or whatever the case may be.

In our story today, we meet one of those people who met disaster and personal loss with a logical, life-changing decision that demonstrates courage and grace. Scripture does not state the depth of this woman’s faith, but it is easy to tell that she has genuine faith. I see an amazing woman who grasps her reality, makes a conclusive decision, acknowledges the harshness of it all, doesn’t harbor self-pity, has the courage to move forward–without the crutch of leaning on others who are willing to help her–and moves on.

Side note: You know, it is okay to acknowledge the pain or difficulty instead of acting like it doesn’t exist (because that wouldn’t be Christian). It is not a sign of little faith or lack of spirituality, it is being genuine with others in the face of trying circumstances. We need to be real with others, show them how God is helping us face our personal crisis or tragedy by allowing them to see us in our hurting place during times of adversity and pain. People are allowed to comfort us and draw courage from us when we are being honest with them.

Life seems to be over for Naomi. She accepts it as such and then moves forward to meet it.  We will see how God answers her faith in a beautiful way, which has an important part to play in the future of the nation of Israel. I believe this woman’s life impacted her great-grandson’s life. The teachings were there, resident in her life, and they were taught and passed down, generation to generation. Naomi is great-grandmother to King David, a man after God’s own heart. Jesus would be born of the line of David.

We, as well, by how we live out our lives, demonstrate to others the depth of our courage and faith as we face obstacles that may halt our plans and force us to make difficult choices.

I encourage you to face the challenge, allow your fellow-participants the freedom of choice (without playing on their sympathies or forcing binding ties), and extend grace to those who also are impacted by your present circumstance. Trust God to see you through the difficulty and ask His help along the way.

PRAYER, PEOPLE, AND POWER (1)

Naomi

The first person we will meet in this series about prayer, people, and power, is part of a biblical account. This segment is about a Hebrew woman whose personal story unfolds for us in the book of Ruth found in the Bible’s Old Testament.  This woman lived in the land of Judah during her youth and married someone of like faith and race. A famine in the land forces her husband and her to move to a foreign land. They make a life for themselves in that land. While living there, she bears two strong strapping sons. Her sons marry women from the region. I think she probably feels sad in heart when each of her sons marries a woman from Moab rather than from her Hebrew race and religion. Naomi’s faith is important to her. We know this by the way she reacts to different situations and how she lovingly embraces her sons’ wives who are of a different culture and religious belief system.

Stop and think a minute. What if that were you? Many of us, including me, put much emphasis on our Christian beliefs. Our faith and Christian practices are the guiding force and guiding light for our lives. For those whom have been nurtured and lived life in the Christian womb of nurtured belief mixed with outward practice, it can be difficult to embrace and accept those who are of a different persuasion. That isn’t the message of the gospel. We love because God is love. We are strong because God is strong. We have hope because hope is found in God. Naomi does all of these. She loves her daughter-in-laws, and they love her back. It doesn’t lessen her faith at all. My guess is, she prayed for them that they would come to know God. Naomi’s loving her daughter-in-laws’ within the framework of unconditional love is a testament to her love of God and of others. Life didn’t turn out the way she had originally expected by the necessity of her family living in a land that was of a different race and belief system, but she doesn’t lose her faith. Her story is applicable. Many people, even today, must leave their homeland because of difficult circumstances.

Then the first major upset happens. Naomi’s husband dies.

Her sadness is great. There goes her security and life as she has known it. She is forced to face her future alone without her mate. In that culture and time, this is a major difficulty. There is little opportunity for a single woman. Thankfully, she has her grown sons and their wives. Now she depends on her two sons and their wives for her needs and comfort. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, but it has. I bet Naomi wished for the comfort of family from back in the home-land during this time of loss and grief. 

The other shoe drops. Not one, but both sons die. This leaves Naomi with no family other than her two daughter-in-laws. Grief overtakes her. Her sorrow is great. There is no husband; there are no sons, and no grandchildren to carry on the family legacy.

Naomi feels a heaviness like no other. She and her two daughter-in-laws pack up the house. She knows there is only one realistic option for her now. It is time for Naomi to return to her living relations back in Judah.  She has heard there is food back in the land. It is time to sever the ties with her daughter-in-laws. They are young and will marry again. They deserve a good life without the burden of being responsible for her care and happiness. Her daughter-in-laws are good girls and she loves them, but she knows she can not ask them to forfeit their lives and their family roots to join her in her journey to a land that is not their own.

With a heavy heart, she tells the girls “I will make the journey alone. Go back to your families. Marry another man. Make a new life for yourself. My life is over. God has been severe with me. You are under no obligation to me.  I will never marry again.” She is speaking her own truth and it is a hard one. Yet, she knows, it is the right one. I think we would all agree, that’s what we would do in her situation. We would return to our roots, spiritual and familial, and we would not wish to obligate someone to us.

How do the two young women react? Instead of rejoicing at the news that now they can have their life back and are under no obligation to care for their mother-in-law, they dissolve into tears and say to Naomi,“We can’t leave you. Let us come with you.”

Their reaction tells us a lot about Naomi. If she hadn’t loved them well and accepted them as her daughters, even though they were of foreign belief and race, they would not have reacted in this way. It is evident that there is connection and love between them. They love her and care for her. She, again, tells them to leave, that she can not give them more sons to marry and is unable to give them what they will need for their futures. Naomi is emphatic, trying to convince these young women of their own needs. She wants them to be happy and to start new lives for themselves.

I see in this that Naomi is unselfish, and she is practical.They must let go of the past to move into the future. It involves a separating in their relationship, a wrenching away from the past, a true and harsh letting go of what they have known as a family unit. Something must die in order for there to be new life in a different place. They are at a Y in the road. There is no continuing forward on the same path.

Choices often include cost. We die to old dreams but find new ones. We let go of what has ended to move forward to what is ahead. We trust God for the journey and believe He is in it. We sorrow with the pain of it but rejoice in the rightness of the choice. Sometimes it feels as if God has been harsh with us, for the dream that died took part of us with it. We may feel a sense of betrayal by others or God. Naomi is facing her new reality. She is saying goodbye to a good portion of her life and the people she has loved, and lost, and cared about. Three men in her life are buried here in this foreign adopted-land. To return to her people will require leaving part of herself, those she has loved the very most, where they now repose, at-rest. That had to be hard.

One of the girls decides to return to her kin, again weeping as she and Naomi embrace. I think they both know that this will be the last time they will ever see each other. The second daughter-in-law shows her spirit. She says these famous words to her mother-in-law “I am going with you. Your kin will be my kin and your God will be my God.”  This is powerful. Naomi accepts it. They return to Bethlehem. There Naomi explains the emptiness of her family, the loss of her husband and sons, how life has been harsh with her. She reenters her former life but this time she has little in worldly goods. Ruth, her daughter-in-law, is quick to help out. She is respectful of Naomi’s wishes and gleans in the fields to help them in their situation.

Everyone is quick to notice the goodness of Ruth. An astute male relative shows kindness to her as she gleans in his field. Not one to ignore a good sign and because Ruth needs a husband, Naomi becomes a match-maker. Boaz becomes Ruth’s kinsman redeemer. They marry and soon God blesses Naomi with a grandson. As she holds her grandson on her lap, she realizes that God has restored what she had lost. The amazing grace of God is obvious in this, Naomi’s grandson is from the same familial line.

From this amazing story and this amazing baby there will come a king who will lead the people of Israel, a man with love for God and fervor for enacting spiritual practices related to the reverence and respect of God’s ways through embracing the things of God. David, the shepherd boy turned king, will be her great-grandson one day.

Read the book of Ruth in the bible for the complete story.

How one woman faced the loss of her husband and sons.
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Naomi showed great grace during times of hardship. She gives us insight in how our will can work with God’s will when He is in it. Her life demonstrates that God does indeed make beauty from ashes.

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Prayer, People, and Power: Intro

Do you have a big prayer concern? Most of us do. Big concerns require big prayers. There are some difficulties that must be taken seriously and then prayed about with great intensity. We must pray like we mean it and then some.

blog PRAYER 1My pastor shared a story of a father who had three grown sons who had been taught the ways of spiritual life but had walked away in another direction. His sons had chosen to live life without much thought of God and without any desire for the spiritual. This gravely troubled the father. He knew his sons were missing the most important element in life, their spiritual well-being and their relationship with God. This grieved the father and was of great concern. He decided there was only one thing to do and that was to go after it by committing himself to prayer on their behalf. It would not be a light treatment, either. I do not know if he fasted or not, but that is quite possible. The two go hand-in-hand.

The father made a choice to go to God in fervent prayer. He went off to a quiet location away from his home and responsibilities. For days he devoted himself to prayer, not just any kind of prayer, but deep prayer in regards to his three sons. He kept at it for days. He would not be deterred from his prayers and was determined to stay with it until there were visible results. After some time, things began to happen. One by one his sons contacted him to tell him about their spiritual awakening, each had encountered God in a new way and God had become real to them. All three sons were changed. It took the father giving up his time and agenda to focus his energy and purpose on the need for God in his sons’ lives. The father, also, became a changed man by having gone through this powerful experience. You see, you can’t pray focused prayer and not have it also change you. We have to empty ourselves of all our stuff and in the process we become cleansed and fit vessels for God’s enabling.

Not all prayers will have dramatic endings or the ending we expect. But this I do know to be true, all answers to our prayers will have God’s touch and response and will be according to God’s plan.

I am convinced we don’t pray as we ought most of the time. Some of our prayers may be self-focused or even selfishly focused. Have you learned to give your greatest concerns to God? Have you learned to say open-ended prayers like ‘show me what you would have me to do’ when talking with Father-God? Part of the deal is that we must surrender our will and way to seek God’s will and way. That is a very hard thing to do until we know God as our spiritual lover who cares deeply for us and has our best interest at heart. Once we feel, know, and understand this, then we are able to pray with fervency of heart, and we find ourselves wanting to serve Him in a very natural way. Our love for God gives us service-oriented hearts. Intimate prayers flow from a soul that is connected with the divine energy that flows from the God-head.

A few years back I wrote a speech about mothers for Mother’s Day. I had a greater purpose, however. My real purpose was to show, challenge, and encourage people to learn to pray with fervency, with meaningful prayer that makes a difference. For the follower of Christ, the depth of the experience is in relation to the expediency of the prayer. This type of prayer is effective and faith-bound, gracious and trust-filled. Prayer like this is prayer that people who effect change will engage in. It is attached at its very core to a living, dynamic, centered life in Christ.

I chose to pivot my talk on strong women of the faith. The common thread was where these women’s strength lay. They were strong because their prayers were fervent and passionate. We, as a people, like that which is real and genuine, not fake or disingenuous. What I shared with my audience was real, not fake, and it was based on historical facts. The women I talked about were Jesus’ mother, Samuel’s mother, Augustine of Hippo’s mother, Hudson Taylor’s mother, Mother Teresa, my grandmothers, my mother and a few others. All of these women prayed fervently and were devoted in their beliefs. They prayed for their children and were strong women of God. Their prayers were not middling prayers; they were powerful, fervent, relentless, and effective.

God recognizes sincerity when He sees it.

The stories supported the claim that strong prayers, prayed by sincere people, receive powerful answers from God. I shared about my own mother, who, during my growing up years, in the morning sat on the couch to read her Bible and would pray while we practiced the piano before catching the bus for school. I told how Augustine’s mother, Monica, went to mass every day, helped the poor, was devoted to God, and how she continually prayed and begged God for her son’s salvation; his conversion was astounding and remarkable, and is still impacting lives today. I told how Hudson Taylor’s mother went away for several days all the while praying for her teenage son to turn his life to God and how she didn’t return until she was convinced he had given his life to Christ, which he did during her time away. I talked about Mary and her response to the message from the angel, her virtue and awe exhibited by the words in her Magnificant, and how her heart broke to see her son on the cross. I spoke of Hannah, whose passionate prayer caused Eli, the priest, to deduce that she was drunk, but her prayer, and God’s response, contributed to history one of the spiritual greats, a man of God.

God answered these women’s prayers. None of their prayers were mediocre prayers. These were heart-wrenching requests of God, filled with petition and praise, and with humble acknowledgement of the God who hears and acts according to His good pleasure. Promises to God were made in their prayers, and kept. Some required sacrifice and unselfish giving on the part of these women. I think of Hannah, who promised her son to God. They knew the full surrender their prayers required and the devotion of their hearts to God and His perfect will. God, indeed, answers all prayer. The effectual prayer of a righteous person avails much.

Strong prayers, prayed by sincere people, effect powerful answers.
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I will begin the series, Prayer, People, and Power, next week. I hope you will join me.

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