Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
May 13, 2007 - W0719

Biblical heroine Ruth changed the world. She took her pain and troubles and with the right heart and perspective she presented them to God as raw materials for Him to build her future. God can take anything, even garbage, and make our future but we have to do our part first. If we let her, Ruth will mentor us on how to conduct ourselves when we have downturns in our lives.

There was a retiring building contractor who was asked by the president of the company to build one last house before he left his 24-year career. He very reluctantly agreed and halfheartedly built it using the cheapest materials and poor workmanship as shortcuts to finishing it. But upon completion, the president of the company presented him with the keys to that very house as a gift for his long service to the company! If he had known that it would be his house, wouldn’t he have built it better?

It is the same with God and us. We give Him the materials with which to build our future through the things we do and the attitude with which we do them, even when we don’t know it. Often our attitude and what we learn during terrible circumstances are the building materials that God uses to build our future.

We do not have to worry about our futures even if we do not know what our futures hold as long as we are obedient to God because He has great plans for us. As the Bible says, “I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope’” (Jer. 29:11).

When I began New Hope I did not know that it would grow as large and successful as it has in such a relatively short time. But I did not need to know. I only needed to trust the Lord and be obedient to Him and His great yet unrevealed plans for me would unfold.

What is our part in God’s plan? The Bible answers like this, “Then Joshua said to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you’” (Josh. 3:5). Consecrate means to make something holy that was not. So our part is to make what we do and ourselves Holy in God’s eyes through our attitude and perspective.   Life is an active participation partnership arrangement. It is a partnership with God. We need to actively participate and cooperate with God in order for Him to shower His blessings and wonders upon us.

Ruth understood this. Though she had major black marks against her in life, she remained faithful to God and ultimately became the great grandmother to King David. Ruth was a Moabite but married an Israelite. Unfortunately, her husband died and she was told to go back to Moab because she was an outsider. But she refused because she had come to know the God of Israel and wanted to be faithful to Him. For her, she felt that running back to her Moab family would be letting a downturn in her life become a U-turn in her faith. Ruth was determined to make unusable material in her life into consecrated building material for God’s future for her.

So how do we ready ourselves for God’s miraculous future for us?

1.     NEVER LET DOWN-TURNS BECOME U-TURNS.

Everyone will experience downturns in their lives.  There will be job loss, love loss, friendship loss and the death of loved ones. There was a man that told me that he used to be a Christian but quit after his younger sister died because he felt that a Christian God would not have let that happen. I was so disappointed in that answer because everyone will suffer some tragedy in life and the important thing is what are you going to do about it? Are you going to make a U-turn in your faith and go back to what you were before?

Ruth did not. Her faithful determination was revealed when she said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my god” (Ruth 1:16).

In order for God to build His miraculous future for us we have to consecrate what we do and ourselves through a faithful attitude. An example of this is when a flood took the lives of a young mother and her two daughters but spared the husband and the last daughter. The then widowed single father simply said that he would continue to serve God til he died so that he could see his wife and two children in Heaven when his time came. It is our attitude and what we do in bad times that is important to God – not the bad times themselves.

The Bible says that after losing everything, Job still refused to condemn God and asked, “Shall we accept just the good from God and not the bad?” He answered himself, “No, we will turn the bad into good.”

Nothing will change God’s plans, not even death so you have to be resilient in hard times. God will use even your troubles to build your future. If we play life’s bad cards wrongly, it will be horrible for us. When a wife passed away suddenly, I tried to console the husband and was surprised at first when he said that she died the way he wanted her to. He then explained that by her dying first she did not have to suffer through his death and did not have to suffer the pain of being alone. The result was that he could suffer that pain for her. You see, it is not the events of life that make a profound change; it is how you define them that does. That husband had eyes that are Heavenward and so he has wisdom to share with all of us.

Ruth was the same. She was humble. She uprooted herself and went to Bethlehem but did not complain. She gleaned or harvested the leftovers in the fields of other people just like a poor person, which is a good lesson to learn from her. Sometimes after a downturn or setback no one wants to start over from the bottom even though that is where we need to be for the humility of our souls.

Ruth teaches that if we are going to consecrate the events of our lives into building blocks that God can use to build a His wonderful and miraculous future for us then …

2.     ALWAYS REMAIN A SERVANT AS YOUR CORE IDENTITY.

It does not matter how rich or famous you are because it all belongs to God and will be gone eventually.  You cannot take your money or CEO status with you to Heaven. It is a good reminder for me that when I get home from 70,000 people speaking engagement that my wife still tells me to take out the garbage. Our household chores keep us humble.  No matter what we do during our regular jobs, we all go back home to the servants’ quarters at night.

Even the Apostles were servants of Jesus Christ.  They learned from Jesus’ example. Although Jesus was God, He existed as a servant on Earth. As the Bible says, “…although Jesus existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant…” (Phil. 2:6-7). Our humility makes what we do usable to God. My father could not fully support six kids and so he had to use food stamps to keep all of us fed. It was sometimes embarrassing to me. Later, when I was an adult, my dad gave me a gift and when I opened it I was surprised that it was food stamps. But I kept it as a humble reminder of who I was.

So Ruth remained humble and faithful as the Bible says, “So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. … She took it up and went into the city, and … gave Naomi what she had left after she was satisfied” (Ruth 2:17-18). She was even humble enough to share.

Paul the Apostle once said that he had learned to be content in whatever circumstances he was in, no matter how bad. Ruth had the same attitude. From her we also can learn …

3.     TAKE NO SHORTCUTS.

Shortcuts will make whatever we are going through unusable to God. Although many of the poor women like Ruth became prostitutes to survive, Ruth chose not to as it is written of her, “Then Boaz said, ‘May you be blessed of the Lord, my daughter. You have shown your last kindness to be better than the first by not going after young men, whether poor or rich’” (Ruth 3:10). The ways of God are not optional for Christians. It reminds me of a sign I saw while hiking.  It read, stay on the path, and take no shortcuts because it may cause erosion. Life is like that. Taking shortcuts will erode your soul. Sometimes God’s plan takes time to unfold. Like the Bible says, “But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently …” (Hab. 2:3).

God’s plan for us may take a while to bear fruit but we have to remain obedient. When God told me to do daily devotions I did not know how much it would affect me and how much it would become a part of New Hope in the future. If your heart is right, then what you do will be usable to God in the future.  If your heart is not right then it will not be. So with a right heart, give your bad stuff to God to use in building His future for you.

This partnership with God is perhaps illustrated clearer in the story of the shepherd boy. In Biblical times a shepherd needed a staff to herd the sheep, a rod to ward off predators, a shawl for warmth at night and sandals to protect from sharp rocks. One night as the shepherd boy was getting up to tend his flock, God asked him for his staff, the boy hesitated knowing full well how much he needed it but reluctantly agreed. Next God asked for his rod.  Again reluctantly the boy surrendered it to God. Then God asked for the boy’s shawl, once again the boy reluctantly gave in. Lastly, he reluctantly gave up his sandals. As the boy tiptoed off to avoid the sharp rocks against his bare feet, God asked him “Where are your staff, rod, shawl and sandals?” The boy answered that they belonged to God now. So God said, “Come back and take My staff, My rod, My shawl and My sandals and watch what I can do.” So consecrate yourself with the right attitude and perspective and God will do wonders.

We will have many downturns or setbacks in life but remain a servant to God and He will have many wonders in store for us.

We need not know what the future has for us because God knows. Our part in God’s plans is to consecrate ourselves with the right attitude and perspective and then God will work wonders for us. In preparation for God’s plan we should never let downturns or setbacks become U-turns for our faith in God. We should always remain a humble servant as our core identity. We should not take any shortcuts along the path to God because it renders useless any raw materials that God might want to use for our future. We should instead be patient, while serving God, for God’s plan to unfold in our lives.

DISCUSSION SUGGESTIONS

1. What can you do today to consecrate yourself for the Lord?
2. How can you tell the difference between a downturn in your life and God simply closing a window in your life and directing you in another direction?
3. When does faith become stubbornness?
4. What happened when you were not serving as a servant? What resulted?
5. What is the difference between shortcuts and working smarter?
6. Generally, patience is a virtue.  When is it not and why?