When life doesn’t make sense: Wrestling with God’s sovereignty in the chaos
This post is part of Blackbird Mission’s 2025 Summer of Sermons series, featuring Daron Earlewine’s most impactful church messages.
Have you ever found yourself asking the question you’re afraid to say out loud: “Is God really in control?” Maybe it started with a job loss, a health scare, or a relationship that fell apart. Perhaps it was something as unexpected as a hornet sting that derailed your carefully planned surgery, leaving you wondering if God has raised His fist against you.
We all start in the same place theologically—of course, God is in control! He’s God, right? But then life happens. The strong “yes” becomes a hopeful “I think so,” which slides into a questioning “I don’t think so.” Before we know it, we’re standing in the wreckage of our expectations, wondering where the good God we thought we knew has gone.
Ruth and Naomi: When everything falls apart
In the book of Ruth, we meet Naomi in the worst season of her life. Famine forced her family to leave their homeland. Then her husband died. Ten years later, both her sons died. She was left with no husband, no sons, no standing in society. She was done.
When she returns to her hometown, she tells people, “Don’t call me Naomi (which means ‘pleasant’). Call me Mara (which means ‘bitter’) because the Lord has raised His fist against me.”
Sound familiar? “God is against me. He’s forsaken me. I’m alone and hopeless.”
Who told you that, Naomi? Disappointment did. Disillusionment did. The enemy did.
But here’s what Naomi couldn’t see: God was orchestrating something magnificent. Her daughter-in-law Ruth’s loyalty and love would lead to marriage with Boaz, who would father Obed, who would father Jesse, who would father David—as in King David, as in the lineage of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
Naomi’s worst season was actually part of God’s greatest plan.
The Bottom Line
God is in control. Not in the way that makes our personal lives easy, but in the way that accomplishes His perfect will and brings His kingdom to earth. Sometimes His macro plan requires our micro lives to go through seasons we wouldn’t choose.
But He is with us. He is faithful. He sees you.
The surgery went perfectly—I can obviously still speak! I’ve got an EpiPen now in case I tangle with hornets again. And while I don’t understand everything God was doing in that season, I know He was faithful the entire time.
Whatever your hornet sting moment is, whatever your Naomi season looks like, remember: God hasn’t raised His fist against you. He’s working all things together for good, even when—especially when—you can’t see it.
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What is God inviting you into today? What have you been saying “I can’t” to that you know you actually could step into? I’d love to hear from you—email me at daron@daronearlewine.com and let me know what God is stirring in your heart.
Episode Summary:
Disappointment doesn’t have to lead to disbelief. In this message, Daron explores the first chapter of Ruth and the dangerous path from discouragement to deconstruction. Whether you’re going through physical pain, emotional hardship, or spiritual drought, you’ll find hope in the God who never leaves, never forsakes, and always sees the bigger picture. It’s time to trust His macro plan—even when your micro world is falling apart.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ Disappointment can be the doorway to disillusionment—if we’re not careful
⚡️ Jesus never promised an easy life, but He did promise to never leave you
⚡️ God’s plan may not make sense in the moment, but He’s always working
⚡️ Ruth’s loyalty reflects the unshakable faithfulness of Jesus
⚡️ Determination is your weapon against disbelief
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “You may not feel it—but God is still in control.”
⚡️ “Disillusionment tells you God raised His fist against you. He didn’t.”
⚡️ “You’re not cursed because it’s hard. You’re not abandoned because you’re struggling.”
⚡️ “Sometimes faith looks like holding on with tears in your eyes.”
⚡️ “God’s macro plan is better than anything your micro perspective could imagine.”
Episode Resources:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host. And hey, one thing I love to do in the summer is shake things up a little bit, right? You got four seasons and everyone’s a little different. And I like to change things up in the summer. And that’s what we’re going to do here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast. So here’s what we got for you. You know, we do a lot of purpose development stuff, whether it’s at schools, the purpose paradigm, with what we’re doing now and kind of communicating the future of Rogue Collective as we’re doing purpose and personal development in the marketplace. And one of other things that I’ve been doing, well, shoot, now for like, I don’t know, since I was 16, is going to churches or being a part of faith communities and sharing sermons out of the Bible. And so what we’ve done this summer is gotten maybe some of the greatest hits over the past year or so of me speaking at local churches and we’re going to put them together. We’re going to share them with you here on the podcast. And here’s what I hope. I hope they inspire you. I hope they help you understand how much God loves you. Okay. I hope they help awaken within you the fact that God is near you, right? That God is for you. And as we say every week on the podcast, that God has created you on purpose and for purpose. lots of different topics that will be coming this summer, but hopefully just great content that’s going to inspire you. And we always love to hear from you. A very easy way for you to do that, just email me, Daron, D-A-R-O-N at DaronEarlewine.com. Love to hear what you’re learning, love to hear questions you have. Maybe there’s a topic you’d love to hear us jump into on the podcast. Please reach out, Daron at DaronEarlewine.com and enjoy the 2025 Summer of Sermons.
Tagline: Created on purpose and for purpose.
North East. We’re kicking off a brand new series today. Welcome to the book of Ruth for the next four weeks. And it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be good. Here’s the big question that we’re gonna wrestle with this morning. It’s very simple but not easy to apply. Here’s the question. Is God in control?
And I think easily if we’re even kind of a follower of Jesus, right, the quick answer is you have to say, yeah, God’s in control. Because if you say God’s not in control, how is he God, right? He’s God, he’s in control. And even the, so theologically, mentally we say, yes, God is in control. And then we live.
And things start to happen in all of our lives that where experientially and emotionally you start to maybe move from a strong like yes to like I really hope so.
And then other things can happen that get more difficult and more chaotic and then maybe you move from I hope so to like man I think so.
And then there are times where things get so bleak, so sad, so hurtful, so disappointing, so disillusioning that we do sometimes, and these are the things we don’t often say out loud to our Christian friends, but we get to the point where we say, man, I don’t think so.
And I think there’s a lot of people that maybe have deconstructed their faith. I grew up going to church, but then I used to believe, but. And usually behind those statements is a path of disappointment and disillusionment that led to disbelief, where they said, man, I really wanted to believe that he was, but my life experience has said, I don’t think he is. We’re going to wrestle with that over the next four weeks as we look through the book of Ruth. And in no way does my last six month come anywhere close to what we’re gonna read about today with Ruth and Naomi, but there’s no real such thing as like comparative suffering, right? Like Ruth and Naomi and people are gonna meet, like they had it way worse than I did. And sometimes when you’re going through something that’s making you ask the question, is God in control, you can sometimes spiritually bypass what God wants to teach you in that moment by going, my life’s not as bad as fill in the blank.
And what we do is we then beat ourselves up for what we’re actually learning because, well, if my faith is so weak that this is causing me to question, I must fill in blank something negative because I don’t have the faith of what that person has. But see, here’s the thing. When you do that, you actually remove yourself from the crucible that God is using to show you his faithfulness.
So this summer, last March or whatever it was, know, God, I felt that God was inviting me to take a sabbatical this summer. I hadn’t done it in 24 years of ministry, but usually most of the time when I know God’s telling me to do something, I go with yes, okay? So I went with yes, sabbatical was great, sort of. It was weird. Like I wish I would have gotten like a $30,000 grant and like walk the steps of Rome and we’re like, I didn’t have that. Right? So it was like, sit at home and my wife would be like, you’re still not working today? I’m like, it’s a sabbatical, right?
Get through the sabbatical. God’s in control. Get back to work. Praise God. Let’s go August. Drop the hammer. We’ve got stuff we got to do. I’m fired up. God’s in control. Two weeks back from sabbatical. Boom. Severely herniated disc in my back. If you’ve done that recently, I would not suggest it. Immediate pain all day, every day. Felt like, you know, when you hit your funny bone, felt like I was hitting my funny bone all day, every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. Okay, God, I gave you eight weeks of not working so I could come back and really get productive. And then you’re gonna like, this is what’s gonna happen. can’t, I’m in pain all day, every day. My right hand doesn’t work like, okay, God, you’re in control.
And then I get it, I know what God’s doing. This is, he’s trying to teach me to understand supernatural healing. That’s what I thought. You ever get there where things aren’t making sense and then you figure out for God what he’s doing, right? Okay, God, that’s it. So I get a couple of buddies that I know that have been a part of healing people. We get together at my house and man, they anoint me with oil. We get the whole thing going. We have this guy from Oklahoma calling FaceTime. He’s like a healing guy and I’m in. I’m like, God’s in control. Supernatural healing, bring it, let’s go. We get done. Nope, I’m still in pain.
God, you’re still in control.
Then it’s like surgery, not surgery, surgery, not surgery, okay. Let’s go for it. Let’s get spinal fusion surgery. That’s gonna be the solution. God.
Then I meet with a surgeon and he’s like, oh, certain side effects, one of the things that can happen when they cut you through the front of your neck and move everything out of the way is if we get in and damage your vocal cords, you could have your vocal cords, your voice box could be paralyzed for the rest of your life.
Doc, I speak for a living, for a calling. This is what I got. Like we, you’re telling me I’m gonna do this and potentially, you know what’s one in 30,000 people lose the use of their voice. Oh, okay. Well, have you ever had it happen? Yeah, once. What?
Well, how many 30,000 surgeries prior to this surgery did you screw up that person’s voice? God, are you in control? what? All right. God’s in control. We’re about a half a week from the surgery. Praise God. We’re going to get it going on. It’s going to happen. God’s going to heal me. He’s in control. And I get stung by a hornet in the forehead.
You have a huge hornet’s nest in my neighbor’s yard and this one of my son’s brilliant friends throws a basketball at it and blasts it in half. We got hundreds of hornets that are like, ah, right? And I’m like, I call somewhere like, what’s the cost to remove the hornet’s nest? Like 250 bucks. I’m like, nah, I can go to Ace Hardware.
So I go get some wasp hornet spray, you get like 20 feet away, safe. A Google search for when do you spray a really angry hornet’s nest would have brought back the results at night when they’re sleeping. Not me. 930 in the morning, let’s go, you guys are about to die.
I’m three seconds into spraying these stupid hornets and one of them comes off with a kamikaze mission. Boom! Right in the forehead. I’m like, ah! But like I can’t move because my neck, I wish, I wish somebody’s ring camera had caught this. Cause for sure I was like, and like, tried to run inside, run inside. I’m like, it hurt real bad. I’m icing it. I go sit down at my desk. I’m like, all right, that was unfortunate. Let’s do some work. And all of a sudden I’m like, ooh.
Everything starts swelling up. Discover, I’m definitely allergic to hornet stings.
drive myself to the hospital. I look like a mutant. Lips, eyelids, everything. like looking in the rear view mirror driving. Probably shouldn’t have been because, you know, anaphylactic shock. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. Get to the ER, check in. Boom, they pump me full of a bunch of steroids, stop the allergic reaction. And I’m like, oh, hey, by the way, doc, I had spinal fusion surgery on Monday. He goes, no, you don’t.
You can’t have surgery with everything we just put in your body. Oh, so almost died from the hornet sting. Now let’s wait two more weeks of continual pain to finally get the surgery that could possibly paralyze my voice box for the rest of my life.
God is in control?
So I’m discouraged, I’m disillusioned. Sometimes when I do that, I’m wise enough to go, I will worship you in the midst of this, which is everything we just sang for three songs.
So I take my phone, just hit random, and this whole past year, this song, I Trust in God, maybe you’ve heard it before, right? It’s been my anthem all year.
Random songs of choice. Millions of songs to choose. What’s my phone, what’s my phone choose? Song starts. Blessed assurance. Jesus is mine. and I drive home from the ER.
Falling.
In just this moment of saying like God, I don’t feel it. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. I don’t get what you’re doing here, but like.
I trust you.
You’re in control.
Obviously the surgery went great, I can speak. I got an EpiPen now, we freaking stir it up with hornets again. And I don’t know yet everything that God was doing and teaching me.
But what I know is that God was with me and faithful the whole time.
And I think what happens in these moments for all of this is when things get bad and weird and wrong, It, it attacks our assumption of what being blessed looks like.
God is good and he’s faithful and I’m blessed when things are going good, right? I mean, you see somebody doing great and you go, man, God’s blessing is upon them. And you see somebody going through hell on earth and you go, I don’t know what happened over there. Where’s God?
And I think what’s weird is that that’s where we go immediately. I think, right, that’s where I went immediately.
And I think that’s probably why when Jesus taught his first sermon or not his first, but his big one, right? Sermon on the Mount, like he worked that one up. It was master class of teaching about the kingdom. And when Jesus kicks off the Sermon on the Mount, right? Here’s the opening line. And as communicators, we work hard to make the opening lines really hook people. And here is Jesus’s first words.
God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. What?
Anybody this next year wants somebody to say, you know what, I’ve been praying for you for 2025, just praying that God’s blessings fall on your life. So we have been asking God to make you poor in 2025.
And if something happened in the next 12 months, you found yourself poorer than you’ve ever been, would you be sitting at home in your poorness and go, blessings, just blessed, too blessed to be stressed?
Then Jesus really makes it better. Here’s the next one. God blesses those who mourn.
for they will become.
I don’t know about you, usually mourning is associated with someone dying in my life that I deeply care about.
And it won’t take us long to share stories around the room of somebody that was related to us or that we loved that went through a really difficult battle on earth physically that seemed unfair, not right, not okay, not how God would treat someone that he loves and they died. And we said, God, are you in control?
Where’s this good God? Where are the blessings? And Jesus says blessed are those who mourn.
They will be.
Then he goes on and says a lot of other counterintuitive upside down kingdom things.
Not because they rhymed or they were good teaching, because he understood what we would need to know to be able to trust him and be confident he’s in control when everything else isn’t.
And I think sometimes what happens in this is it’s when we confuse the micro for the macro.
You see, oftentimes our view of when I’m blessed or when God is good is when he is making my micro-sized life work how I want it to work, yes? Micro, we could also say personal. We say things like Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior. What we don’t say, the unspoken assumption is his job now is to make my personal life always easy, good, up and to the right, always working well. Jesus is my, you know, my get out of jail free card. He’s my genie in the sky. He’s my Santa Claus. And if I love God and he loves me, I will be blessed, which means everything will work the way I want it to work.
What we forget in the process is that God operates on a pretty macro scale, like running the universe and having ultimate wisdom of what he’s doing to see his will be done and his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. And sometimes that means our micro personal life will not always go the way that we thought it would go.
Jesus could teach us to pray like that. Here’s how I want you to pray. Right? Your kingdom comes. Your will be done on earth as it in. Jesus had the ability to teach us to pray like that because Jesus fully, completely understood the heart of God in his faithfulness. So even as Jesus is about to see his personal life be hung on a cross,
He was able to say, you’re in control. Your will be done. Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven because you are faithful. And your macro size plan for my micro size life is actually infinitely better than anything I could figure out of my.
And I think this is the constant struggle we find ourselves in in our faith walk day after day after day.
The micro versus the macro.
Let me, spoiler alert, let tell you where we’re going in this story. Today we’re gonna walk through the micro portion of the Ruth and Naomi story. Chapter one. As we read it, you’re gonna go, woof. Things are not going well for these ladies.
Here’s what macro God is doing. Okay, so I’m gonna tell you the end of the story here. If you don’t know it, I’m ruin it. There’s gonna be no cliffhangers for the rest of the four weeks, okay? I’m gonna read you chapter one of Ruth. Let me read you the last sentences in Ruth four, the last chapter. Here’s what it says. Boaz was the father of Obed. You don’t know Boaz yet. Boaz is gonna get to meet him in the next couple of weeks. He’s a major character in this story and redeems this whole thing. It’s pretty awesome.
So Boaz, who we’re going to meet, was the father of Obed. Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David, as in King David, as in man after God’s own heart, David, as in David and Goliath, as in David in the lineage in line of Jesus, the savior of the world.
So as we go through the micro of the first part of the story, remember macro what’s going on. God and His infinite wisdom that we don’t need to understand in ways that we would not choose Him to do it is orchestrating things to do amazing, faithful, miraculous, God-sized things to set up the world to have a lineage in which Jesus, His Son, comes to save the world. And it would be so much easier in our life if we’re in the midst of things that are that are being very disappointing and moving us to disillusionment and getting us on the verge of displeased. Wouldn’t it be great if God would show up and say, let me show you macro what I’m doing. In 10 years, I’m going to use this to change the world. And you would go, woo, I will be done. Thy kingdom come, I’m in. That’s not how it works. Why? Because he says the righteous would live by faith.
Oh, by the way, the election’s on Tuesday.
Here’s what’s not funny.
The way our political world is set up right now on Wednesday, if we know who wins, so wins. Half of America will be really scared, really angry, disillusioned, disappointed, and asking this, is God in control? So there’s like, I don’t know, 400 million of us or something now in America, something like that, I don’t know, right? So think about this, Wednesday, 200 million people that you loosely know, some that you’re related to, will be in a crisis moment wondering, is God in control?
Here’s our opportunity, if we are followers of Jesus.
is to be resolutely sure.
And our heart, soul, mind and strength, he is and act that way.
So some suggestions. If your candidate wins this week, know that half the country, maybe even people that you would consider enemies, which is unfortunate because you’re a follower of Jesus and he said things like this, love your enemies. They will be in a really, really difficult place. So it would not really look like Jesus.
for you to jump on Facebook and declare that this is proof that God loves your kind of people.
Because what you’re saying, but not saying is his blessing and love is not for you kind of people. If your candidate loses this week and you’re a follower of Jesus who believes that God is in control and macro is doing what he wants to do. If your candidate loses, it would also not behoove you to jump on Facebook and declare the end of all things.
More than Facebook, here is what I think I have wrestled with.
Maybe you don’t ever post anything, but it would be really, really, really dangerous for us to begin to feel and then believe either of those things I just said.
And full transparency, I have found those words coming out of my mouth over the past couple of weeks. If this happens, are you kidding me?
But what would it look like for me to say God’s in control? If this happens, God’s in control. This may not look the way I think it should look, and I don’t know, but God’s in control. And then act, live, love, and lead in that way. Amen? I should just close now, because I’ve only got six minutes left. We haven’t even gotten to the thing.
I told the team already, said, there’s not a chance. This sermon is getting done.
So just when the thing says zeros, come start playing behind me and we’ll figure out when to quit.
Ruth chapter one, micro perspective leads to misunderstanding. In the days when the judges ruled in Israel, we just studied that for the past couple months, a severe famine came upon the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah left his home and went to live in the country of Moab, taking his wife and two sons with him. The man’s name is Elimelech and his wife, Naomi. Their two sons were Mahlon and Kilian. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in the land of Judah.
And when they reach Moab, they settle there. God is in control, is what they’re thinking. Okay. Then, Elimelech died. And Naomi was left with her two sons. Following God, God’s in control. Now I’m a widow. God, hello. But it’s good, I still have two sons. God’s in control. The two sons marry Moabite woman. One married a woman named Orpah. The other married a woman named Ruth.
God’s in control, He’s provided for my daughters, praise the Lord, I know I’m a widow now, but God’s in control.
But about 10 years later, both of them die.
This left Naomi alone without her two sons and without her husband’s context. That basically gave her no standing in anything in society. She had no husband, she had no sons, she is done in her view.
God is in control.
What happens here is disappointments, they begin to be building blocks for dissolution.
Be careful if you’re experiencing disappointments right now in life, which you are because you’re breathing. Be careful that they not take root because they will begin to be building blocks of disillusionment. Let’s see how this happens for Ruth and Naomi. Then Naomi heard that Moab, that the Lord had blessed his people in Judah by giving them good crops again. So Naomi and her daughter and her daughter-in-law got up to leave to Moab to return to their homeland.
The two daughter-in-law, they sent out from the place where she had been living, they took the road that would lead them back to Judah. But on the way, Naomi said to her two daughter-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 and she kissed him goodbye and they broke down and wept. No, they said, we want to go with you to your people. But Naomi replied, watch the disappointments that are leading into disillusionment.
Why should you go with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up and to be your husbands? No, my daughters return to your parents home for I’m too old to marry again. 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? No, of course not, my daughters. Things are far more bitter for me than for you because here’s the linchpin, because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me.
Again, they wept and cried together. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung tightly to Naomi. Look, Naomi said to her, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods. You should do the same. But Ruth replies, 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. Your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. And 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 their journey. And when they came to Bethlehem, the entire town was excited by their arrival. Is it really Naomi? The women asked. 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 since tragedy upon me? So they returned to Moab accompanied by her daughter-in-law Ruth, the young Moabite woman. arrived in Bethlehem late that spring, the beginning of the barley harvest. Here’s the problem. Is disillusionment then paves the way for disbelief?
Disillusionment means this, a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be.
Some of you are here right now.
And we don’t always help in this in the church, because we say things like, give your life to Jesus and everything will be wonderful.
all these promises and blessings that God’s gonna bring. And some of you started following Jesus and you were like, this is terrible. I feel like a failure all the time. I can’t live up to the things that my old friends don’t walk with me. I had to break up with that guy. This didn’t happen. Then I was honest and still got fired from my job. I’m waiting for it to come around and be like amazing.
They said, you know, if we had a Christian marriage, it would be easy. And it is not.
You said it was gonna be this, and this is not as good as I thought it was gonna be in my micro little personal way that my life is supposed to work out the way I want it to when I want it to how I want it to.
What is disillusion?
And I tell you what’s happening is I’m starting to just disbelieve.
Naomi says, God has raised his fist against me. He’s against me. Who told you that, Naomi? Disappointment did. Disillusionment did. I would venture to say the devil did.
You’re alone. You’re alone, Naomi, and you’re hopeless. Who told you that? My disappointments and my disillusionment did. Guess who is behind those lies that you’re hearing in your head right now? It’s not Jesus. It’s the devil trying to destroy your faith and God’s faithfulness because you’re disappointed in growing in disillusionment. We just spent four weeks, the series called
Alone? Helping you understand what Jesus has promised us that you’re never alone. That God does not raise his fist against you. This is what Naomi needed to believe. And here’s the beautiful thing. Is that in this process, here’s how we defeat the disillusionment determination.
Determination is our weapon against disbelief and it goes two ways. It’s understanding the determination of Jesus and his faithfulness to us and our determination to be faithful to people in our life who are walking through a Naomi season.
What Ruth said to her is, people will be my people. Your God will be my people. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you to death.
And we’ll see in the coming weeks how that determination and that faithfulness, that love paved the way for what God was doing. But as I read it this week, I couldn’t help but think about the things that we are told from the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews chapter 13, he said, I will never leave you.
nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? In that scripture, it’s quoting Deuteronomy 31, which is way back in the Old Testament, as God was sending his people into the promised land. And he said, listen, be strong and be courageous. Do not fear or be in dread. For the Lord your God goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
Do not let your disappointments, not let your disillusionment lead you to disbelief that God is against you, that God has left you. God is at work in the midst of your mourning, of your disappointment, of your disillusionment saying, trust me, I have always been faithful. I am faithful now and I always will be.
God sees you. He’s with you. He’s in covenant with you. Here’s what the word of God says in the book of, we’re in Hebrews still, Hebrews 10.
Or skip down to verse 23. us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think, I love this, let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love in good works. We receive the determination and faithfulness of Ruth through the love of Jesus.
And then it is our opportunity to extend the determination, the faith, the loyalty, the love of Ruth and of Jesus and to the lives of those we walk with. Stay with me.
Are you in a Naomi season? You’re disappointed, you’re disillusioned.
say a lot of us are.
And I don’t want you to feel any shame for the struggle you’re
because it’s hard.
and you maybe never have been here before.
Yeah, for me it was a herniated disc and hornets. It seemed hard for me. For you it’s something else. And what the enemy wants to come in and say to your head is God has forsaken you, he’s raised his hand against you. The fact that you’re discouraged by this, you have no faith, you’re so weak, just quit. Those are lies, friend.
in the midst of your discouragement, your disillusionment, God is with you. He is faithful.
Be determined.
Just stay faithful.
And if you’re in a really good place right now, but you know someone in your life is not, don’t just pray for them from afar. Go speak your faithfulness and your loyalty to them. Maybe say little, but show up much.
Because the word of God promises this in 2 Corinthians 1, 3, 4, 3 to 4, all praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful father in the source of all comfort. He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
So if you’ve come through that season of disappointment and disillusionment, it wasn’t just for you to get through. It was that God brought you through it. And now he is bringing people in that season next to you so you can say, he is faithful and I will be here with you through it.
Heavenly Father, we feel this. We live this day in and day out. We need your help. So God, I pray for someone who may be in a Naomi season right now. They’re in disappointment. They’re in disillusionment. They’re on the verge of disbelief. God, I pray as we sing this song that these words would be a prayer for them. That you would begin to give them a spirit, your spirit of power and of love.
And if self-discipline, Father, to be determined, I will hold on because God is faithful and I will see him prove himself. And as we sing this song, Father, if we are in a season where you’re calling us to be a Ruth, to go walk with someone and to be an extension and ambassador of your love, I pray that we would sing this song as a prayer for the person you have given us the honor to walk with. And God, we pray for this week. May we be able to say, no matter
the results of this election, may we be able to say with peace and confidence afterwards, good, because somehow God is going to use this for his glory and for his kingdom. And it’s our opportunity to figure out how we fit into what you’re.
We love you Jesus, we give you the best.