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About the episode:

Jaime Luce’ testimony has daunting personal mountains and treacherous financial valleys. She was trapped in day-to-day stress and couldn’t see a way forward. But how she started is not how she finished! And she wants you to know God has a plan for your life too, no matter how tough it seems. Today, Jaime has been married to the love of her life for almost three decades, owns two companies, and has become an author and podcaster. God’s way is always the blessed way!  Learn more.

Related reading:

• How To Heal Through Responsibility and Faith
• How To Use Your Kingdom Authority In Prayer
• Plug Into A Warfare Prayer Source
• Have a Different Spirit
• Be A Good Gardner

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Full Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated and not perfect. We hope it blesses you.

0:00:03 – Jaime Luce

Welcome to the Jaime Luce Podcast. I’m your host, Jamie Luce. Thank you for listening today. All of my blogs, social and YouTube links can be found on my website, jamieloosecom. If you enjoy this podcast, you can support it by liking, subscribing, getting notified and sharing this broadcast. Another way you can help is by rating and reviewing on Apple Podcast. My hope and goal in every episode is to give you tools found in Scripture, either by teaching, discussions, testimonies or interviews that encourage and equip you as you navigate living a real Christian walk in a difficult world. I would love to hear from you whether you have a comment, question or prayer request. You can email me at mail at jamieloosecom. If you’re watching on YouTube, drop me a comment. I’d love to partner with you on your journey of faith. If you’re listening today on any podcast platform, take a screenshot and tag me and I’ll post it to my Instagram story. And now join me for today’s episode. Welcome to the Jamie Loose Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today.

I wanted to share a word with you. Today We’re going to be in several passages of Scripture, so I want you to do like I always ask you to do get out your Bibles. Get something to write with and we’ll get started. Today’s topic boy. I could have called it many things. I think what the essence of this is, without going into a detailed title, is that we need to be those who don’t look back. We look forward, We don’t look back, we look forward, and there are many. There’s many reasons, but there are critical oh gosh consequences good and bad to making this decision in your life, because you’ll find it affects you in many ways. In many ways in your life, not just in what you would think, the typical things, and I don’t want to give too much away right off the bat and then have to backtrack myself. I don’t want to have to go backward. So, without any further ado, why don’t we have you start in the book of Ruth, though I am going to read you one Scripture, not in Ruth right off the bat, but go to the book of Ruth, because that’s really where I’m going to concentrate most of our time.

I want to say this because I think this is true for many people and you might be in this category, and if I’m right and you hear this and it affects you or somebody that you know, i want you to really perk up your ears. You know, i ask the Lord all the time. When I’m praying, when I’m reading, when I’m studying or listening to somebody. If I’m in the church and I’m listening in a service, i want to have ears here. I want to be able to hear what the Spirit is saying to me. So even to yourself, right now, you may just want to say Holy Spirit, i ask you to come, be with me today. Help me to hear what I need to hear, so that my life can continue to move forward.

God has a plan for us. He told us that, while we are waiting for his return, we are to occupy until he comes. That means there are stuff for us to do. We are to be a people who are about our father’s business, and we don’t have time to get stuck. We don’t have time to waste, and the older we get, we realize, though, god is outside of time. We were created inside of time, and we have a time limit, and so we need to get busy using the time that we have wisely. So what you may have thought this is the thought that I want you to think about You may have thought that your blessing was in what you lost, something that is behind you a mistake you made, in the thing that you lost or whatever circumstance that happened. You may think that your blessing was in what you lost. Okay, and because we can believe this, we have to be careful, because Naomi in the book of Ruth, as we’ll see, gave herself, renamed herself.

Her name was Naomi. She renamed herself Mara and told the people don’t call me Naomi anymore. I went out full. I’ve come back empty. God has taken everything from me. There’s a whole lot going on there in that thought process. And instead she said call me Mara.

The name Mara means bitter. Have you ever met a bitter person? Have you ever met somebody who lives in bitterness, that, no matter what good thing is in front of them, all they can see is from a perspective of bitterness, that they are unable, in that bitterness, to be happy, to experience gratitude. Bitterness is deadly And this is something that Naomi struggled with and lived with. And what is sad is that Naomi, in this journey of being in a place of great loss and trying to move forward, actually tried to take her helplessness, her hopelessness, her lack of seeing future for her life, the loss and feeling that everything that I had that was worth anything is now gone all of those feelings, and then she put them, tried to put them on her daughters-in-law, trying to convince them how hopeless and helpless they were, and that not only was she helpless but she could no longer help them. So you’re helpless and hopeless.

You might as well go back, go back, and I want us to talk about that, i want us to think about that, because to go back to anything in an old life, to go back to the old familiar boy, unless you’re unless there is one caveat to this unless you have turned away from obedience to God and are in a backslidden condition, that is the only time you want to go back to what is the right kind of familiar with God, the right place with Him. That is the only time that you want to do that. But if we are not talking about that, if we are not talking about an obedience to what you know God is calling you to, that is somehow back, then we are talking about moving forward and not going back. The danger in looking back is that there is always a temptation to then go back, because you can only go in the direction that you have vision. So, whatever position that I face, that is the direction I’m going to go. That’s both true, naturally and spiritually. Okay, if I am facing, naturally, north, it is impossible for me to see and go south, and if I’m facing east, it is impossible for me to face and go west. If I’m facing east, it’s impossible. We are we either use this information for our benefit or we ignore it to our demise.

So I want to take you to Psalm 103, verse 12. And I want to make this point right off the bat. I want to, i want to give you a little hope right before we dig in. Okay, and this is what the Psalmist said He, god, has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. What is he saying? These two will never meet. They are completely opposite of one another. He has taken you and faced you one way and he has taken sin and he has removed it. It is now in the complete opposite direction And no matter how much they travel, they shall never meet East. There’s not a crossroads that says east and west. I know we have our little symbol of north, south, east and west, but there is no mark. If you go north, you will continue to go north, no matter how far you go. If you’re facing north, you’re going to keep going north. That’s just the way it is. They cannot meet. The direction you face is the direction you will go.

So what are you looking at right now In your life, in your circumstances? what are you looking at? How are you focusing? What is your attention on? Is your attention on what you’ve lost? Is your attention on your, your attention on things that seem missing? Is your attention on things that feel hopeless and helpless? Is it on loss or regret? Is it on, is it on pity, self-pity, that back then, at least I mean that self-pity trap. In other words, what we need to be seeing is that The complete how do I want to say this If you choose your direction and we spoke in a previous broadcast about stubbornness, a hardened heart if I have decided in my heart about a situation, i have to be so careful because, like Naomi, her decision and facing that direction in her life, in her heart, caused her to try to put that on those around her.

She tried to convince her daughters-in-law to feel the exact same feelings she felt. She tried to put on them her helplessness and hopelessness and convince them to go the other way, to not move forward with her, and that partly is self-pity, that partly is not wanting to take responsibility. There’s a whole lot wrapped up in that. But we have to know that what God has chosen for us, in the very example that he gives us about our sin, how he wants us to deal with life, is for us to move forward. He never wants us to get stuck in yesterday. He never wants us to get buried in helplessness and hopelessness and feeling like I have no future. That is not the plan that God has for your life. In fact, i didn’t even put this in my notes and it’s an obvious scripture for this. But if we were to read Jeremiah 2911, we know that he says that we have a hope and a future, not hopelessness and lack of future. Right, a good plan for us. And you might be thinking how is this a good plan? This is kind of the joke. In my house between me and my husband.

There’s a movie that Jim Caviesel played in many, many years ago called The Count of Monachristos. It’s one of our family’s favorite movies And in it there is a line when he’s actually wanting revenge before he trusts and learns to trust in God. He wants revenge and he has someone who’s willing to help him and he says that he’s going to go take care of it for him. He’s going to go shoot whoever he’s going to shoot and kill him and take care of it, and by the bing, by the boom, no problem. And he says, how is this a bad plan? And so we use that line all the time whenever we’re trying to come up with what we’re going to do How is this a bad plan? But you have to know that in God’s, in God’s plan for your life, it is never a good plan to go backward. It is never a good plan to decide to lose ground and go back what you have come from, to go back what you’ve been delivered from, to go back When Jeremiah and we again this a couple of weeks ago.

If you’ve been staying with me, some of these lessons, they’re kind of building on thoughts one from another. So if I mentioned them, it really, if you haven’t listened to them, you would do yourself a favor to go back and listen to them. And there was an episode recently where we talked about Jeremiah, about how the people did not really want to hear what God was telling them, that they would ask, but they had no intention, because they had a hard, stubborn heart. They had no intention of doing what God instructed them to do. But I want us to go to that scripture and that passage because I want to reiterate this point.

When Jeremiah warned the remnant who were left in Judah after Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, came in and then this was when the exile took place, and he left only a few of the poor in Judah to take care of the land and had appointed a governor over them. And this group of people went to Jeremiah and asked him to pray and get direction from the Lord, for the Lord’s instructions And God’s instructions to them were do not stay here in this land, stay right here, do not go back to Egypt. So let’s read that. That’s in Jeremiah, chapter 42. And I’m going to read you verses 9 through 17. And I want to get this back in your spirits.

Verse 9, he said to them you sent me to the Lord, the God of Israel, with your request. And this is his reply Stay here in this land. If you do, i will build you up and not tear you down. I will plant you and not uproot you, for I am sorry about all the punishment I had to bring upon you. Do not fear the king of Babylon anymore, says the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and rescue you from his power. I will be merciful to you by making him kind so he will let you stay here in your land. But if you refuse to obey the Lord, your God, and if you say we will not stay here, instead we will go to Egypt, where we will be free from war, the call to arms and hunger.

Then hear the Lord’s message to the remnant of Judah. This is what the Lord of Heaven’s armies, the God of Israel, says. If you are determined to go to Egypt and live there, the very war and famine you fear will catch up to you and you will die there. That is the fate awaiting every one of you who insists on going to live in Egypt. Yes, you will die from war, famine and disease. None of you will escape the disaster I will bring upon you there.

The Lord is saying listen, i’m telling you, i have a plan to prosper you. I have a plan to take care of you. I have a plan to meet your needs and you will be okay. It will not always be like this, but just follow my instructions. I will take care of you, but don’t go back. Don’t go back.

Let’s look at another example. I’ve got several examples. I’ve mentioned this before. My mother used to tell us it’s not that the Bible says so much, it’s just that what it does say. It says it over and over and over again. There are things that we need to learn about our lives and how to navigate our life in this world. We see that again all over. When I spoke in a previous episode, i gave you several illustrations of what that means to have a stubborn heart. I also want to show you, over and over again, what happens to people when they look back, when they go back.

Let’s turn to Genesis 19. We’re going to read from verses 12 to 26. I told you I’m going to give you a lot of scripture today, but there’s nothing more powerful, nothing more true, nothing more helpful than the Word of God. Genesis 19, 12 to 26. This is the story of Lot and his family. I’m not going to take the time to go over through the whole story of Lot, but I do want to give you this passage, because this is what we’re talking about today. Meanwhile, the angels questioned Lot. These are the angels who are going to bring him out to safety. Lot is bringing judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah and he is saying but because Lot is there, i’m going to rescue his family. If they will follow my lead, follow my instructions, do what I tell you to do, your life will be spared, you will be okay.

Meanwhile, the angels questioned Lot Do you have any other relatives here in the city? They asked get them out of this place Our sons and lot sons, daughters or anyone else, for we are about to destroy this city completely. The outcry against this place is so great It has reached the Lord and he has sent us to destroy it.

Before I even move on, recently in the news it came out that they have actually found and proved a catastrophic event that took place in Sodom and Gomorrah. And they actually have found the salt. They’re like complete sulfur, like solids. This is impossible, that there’s so much about it and I can’t even go into that today. It’s a whole different subject. But that proves what took place in the city and how devastating and why it took out the city. God does not make stuff up. This is not fables. These are actual stories of what took place. This was a real event, lot is a real person with a real family. Let’s go on. So Lot rushed out to tell his daughter’s fiance’s quick get out of the city. The Lord is about to destroy it. But the young men thought he was only joking.

At dawn the next morning, the angels became insistent Hurry. They said to Lot, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, get out right now, or you will be swept away in the destruction of the city. Then Lot still hesitated. Folks, i know that there comes a point we hesitate. We hesitate to do what God tells us. There’s fear of the unknown in front of us and all that we know is behind us. But you will go the direction you face.

When Lot still hesitated, the angels seized his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters and rushed them to safety outside the city. For the Lord was merciful, so I want you to see God even helped intervene. They laid hold of this family to deliver them out of the destruction that was waiting in this city. I mean literally. The angels laid hold of them, seized them, and they did this because of Abraham. Abraham was like Lord, you won’t do this. God promised Abraham that he would not let them be destroyed. So he gets them out of the city. God does exactly what God says he’ll do He gets them out of the city. Now let’s keep reading. This is what they say when they are safely out of the city.

One of the angels ordered okay, he’s giving instructions, ordering them run for your lives and don’t look back or stop anywhere in the valley. So don’t get partly out, don’t be one of those who lives one foot in and one foot out. You get out of dodge, you leave, run for your lives, don’t look back and don’t stop anywhere in the valley. He says escape to the mountains or you will be swept away. Oh no, my Lord, lot begged. You have been so gracious to me and saved my life and you have shown such great kindness, but I cannot go to the mountains. Disaster would catch up to me there and I would soon die. See, there is a small village nearby. Please let me go there instead. Don’t you see how small it is? Then my life will be saved. All right, the angel said I will grant your request. I will not destroy the little village, but hurry escape to it, for I can do nothing until you arrive there. This explains why that village was known as Zoar, which means little place.

Lot reached the village just as the sun was rising over the horizon. Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people in every bit of vegetation. But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him and she turned into a pillar of salt. God, i know that we find that hard to believe. I mean, we find that hard to envision, we find that hard to grasp. She didn’t go back, folks, she just looked back.

The reason that’s so critical is because you will go back to the place as you will go in the direction you face. You cannot go forward if you are looking back. You cannot. It will stop you and it will turn your attention in direction. Don’t look back. Don’t get stuck in that trap. Hear the cry of the angels of the Lord in your ears telling you the direction that you are supposed to be going, and don’t look back. The temptation is always there. It’s always there, folks. Okay, i wanna keep moving because I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I want you to turn to Ruth. I told you to already go there. You’re probably there waiting on me. So let me turn to Ruth. And here we have that.

This family was driven by circumstance. There was famine where they were from and they left that land to go to Moab because they heard there was food in Moab. So for their survival, they felt they had to do this. They felt their circumstance forced them to do this. We don’t know It’s not told to us if they were given direction to do this or if they did this on their own. All we know is that they did it. So their circumstance pushed them and drove them and they went to Moab and left their home in Judah. In a sense, they were like. They were like a lot because in that, in order to live, they were forced in a move. Okay, so there’s a similarity there, but they have to leave their home and what’s familiar behind.

That is a very difficult thing to do. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do that, if you’ve ever had to pick up and leave everything that’s familiar, or be like Abraham and leave the land of your fathers and your family and all that you know and just go where I show you and follow God in faith. It’s a very hard thing to do. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do it, but it is a very difficult thing to do. I’ve had to do that. Literally, i can say that was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do.

And it is a walk of faith. It will force you closer to the Lord. It will force you to wrestle with yourself, to confront yourself. It will make you wrestle with things you never probably realized were there inside of you. But regardless, it’s the place you need to be following the voice of God for your life, no matter what that means. And people won’t understand. They will not understand. So you just have to let go of that. That’s part of the walking away from it, because you know a lot of what you’re going to face.

I mean, that was a lot’s argument. If I go over here, i’m going to die. It’s going to kept up to me. I’m going to die. There’s certain things that we do know and understand, but this one, this is kind of critical. So that kind of move takes and I really sat in this for a while The Lord had been speaking something to me over the weekend in my heart and I wondered why he was saying it, i didn’t have the full picture yet, but once he brought this message into my spirit, he said remember what I said over there. And I realized, oh my goodness, this plays right into it. This is what you were saying to me. And in order to not look back, in order to not go back and change your direction, to be able to follow where the Lord is taking you, that takes total surrender, total surrender And complete surrender is well, i’ll explain that in just a minute. So they moved right.

Naomi moves, her family moves, they lead everything behind And in the course of time, in this move, they took two sons with them. Their sons now are in this land of Moab with them and they marry Moabite women from this new place, not women from their home, not women that are from their culture and they don’t serve their same God, even Different. They’re in a different land. This is not God’s territory where they’re at. And in a short span of a round we estimate about 10 years after those men married wives, all three of the men die. Naomi’s husband dies and the two sons die. So who is left? But Naomi is the only one left, but Naomi and her two daughters-in-law, who are Orpah and Ruth. Ok, orpah and Ruth are now widows. They have no one along with Naomi. They have no one to support them. In that culture, the men did all the supporting. If you didn’t have a husband, you hoped you had a son, because he would then care for you and meet all your needs. Well, now you have these three women who have no men in their lives to care for them.

Naomi feels the weight and the responsibility for her daughters-in-law, and the weight is so heavy that she believes in her hopeless and helpless state that because of it there is no way for her to help her daughters-in-law. So that means that her helplessness and her hopelessness in her eyes and her estimation are what connects her with these women. That they now are hopeless and helpless. Ok, that she feels that what she has now, this misfortune, so to speak, and disaster and trouble that has come on her, has now come upon her daughters-in-law. So she feels some sort of responsibility because these were her sons And not knowing what to do with this and feeling the weight and the responsibility of it, it only drives her into a more hopeless feeling.

So what is interesting is that in that immediate time after this loss, naomi hears OK, so you got to see what’s happening here. She’s gone through great loss. We’re talking about not just her physical loss. What’s going on physically. There’s a lot of emotional loss going on there. This was her husband and her sons. There’s a lot wrapped up in that And in this she hears.

In the middle of her loss and in her pain she hears, she gets word that there is now a change in Judah, that God has again blessed his people. There’s now crops and grain and bread. There is no more famine in the land that she has that she came from, and so this it sets her on a course that, ok, i am helpless and hopeless here. So it’s really. This is kind of one of those lot in his hesitation. Ok, there was some hesitation in his move.

This is what Naomi is going through. There’s this hesitation because, on the one hand, she wants to move forward. She’s going to die. So she knows I’ve got to get back to Judah because that’s where the food is so that I can survive. But she doesn’t have enough faith in this little bit of what might be hope to move in the right direction. She is.

I want to give her credit for the fact that she’s getting up and leaving where she is. She has to move forward. She has to leave this behind. She has to move forward. So in her obedience to do that, there’s barely enough strength for her to do that, because she has no hope still for her daughters in law, even though, even though she knows there’s food there, there’s food there. That doesn’t matter in her mind, in her estimation, i am now a desolate, bitter woman.

I’ve got nothing. You have no future being with me. You have. I have nothing to give you, no matter if I end up being able to survive on my own. This is a hopeless situation you’re in And I don’t know if you’ve ever been around that before, but you could be going through something tough. But you’ve got faith, you’ve got hope and you hear people that you look up to who don’t And they’re discouraging you and they’re telling you there is no hope, it’s hopeless. It won’t matter what I can do. I can’t do anything more. I’ve done everything I can do. There is just hopeless and helpless. This is just the worst possible scenario and I’m sorry. There’s just nothing more I can do. And there’s this almost anger, because bitterness leads to anger, and we know that she was angry with the Lord. We know that, based off of her wanting to call herself Mara, people call her Mara. I’m bitter. God’s taken everything from me. I mean there’s definitely some anger there.

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This book is available today, and so they are preparing to move forward. That’s a good thing. They’re all getting ready, they’re going to go forward, and then we come upon this verse. So I want you to look at Ruth, chapter one, and we’re going to read verses seven through 22. Verse seven says with her two daughters-in-law, she set out from the place where she had been living. Okay, that’s the good thing. We’re facing forward, we’re leaving this behind. And they took the road that would lead them back to Judah. They’re all heading in the right direction. They’re all moving forward. Praise God. That sounds great. But on the way now remember what we read in Lot Don’t stop along the way. He said. Don’t stop along the way, get all the way out. Don’t stop in the valley, you just keep going.

But on the way, naomi said two, her two daughters-in-law, go back to your mother’s homes, and may the Lord reward you for your kindness to your husbands and to me. May the Lord bless you with the security of another marriage. Then she kissed them goodbye and they all broke down and wept. I mean she’s saying go back. You’re going to have to start all over again. Just go back. Just go back to what you know. Go back to the old people, go back to the old ways. Go back. Forget that your life is now 10 years down the road. Go back. No, they said, we want to go with you. To your people Can you hear this? They’re saying don’t try to discourage us. No, we’re going forward. We are with you. This is the path that we are to take. We’re going forward. But Naomi replied why should you go on with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands? No, my daughters Return to your parents’ home, for I am too old to marry. Again, here we go again.

Self pity is self-hopeless, helpless situation. Don’t come with me. And even if it were possible and I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else? I mean, this is I’m going to convince you to be as helpless and helpless as I am? No, of course not my daughters. Things are far more bitter. They’re far more bitter, not better bitter for me than for you. I’m the worst case scenario. You don’t want to be with me because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me. Do you hear that? Oh, i pray you don’t fall into that trap. I pray you don’t blame God for the circumstance that you are in.

Like I said, we don’t know what caused them to go to Moab. We don’t know. We know there was famine, but we don’t know if they received instruction from the Lord to go or not. But all we know is that she’s holding God responsible for what has taken place in her life. She holds him responsible and she’s bitter about it, angry with God.

And again they wept together and Orpah kissed her mother and logged the bike. She convinced her Just go back, just go back to your old life. Orpah loses out folks, she loses out. But Ruth clung tightly to Naomi. Look, naomi said to her, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. You should do the same. But Ruth replied don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. 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 there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us. When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said nothing more. So the two of them continued on their journey. I’m going to go ahead and finish reading this part. Ok, i told you? I was, and I hesitated Ah, don’t hesitate, right, let’s see. So the two of them continued on their journey.

When they came to Bethlehem, the entire town was excited by their arrival, so they’ve got a whole welcoming committee. Is it really Naomi? The women asked. Obviously, this woman was a very loved woman. That’s why it’s so sad to see how bitter she was, because they were excited for the return of Naomi. She had daughters-in-law who loved her so much that it didn’t matter what a costume they wanted to go with her.

This was a woman that was a wonderful woman, and life circumstances and loss have taken what was so beautiful in this woman and left her bitter. And she says to them this is verse 20, don’t call me Naomi. She responded Instead, call me Mara, for the Almighty has made my life very bitter for me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me home empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has caused me to suffer And the Almighty has sent such tragedy upon me? Can you hear that? Oh, so Naomi returned from Moab, accompanied by her daughter-in-law, ruth, the young Moabite woman. They arrived in Bethlehem in late spring, at the beginning of the Barney harvest, So they returned at a harvest time.

This is so important for our lives. This is not. You will have a decision to make. You will either feel like you are Naomi, you will feel like you are Orpah, or you will feel like you are Ruth And you have to determine where you are in this picture. If you are Naomi, by the time I’m done with this, i pray you lay your bitterness down and you realize that God was not bringing all of this tragedy upon your life. If you are Orpah and you are making a decision based off of other people’s misery, do not allow that to rob you of moving forward in your future. And if you are one who has faith, if you are one who believes that, i encourage you to keep on. Do not stop in the middle of the road, but you keep on. And when you are buffed and rebuffed on that road, you stay on that road. You stay on that road.

Orpah listened to the discouragement and hopelessness and went back. You won’t go back if you are listening to faith. So we know she wasn’t listening to faith. You won’t go back if you’re listening to hope, because what she was listening to was hopelessness. You won’t go back if you have a vision of the future. Going back and not forward is always….

Oh, how do I want to say that If you go back, you are abandoned. That’s the word I want. You are abandoning faith. If you go back, you are not going back. Don’t believe the lie, because the enemy is going to tell you all kinds of things and call it God, and it’s not God. God doesn’t change his mind about you. So don’t listen to the lies of the enemy. Don’t allow discouragement to be your guide on your path. Don’t allow faithlessness to come in and don’t say well, it’s not that I’ve lost faith in God, but I just don’t. Don’t go there. Don’t hold hands with faithlessness. You are a person of faith. I encourage you to stand strong in your faith. But if you go back and not forward, you are abandoning faith, hope and vision.

So there is a difference. I want to make this. I mentioned this at the very beginning. I want to kind of reiterate and give a clearer picture of this. But there is a difference between the word going back and the word location. Because what if God is calling you back? What if you are in a trouble? you have trouble, you have oh gosh, there’s several. Okay, i need to stop If you are a child and you are a prodigal of some sort, or you have distanced yourself from your family because you, there was an argument and you haven’t spoken to one another and no one’s wanting to humble themselves and make the first phone call or apologize or whatever.

That kind of going back is not geographical necessarily okay. So I want you to understand that going back and the location may be two different things. The reason I say that is because for Naomi, she was moving on, she was moving forward, she was moving on, but for her to do that she had to go back to God’s land. She had to go back to Judah, okay. But going back can represent where God has delivered you from. Like the children of Israel. Do not go back. Do not go back to Egypt, okay, i delivered you from Egypt. That’s where your slavery was, That’s where that old life or your old man is located. You don’t want to go back there. But going back might be like Naomi, in the sense that back is not backward, that it’s going forward. It’s just that the location is the same location. I hope I’m making sense.

You might need to go back to a particular location, but that’s you moving forward, okay, you may be fighting and separated from a spouse, and God is saying you go back to your home and reconcile in that home. That’s where the bread is located, that’s where I’m calling you. That’s forward, that’s where life is Not separated. And so it’s the word back. I don’t want you to get stuck on the word back. Okay, i’m not talking about an actual location. I’m telling you to move forward And God, that might mean an old location or an old place that you’ve been before. So I don’t want you to think, well, i can’t go back and that it always means that It doesn’t. You need to hear what I’m actually saying. I’m talking about going where God leads you forward from the place that you are at, okay, and back can mean you know word using the term back meaning to something not good for you, something that has been harmful to you, okay, so I just wanted to make that clear before we move on. Though Naomi was going back to her homeland, she was moving forward.

The difference between the two things that overcome hopelessness and helplessness. There are two things, and I’m going to be giving those to you here, and there was a difference here between Naomi and Ruth on this journey back. That difference was faith. Okay, that difference was faith. Now, in that faith, there are two elements that I want us to discuss, because it is in those two elements that we find the ability to be someone who is not hopeless and not helpless. Okay, so Naomi went back, or I should say forward, because to stay meant starvation and certain death.

But her return was not backed in faith, for she said don’t call me Naomi, call me Mara. I mean, she’s telling you I’m not really walking in faith, i’m walking in survival mode, but there really isn’t any faith here. In fact, i’m mad at God and I think God did this to me. Okay, so she says don’t ask me. Then we read that Ruth says don’t ask me to leave you. I read you those verses And I love that.

In verse 18, we see that Ruth said that when Naomi heard what Ruth said, she understood that Ruth was determined. And again, this is the difference between when we talked about in a previous episode the difference between having what would be a right determination, a right stubbornness, and a rebellious stubbornness, and how the rebellion and that kind of stubbornness leads to destruction. But you can have a right stubbornness in that you know what you need to do and you’re not changing it, you’re not getting off course. You’re doing what God told you, no matter what. I mean that’s the Abraham kind of faith right to do what he did.

And so it is faith that shuts the mouth of hopelessness and helplessness. It is faith that sees the vision of the future. So in faith, there is well, there’s faith, and then there is surrender. So faith the first element of faith is that you actually take steps of faith, because we know that faith is action, it is. We are not staying here, we are moving forward. There’s an element of faith, but what am I having faith in?

So, if we look at Naomi, the faith that she was using was simply a faith that said I heard there’s bread. She had faith that there’s bread where she came from. She’s going back to get bread, okay. Ruth, on the other hand, has faith And her faith is I am going to make where you live. That is where I live. Your God is becoming my God. So she must have seen something in this duration of her life with Naomi and her family, in the 10 years before she lost her husband, that she recognized. There’s something very real there, something that is so real I’m not going back to the land of familiar. I’m not going back to my old family and the old gods that I served in the old way I lived. No, it’s forward, naomi, and I’m going with you because I know it’s there. There’s a difference. That’s faith with feet that believe. That’s a real faith. That’s not an angry God. We see no bitterness in Ruth. All we see is love and devotion. We see faith in action in Ruth, and that faith has a sister partner. That partner is surrender.

This is the part that sat on me over the weekend and that stirred something in my heart, because I got a visual of this and the visual helped me to understand surrender in a different way. And I want to give you that picture because I think it will help When we’re given the temptation to go back to the old way, which Ruth had refused, and she refused it in total surrender, meaning I am surrendering everything I know. Okay, we talked about this Everything I know, everything that’s familiar. She surrendered it all to the future That was ahead, even if that meant because she said and I’ll die where you die, so even if this means I got this wrong and this leads to death, this is kind of your entrepreneurial spirit. People who are entrepreneurial get this. They see the risk and they feel like that risk is worth taking. And I am taking that risk. It doesn’t matter what it costs me. I know I’m going to, i need to go that direction. That’s the way I’m going And that’s total surrender. That is totally abandoning yourself for the right things, not abandoning your hope, not abandoning your hope and you’re not abandoning what you think is your future. You’re saying no, i believe I have faith. I have surrendered my will. I have surrendered the way that I know my ways and my will, and I’m going to do this. Surrender has to be total for it to be surrender. You can’t have a partial surrender.

The word surrender means to cease resistance and to submit your authority. It’s to voluntarily hand over control. I’m sure you’ve heard of a ceasefire, right, and a ceasefire means that both parties are voluntarily stopping their war. They’re shooting, guns are down A temporary ceasefire. We’re not going to shoot one another right now. We’re not going to—they both are voluntarily stopping, even in the midst of trouble and in the circumstance that they’re in and the war that they’re in, or if you’ve ever heard of when one side surrenders to another back in the way that they used to do war A lot of times in early American history.

A lot of times what they would do is a general who was surrendering their troops, and the territory they’d gained is now being surrendered to their opponent. And when they would surrender the actual surrender was peaceful They would come and the general would hand over his—it could be a sword, it could be a gun, it could be—but there was a symbol of surrender. I am handing over my authority to you. You are now in control. I am now under your control. It’s a complete surrender.

So let’s look at this how it relates to us becoming a Christian. We must surrender as a Christian. In this walk of faith, in our journey forward, we have to surrender the control and authority that we have over our lives to God. There is no partial surrender, and I thought of this in terms of our body. My whole body is under the control of my brain. There is not one limb, not one organ or function in my body that is not under the control of my brain. If my brain doesn’t tell it to function, it will not function. My hand will not move unless my brain tells it to, and my brain telling it to do it causes it to have a reaction. It simply obeys In surrender. The one with the authority gives the command and then the obedience comes after that.

So the only way, if you think of partial people who kind of live one foot in the world, one foot in the church, people who have not surrendered their will to the Lord, who are bound and determined to do it their way and not God’s way, who have not said Lord, i trust you, i’m giving my whole life, no matter what it costs me And this is the picture of Ruth no matter what this costs me, i am following you, i am with you. I want God to punish me. I call God now to punish me. If I am, if I am allowed to be separated from you, if I allow anything to part me from you, that is faith, that is beautiful, complete surrender under someone’s total authority and control. And the only way that my, if I want my arm to not take commands from my brain, the only way that happens, is if I cut my arm off. If I want an organ not to take orders from my brain, i have to cut it out. Well, what obviously happens when I cut it off or cut it out it dies, it dies, folks.

It’s a lie to think that we can partially surrender. We are fooling ourselves if we think that we can sort of obey God and not fully obey God. I mean, that was what Saul did. That got the kingdom ripped from him and he eventually lost his life in battle. Why? Because he said, well, i sort of obeyed God, i sort of did what he wanted me to do, and he said no, i gave you a command and you did not follow the entire command. Partial obedience is full disobedience. Partial obedience is full disobedience. We are fooling ourselves. We have to surrender completely.

Now don’t get me wrong. I know this is not easy. We have strong wills, folks. We have strong wills. We have strong forces, whether that’s people’s voices or institutions or things that fight against us, trying to tell us not to move forward and not to surrender to the Lord in total. And we somehow have believed the lie that we can do it, that we can partially do it and not fully do it. It’s just not true. It will lead to destruction. It will not lead to blessing.

To stop on the middle of the road does not take me to the place of bread where there’s food and I can get nourishment. I may not be in the land I was in, where I know there was famine, but I never made it to the land where there is. I will die in the middle. I have to move forward in God. I have to be determined. I’m getting up from here. I’m not staying here. I am not allowing self-pity to bury me in this place anymore. I am getting up from here. Look at Joseph. If he would allow himself to stay a prisoner and never bother to continue on with believing the dream that God gave him, he would have never, ever, opened his mouth to speak about a dream again. You wouldn’t have told the Butler and the Baker what the interpretation was for them. He would have kept his mouth shut. You have to be willing to follow God, no matter where that takes you, no matter what that costs. But that is total surrender and it is the only way that leads to your protection and your life, to the blessing that God has for you. It’s total surrender. I’m almost done. I’m wrapping up.

When I was thinking about this, it brought to mind the old hymn I surrender all. I even just sat and sang it several times to myself. It was written by a man named Judson W Vandeventer in 1896. The first verse and the chorus say this all to Jesus, i surrender all to him. I freely give. I will ever love and trust him In his presence, daily live. I surrender all. I surrender all, all to thee, my blessed savior. I surrender all.

I want to take us into what I think in this beautiful picture of surrender, the hidden treasure in the story of Ruth, and my father-in-law actually had just recently preached He will turn 90 this year and he’s still ministering and preached recently and told me about one of the things that he ministered and that it was so beautiful. I thought I needed to put it in here. But he said Naomi and I mentioned this at the very beginning of this that she thought that her blessing was in what she lost and therefore it was gone. There was no more blessing. That’s why she felt helpless and hopeless. It’s gone. I had my opportunity and now it’s gone. Though she thought her blessing was in everything she lost, she found out instead that the blessing had been right there with her the entire time. I want us to read Ruth 4, verse 13 through 17.

So Boaz took Ruth into his home and she became his wife When he slept with her. The Lord enabled her to become pregnant and she gave birth to a son. Then the women of the town said to Naomi praise the Lord, who has now provided a redeemer for your family. May this child be famous in Israel. May he restore your youth and care for you in your old age, for he is the son of your daughter in law, who loves you and has been better to you than seven sons. Naomi took the baby and cuddled him to her breast and she cared for him as if he were her own. The neighbor woman said now, at last, naomi has a son again, and they named him Obed. He became the father of Jesse and the grandfather of David, and of course we know that Jesus came through the line of David.

This hidden treasure was that, without her knowledge here, she thought the blessing was in all that she lost, and instead God had not taken all of her blessing from her. God had provided blessing ahead of time that would carry her and bring her into new life, and new blessing through the daughter-in-law that she had received, ruth, that God had provided all along. God had the answer all along. There was no need for the bitterness, there was no need for the anger at God. God had been there the whole time. He had been working before the need even arose. God knew what was coming in her life and had prepared someone to care for her, love her and give her a new hope and future.

That is the God we serve. Don’t get me wrong. Things happen, life happens and we go through loss and it can feel overwhelming, and you will have moments where you feel hopeless and helpless We all do. But I encourage you to take the right position. Face the right direction. If you will face the right direction, you will go in that direction. Block your ears to the sounds of those who are crying out in bitterness. Don’t listen to helplessness and hopelessness. Listen to faith. Put action to your faith in the right direction. Surrender it all to the Lord and watch as he brings new life, new beginnings, a future and a hope made just for you.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I want you to be encouraged. Share this message with those that you know that will need it. Like and subscribe if you want to be notified and go to my website If you have any need of other materials. You want to go back and listen to older podcasts. You can do that on podcast platforms. You can also go to YouTube. I’m on both and you can either watch or listen.

You can go to my website, jaimeluce.com. You can get a hold of all of my things there. I would love to hear from you. If you want to email me, you can reach me at mail at jaimeluce.com. I would love to hear how this message has impacted you or encouraged you. Leave some notes on YouTube. I love those of you who are so much a blessing to me and encouragement to me and you leave me your comments. Feel free, leave comments. You can share this on all social media. Leave me comments there as well. Thank you again for joining me. It was my pleasure to be with you and I will see you next week Bye you.