God Does Not Give You What You Want, but What You Need

I have preached about the Book of Ruth and some of the principles contained in this Book, and I want to do so now in light of the subject we have been discussing. And I believe that, unless God indicates otherwise, this will be the second and final sermon within this larger series on pain, trials, and suffering, and on how we can relate positively to the pain and suffering that are part of this world and part of the experience of the children of God: seeing them in the right way, from the right perspective; facing pain, tragedies, losses, setbacks, and failures in life in a biblical way, in a spiritual way, understanding that they are part of the human experience and that God often uses life's setbacks, failures, sufferings, and deserts to bless us, improve us, strengthen us, and take us to another level of quality of life.

They can even be God's instrument for enabling us to be truly happy in the future. If we receive trials and pain in a biblically correct way, if we see them through the eyes of God and His Word, if we relate to life's deserts in the right way, then even pain can be an instrument for our future happiness; it can be an instrument that makes us lighter at the end of the process, remembering the words of the apostle Paul, right?—that we should lay aside the sin and the weight that beset us so that we may run lightly the race of faith, which is the race of life.

Pain has this virtue: through the fire of trial, it melts away some of our excess fat and sin, our defects. It is a kind of psychological therapy that God uses to break many things within us, to melt those blockages, those things that have become petrified and hardened from a lack of flow. The fire of trial comes and burns those things, melts them, and makes them flow again, just as the oil in an engine that has sat unused for a long time dries out and hardens, but with the heat of operation, the grease begins to flow once more, and then the engine can start again.

The struggles and problems of life can do that if we adopt the right perspective and relate to that painful experience in the right way. If we begin to see life's absences, barrenness, and problems in a redemptive light, if we begin to see them once again through the lens of the Spirit, that will change our existence.

Psychologists know that the narratives we adopt concerning our lives and our negative or positive experiences determine the way we live. If you adopt a negative narrative—and by narrative I mean an interpretation; it is as though you were writing your interpretation of your life—whether you do so positively or negatively will determine the destiny and course of your life.

And any experience in life, especially a painful one, if you take it to be something cruel or victimizing with no possible redemption or anything good in it, then that is what it will be: something destructive to your life. It will victimize you, bind you, and hinder you on your way. But if you receive it in a different way—positively, hopefully, redemptively, seeing the hidden gold—you will see that this changes the experience.

The same event affects two people in different ways, even within the same family many times: a divorce, the loss of a father during adolescence. One child may emerge strengthened, gentler, and blessed, while the other may emerge bitter, rebellious, cruel, resentful for the rest of his life, and depressed because he saw things differently. That is what happens with the events of our lives. That is what happens with the events of our lives.

And God encourages us to see pain and suffering as something rather positive, to find the hidden gold within them. It is hard, especially when you are right in the midst of it. The first blow of pain always leaves us breathless, and sometimes the initial reaction is anger and rebellion: Why me? How could God allow this to happen in my life? We go off into a corner and refuse to kiss the Lord's hand anymore; that may be the first response.

And sometimes—hey, that's okay—sometimes we have to throw the tantrum first, right? And then afterward say, “You know what? Yes,” come to our senses, return to the Father, bless Him, bow our heads, and say, “Where shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life,” right?

Because sometimes, when you go through pain and suffering, you say, “Ah! I'm not going to church anymore.” But where are you going to go—to the hand of the devil, to this cruel world out there without the Lord's protection? There is simply no other way; there isn't. Once you know the things of the Kingdom of God, there is nowhere else to go. And above all, if you remain within the Kingdom, in the long run you will receive what you need; you will learn, you will grow, and then God will begin to bless you. Well, that is the beginning of the interpretive framework for what I want to say.

Last Sunday we spoke about Elijah's experience and his great crisis in the desert, and how God used Elijah's desert—his utter depression, his ministerial failure in a sense—to give him a different perspective on God and on himself, and to show him another aspect of ministry and of God: not only the God of fire and brimstone and judgment, who kills and destroys 500 false prophets, but also the tender, loving, maternal God who twice provides a baked cake and a glass of water for the emotionally exhausted prophet, puts him to sleep and gives him rest, and then gives him a tremendously powerful revelation that He dwells not only in the earthquake, the fire, and the explosive wind, but also in the gentle, quiet whisper.

So we saw that Elijah's ministerial failure—his moment of being caught between a rock and a hard place and realizing that he is not that mighty man who performs terrifying miracles, but that he is also a man who needs ministry, needs to be served, needs God's maternal touch, and also needs to see the maternal aspect of God—all these things and much more are contained within that painful experience of Elijah, and so we see how God used the pain.

Today I want to talk about Ruth and Naomi and examine this account that takes place during the period of the Judges, the Book of Ruth. That is why this Book is unusual, because it is situated right there in the Old Testament, before First and Second Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles—before all that, in the time of the Judges, before there was a king in Israel. Ruth and Naomi's drama is recorded in the Bible, although the Book was probably written much later. Some believe it was written in David's time, already three generations after Ruth lived, because later we are going to see something very interesting about Ruth.

But this story takes place specifically in the time of the Judges, and that is why I tell you it is so important. I hope that everyone here immediately knows the account of Ruth. No one who knows the Lord and has spent time in the things of faith should be ignorant of this story or fail to know it well—the life of Ruth. My task today should simply be to comment on the account, because we should all know it by heart. It is a very beautiful story, even if we do not know all the details.

But I want to speak specifically about how to overcome a terrible loss, how to transcend life's tragedies and reach the final point of blessing and triumph. For the Book of Ruth begins precisely with a very tragic scene: her mother-in-law, Naomi, had left Bethlehem with her husband and her two sons. It is interesting that during this Christmas season we have Bethlehem playing a very important role here, because this story is connected with Jesus, the Messiah who would come centuries later.

Ruth and her husband Elimelech, and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion—it seems one of them was very bad because they call him Mahlon, not just malo but Mahlon. I'm joking—a cheap joke at nine in the morning (laughs). But Mahlon and Chilion went with their mother and father to Moab, a pagan land. They left Bethlehem of Judah during a time of barrenness and famine in Bethlehem. They left, traveled to this region of Moab, and lived there for a while. Unfortunately, Naomi's husband died, and her two sons, who had married two Moabite women—one of them Ruth and the other Orpah—does anyone here happen to be named Orpah? I don't want to make jokes or anything (laughter), just in case.

Okay, Ruth and Orpah. Incidentally, there are many Ruths in the world but very few Orpahs, partly because Ruth chose a much better path, the path of nobility and generosity. The fact is that Mahlon and Chilion married two Moabite women and, unfortunately, they also died. Imagine being at an advanced age, as Naomi probably was, losing your husband and then losing your two sons, and having to bury both of them in a foreign land when you had left your own land precisely in search of a better life. You emigrated elsewhere seeking a better life, yet all your dreams and all your plans failed completely, and you find yourself alone there in the twilight, at the end of your life—a tragic scene.

And so the first chapter records how Naomi takes her two daughters-in-law and sets out on the journey with them. About halfway along the road—I picture it dramatically—Naomi comes to where the road divides and goes in two directions: one leads toward Bethlehem and the other toward another part of Moab.

At that moment Naomi stops there with her two daughters-in-law and tells them, “Turn back, my daughters,” in verse 11. And before that: “Go back, each of you, to your mother's home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to the dead”—that is, her sons—“and to me. Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept,” verse 9, “and they said to her, ‘Surely we will go with you to your people.’” There was an initial effort, as it were, to remain faithful to Naomi.

But then Naomi insists: No, go back, girls. Why would you go with me? Do I have any more sons in my womb who could become your husbands? You know that in the Old Testament there was this custom whereby she could have sons and the two young women could wait for those boys to grow up and then marry them—the whole matter of redemption, of having children, of not remaining single widows. So she is alluding to this Israelite custom.

And she says: Look, I am already old; I cannot have children. And even if I did, would you wait for them to grow up so that you could marry them? You would have problems with the Department of Child and Family Welfare, right?—for child abuse. So go.

At first they weakly say, “All right—no, we want to go with you.” But Naomi insists, and Orpah says, “Well, no; I tried, so now I'm going back to Moab.” And she takes that road, very legitimately and properly, deciding to return to her family and see what the future holds for her, to try her fortune. But Ruth, in immortal words, tells her: “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also”—it is like an oath she makes—“if anything but death separates the two of us.” Naomi is astonished, sees this young woman's determination, and says, “Well, I am not going to keep arguing with her. Amen.”

And I believe that there, in that very noble, very beautiful scene, the theme of this account already begins, because here we see nobility. To me, the entire story of the Book of Ruth is a story of generosity, nobility, and grace—God working through the generosity of the protagonists of this Book. And I believe that here we already have a lesson about the importance of nobility. I will speak a little later about that, right?

But I want to reinforce an important point that we have already discussed. Notice that neither Naomi nor Ruth, nor Orpah, nor Elimelech and his two sons have done anything to deserve such a great tragedy. These are not ungodly and sinful people; quite the opposite: they are noble, hardworking, honest, even devout people. And yet look at how devastating this tragedy has been, at all the losses this family has experienced.

Remember what I have told you: suffering, loss, and life's tragedies do not come only when we are outside the Will of God. Many times they come precisely when we are at the center of the Will of God, because God is working.

This is another thing about this Book: there are no astounding miracles here like the ones we see in the Book of Exodus with the great prophets. Instead, this is an everyday Book about two women who experience a great loss and set out to resolve their situation, but God is involved throughout the entire process.

We continually see divine intervention in very providential ways: arranging divine coincidences, preparing the man who will marry Ruth, opening doors, and blessing her efforts. God is present throughout that entire process. They are not far from God. God is right in the midst of their situation, taking them to another level.

Ruth and Naomi could have stayed there in Moab with their sons and lived a perfectly ordinary and normal life, and today no one would know that Ruth and Naomi ever existed, just like Orpah. No one preaches sermons about Orpah except to point out the contrast with Ruth. Orpah chose the easy, normal path in life; who knows whether she married someone there in her village and went back to her gods, because Naomi says, “Go back to your families and your gods.” That is very important, isn’t it? Because Orpah chooses to return to her former situation.

Naomi and Ruth leave Moab and return to Bethlehem, to their spiritual foundations. They went to Moab, to the pagan world; there they suffer terrible loss, and now they return to Bethlehem to rebuild their lives, to find a solution. It has already been said that in Bethlehem God has once again visited His people and that there is a harvest. In fact, they return at harvest time; prosperity is returning, the time of financial crisis has passed, and once again they are harvesting.

They go to Bethlehem again. I believe Bethlehem is the place of miracles. Bethlehem is the place where the Presence of the Lord is, in a sense; Bethlehem is a return to your spiritual roots. When you go through tribulations and losses in your life, do not remain in the place of loss, slowly stewing in your own juices; go to Bethlehem. Bethlehem is where the Word of God is; Bethlehem is the holy place of prayer; Bethlehem is where you return to seek refuge in the Word of God; Bethlehem is where you wrestle with the angel so that God may heal and restore you; Bethlehem is where you seek the solution to your problem instead of remaining in resentment and in a sense of loss, victimhood, and failure. No. Return once again to the place where there is bread for you, where there is hope for your life.

When many people go through crises and tribulations, what do they do? They move farther away from God, become more rationalistic, and begin to water down the Word of the Lord and the promises of God. They try to adjust their knowledge and understanding of the generous, Almighty God to fit their tragedy instead of doing exactly the opposite: adjusting their loss, their crisis, their difficult situation to the Almighty God who wants to redeem their tragedy. Do not remain in barrenness, right? Seek your restoration and healing in God; wrestle with the angel there in the night while you swallow your tears; cry out to the Lord like Job.

The Book of Job is also a book about terrible loss, and the most fascinating thing about the Book of Job is the struggle Job had with God, because sometimes we think of Job as a one-dimensional book in which Job suffered a loss, stood there firm as a tree trunk, and in the end God blessed him. No. Job wrestles with God; Job questions God, in a sense. He says to Him, “Look, I have done the very best I could. Why has this terrible loss come upon me?”

And one of the most powerful dimensions of the Book of Job is the inner drama of this man who drinks his tears, asking himself, “Where is the God I know?” and who holds on there until God gives him His answer. And God gives it to him in the end, you see? Because many times God takes His time, but in the long run He blesses and heals you if you give Him time, if you go through your trial with the Lord, if instead of moving away from Him you embrace Him and begin to wrestle lovingly with Him.

That is what matters. When we go through tribulations and trials, let us not move away; let us not impoverish our understanding of God. If God has not given you what you asked Him for and what you trusted He would give you, do not water down the soup, right? Believe that no, it is as God says and there must be some answer, but do not diminish your understanding of the loving, merciful, Almighty God you have. Fight until you see it restored once again and can return to Bethlehem to eat of the bread of the Word of the Lord once more and freely enjoy worship.

How beautiful it is when you have gone through the crisis and the trial and your feathers begin to grow back, right? And once again you begin to receive joy and to worship God anew after the season of spiritual poverty. That is beautiful, isn’t it? That. In other words, the pain passes. What I mean is that God is at work in the midst of this, because God wanted it.

I wonder whether one day Ruth, sitting there at home enjoying a good meal with Boaz, her husband, by then a respectable lady and the mother of one who would become an ancestor and forefather of Jesus Himself...

Did you know that Ruth became David’s great-grandmother? Naomi became King David’s great-great-grandmother. This Moabite woman, this woman who came from a pagan land, is elevated in status to become the great-grandmother of King David, from whom descends the Lord of lords and King of kings, the Messiah who would rule all humanity. And Ruth becomes a repository of that Gospel which was for all nations, for pagans and for Jews, for those who were inside and those who were outside, those who were near and those who were far away.

That is why Ruth is so important: because she is a pagan, Moabite woman, but God wanted her in the lineage of His Son. The genes of Moab—a pagan land whose people were even enemies of the Kingdom of Israel—flowed through the human blood of Jesus, and Ruth could have spent her entire life anonymous and spiritually poor, but God wanted to place her in a royal lineage.

I imagine that if Ruth had been asked, while she was sitting there in her home watching her grandson or her son, a respectable woman in Bethlehem, “Ruth, if you could turn back the clock and avoid losing your husband, what would you choose?” I insist on believing that Ruth would not have hesitated for a second and would have said, “No, God’s Will was fulfilled. I want things to have happened exactly as they did.”

Ruth may never even have known that she was going to be an ancestor of the King of kings and Lord of lords. She probably did not even know that she would be the great-grandmother of the most glorious king Israel had ever had or would ever have, David, because that is another thing. Many times we go through situations and tragedies in life but do not have the privilege of fully understanding why. Yet God had a plan in it, and perhaps others will know it generations later.

Do you remember the illustration I read some time ago about how one person’s intervention changes destinies in the future, and how sometimes we do not know the full impact it has had on our lives? Sometimes we will not know why God did not give me this, why that other thing happened to me, why this trial came into my life, why I had to—we will not know, but we have to trust in the Lord.

I will tell you one thing: that is the last card a Christian plays—that even if you do not know the answer as to why your losses and tragedies occurred, surrender them to the Lord and believe that God is good and that He has a purpose. When you do not know how to explain some loss in your life and God does not give you the answer immediately, say, “Lord, Your Will be done. I do not understand why, but I know that You are good and that You have a good purpose in this.” For God was using the loss, the pain, the widowhood, all these things, to lead these women to live out an exalted drama that would bless humanity for centuries and centuries, just as it blesses us today on this Sunday in December.

These women were being used, that is what I mean. Do you know that God often exchanges the limited enjoyment of a positive situation for the exalted, noble, sublime, sacred delight of spiritual growth? Do you understand what I mean? Many times we have to exchange cheap emotional gratification for spiritual greatness and spiritual growth.

And unfortunately, what we like is, you know, immediate gratification. Who wants to lose a child or lose a longed-for career because perhaps this will make you a nobler person? We, who are so driven by immediate gratification, will always choose what is most pleasurable and immediate, but God does not think that way. And in eternity, I believe we will think as God thinks, and we will look back at the video of our lives and see that things we now lament with bitter tears can then be seen in the light of the God who knows all things. We will be able to see how this blessed our descendants, how it blessed those around us, how it prepared us for other joys and other forms of greatness in the spiritual life, because God is an objective God.

God does not give you what you want, but what you need. God wants you to reflect the glory and greatness of Christ Jesus, not to be a spoiled little child who is given the lollipops and ice cream he likes but possesses no spiritual greatness whatsoever. What interests God most is that Christ be formed in us and that we reflect more and more of His glory and His character.

So He is going to work in our lives. He was working through all this suffering and affliction of Ruth and Naomi to lead them to an ending. So what we are saying is this: that in the life of every believer it is real, it will come, and what we have to do is take this dough and knead it and work it with the principles of Scripture, knowing that God may be leading us to something much better, as He did with Joseph, with Moses, and with other great heroes of the faith, using tragedy, struggle, and drama to take them where He ultimately wanted them to go. As in the case of Ruth and Naomi, God is working powerfully in them, just as He can also work in your life.

Then another thing, again: this principle here is very important, right? Pain can come into our lives, and how we face that pain determines what happens in the end. If Ruth and Naomi had simply shut themselves away there to lament their terrible loss and had remained in Moab, what happened would not have happened. But these women choose to face their situation and see that there is a positive hope.

In this case, Ruth and Naomi’s ending is not the ending but the beginning. The ending is that they lose their husbands, they lose their entire inheritance, but it is simply the beginning of the drama. That is why it is at the beginning of the Book, in chapter 1, because their story is only now beginning, right?

Another principle I see here is that Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law—listen to this—places God in the midst of her suffering. She deliberately brings God into her drama because everywhere she is pointing to God. Look, for example, I am going to choose at random from verse 9: “The Lord grant that each of you may find rest in the home of her husband.” Before that: “May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.”

There is also a very dramatic passage there in verse 13, when they want to remain with Naomi the first time. It says: “No, my daughters, for I am in greater bitterness than you are, because the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” Naomi sees what is happening as though God were against her, but what is interesting is that she does not rebel against God. It is as though she were saying, “God has struck me; God is doing something adverse in my life,” but at least she is bringing God into her drama.

In verse 20 it says: “And she replied to them, ‘Do not call me Naomi,’” which means pleasant—how ironic this is, right? In Hebrew Naomi means pleasant—“but call me Mara.” Do you remember the waters of Marah? That is why it is so important to know these dramas in Scripture. “Call me Mara,” which means bitterness or bitter, “because the Almighty has filled me with great bitterness.”

Do you not sense there an element of worship and submission to the Will of God? “The Almighty has plunged me into bitterness.” By saying “the Almighty,” she is saying, “The One who has the power and the right to do whatever He pleases; I have no power to oppose His designs.”

In verse 21: “I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty-handed. Why call me Naomi, since the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?” Right? Everywhere.

Ruth’s perspective is mistaken because she sees suffering as a punishment from God, as a negative action by God, as we ourselves can often do. Nevertheless, the first thing is that she does not rebel against God; she submits to His Will and blesses Him, and I believe this keeps her from drying up and becoming barren and from ending up in bitterness.

Because I say here that even if our theology is mistaken, keeping God at the center of the perspective from which we view our experience is key. When we live through our struggles, our pain, and our tragedies in the light of the divine, of the narratives of Scripture, of the principles of the Gospel—do you see?—we redeem them; we give them stature, we give them a nobility they would not have if we experienced them only at ground level, as something that simply happened and has no meaning, no redemption.

When you decide to bring in God and the Word of the Lord, the principles of the Kingdom, and to see your struggle—to see your struggle and your tragedy—in the light of the Word of God, asking, “What might God be doing? What do You have in mind? What do You have in mind? What are You working out in my life?” what you are doing is raising, elevating the quality of what you are experiencing. I do not know whether that sounds very philosophical to you, but it brings me blessing.

Because many times depression—depression when we go through tribulations—depends greatly on the idea that we are alone, that our sufferings have no resonance beyond ourselves, and that suffering is simply evidence of life’s meaninglessness; when we find ourselves and see ourselves as though we were in a dead-end alley, and as though I were drinking my tears alone and there were no one, no witness to see my suffering.

The beautiful thing is this: the most sublime witness to your drama is the eyes of God, which are watching you and living through what you are going through with you. The fact that you have a reader, an interlocutor, an observer of your drama as sublime as the Almighty—wow—that magnifies your drama, instead of your seeing it simply as something cheap and utterly beyond redemption. When we make, or recognize, God as the omnipresent element in every aspect of our lives, this gives our struggles a stature and an intensity that free them from the banal—banal meaning the cheap, the meaningless, the ordinary.

I think of Paul in his cell in Philippians, right? Not knowing whether he is going to survive or whether they are going to execute him, and yet Paul writes one of the most sublime, beautiful, and joyful letters in all of Scripture: Philippians, the Epistle of Joy. And look at how Paul views his predicament, the drama he is living through in that Roman dungeon. Paul says in Philippians 1:12, “I want you to know, brothers, that the things which have happened to me”—in other words, my being confined here in this prison—“have actually turned out for the advancement of the Gospel.”

Ah, he is viewing his drama through God’s benevolent purpose. Paul knows that he is going to bear witness there in Caesar’s Praetorian Guard, that many soldiers will come to know Christ through him; and he did not know that those words of his would be recorded in Scripture throughout the whole earth. His imprisonment had cosmic, worldwide, eternal resonance.

But he does not even know that. What he sees is that, confined there in prison, he can preach the Gospel. He says, “So that my imprisonment in Christ has become evident throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everyone else. And most of the brothers, having grown confident in the Lord because of my imprisonment, dare all the more to speak the Word without fear.” In other words, others who have seen my drama and have seen me proclaiming the Gospel say, “Wow, if Paul says it, I can do it too. Wow, if this man can remain faithful there in the midst of such a great trial, then what do I have to complain about?”

You see that with Paul—this is a theme that is repeated many times—Paul views his suffering, his afflictions, and his illnesses in light of the Kingdom of God and the benefit they produce. That allows him to have a redemptive perspective on his sufferings and to see them as something grand, a sublime drama. He does not view it simply as: these soldiers seized me, and God allowed them to put me in prison, and why? And God is neither as strong nor as loving as He thinks He is, nor as faithful. He sees that God is working through his struggles.

Let us make God the interlocutor in our struggles; let us include Him as an integral, central part of our situations. By including Him, we will understand that we are not alone. And do you know one of the most powerful ways for you to include God? Prayer. When you are going through trials, the first thing you have to do is throw yourself at the Lord’s feet, cling to the hem of God’s garment, go straight into the temple, and take refuge in prayer, because prayer changes our perspective.

Prayer is not merely about getting God to give us what we ask Him for. To me, prayer is what renews my vision, what fills me with courage, what invites me to look toward eternity and not merely at the moment, at the mud I am trudging through at that time. Prayer is, among other things, an exercise in perspective. Prayer enables you to see things with the mind and eyes of Christ. Prayer is where you sweat out your pain and your fear.

And besides that, prayer transforms. We will talk about that later, because one of the things I want to talk about is that. One of the most powerful means of changing our temperament, our character, our deficiencies, our bondages, compulsions, and obsessions is the power of God—appealing to the power of God and resorting to prayer.

To me, prayer is like radiation therapy: it takes that tumor of your addiction, your struggle, your compulsion, and your neurosis, and that prayer is like heat that gradually shrinks the tumor until it destroys it completely. It takes time, like radiation therapy, but it works, and in the end you will see that you will have the victory.

Prayer is very important, as is spiritual warfare—two things that help us live healthy lives. Prayer, fasting too, I would say, and spiritual warfare: three things that help us move forward. But we are going to talk about that as a separate subject, because I believe there can be no spiritual health without continual prayer that is like the blood that carries toxins through the entire body and eliminates them, and that oxygenates the body.

It is very important, because prayer enables you to see the gold hidden in your tragedy and not to see it simply as a blow that did not reverberate and just remained there, with no greater resonance—a stone that fell to the bottom of a well and made no sound because your situation was so deep.

When you include God in your struggles, even when you are seeing Him as we saw in Lamentations chapter 3—“I am the man who has seen affliction beneath the rod of His anger; against me He turned and turned His hand all day long,” says the prophet Jeremiah, seeing God as a bear that has struck him with its paw and forgotten him—even then he says, “Because of the mercies of the LORD we have not perished; they are new every morning.”

Sometimes you are going to look at God and say, “Wow, where were You when this happened to me? Were You sleeping? Were You chasing after some star, some meteorite in space, and neglected me?” No, He has not neglected you. Even the question is already progress, because at least you are acknowledging that He exists, and from there perhaps you can go to another level.

I am going to leave the message here. Who knows whether I will pick it up again sometime, because there are so many things in this passage, but our time is already up. We will return to it sometime, and who knows—next Sunday we have to preach the customary Christmas sermon. I am going to leave it for a little while, but we will return to it sometime, because it is a very beautiful passage. These women are powerful, you know? They are not some little women out there, completely broken and powerless. They are spiritual giants, just as Scripture records so many powerful women; they are enviable giants.

But I love this idea that suffering came, that loss came into lives that were very noble, but God was crafting a drama from which all humanity would benefit for centuries and centuries. Unfortunately, these people had to pay the price for that drama to unfold, but it is a drama that has blessed possibly billions of people who have read it, and it has enriched humanity’s literature and art—so many paintings. Go to Google and search for “Ruth images” or “paintings,” and you will see: all the great artists of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages painted pictures about Ruth; dramas have been created throughout history. They had to pay the price.

But pain may come, suffering may come into your life, but remember that God is using it for something that you yourself may not understand, but it is good. And secondly, always keep God there; do not water down your theology because pain and loss have come into your life—enrich it. Your theology will be richer and denser because of pain, not the opposite, you know? Pain will enrich it; it will make it deeper, more complex, instead of that cheap theology that says everything is going well and that there is nothing wrong in life, that God is going to give you the Cadillac and the BMW, the blue-eyed husband who is six feet four inches tall, and perfect, exemplary children. God is far too complex a playwright to be satisfied with cheap, childish, Disney-style stories like that. He writes sublime texts in our lives; we had better get used to that from the beginning, okay?

If you want to be a true warrior, fasten your belt securely. In my country we say, “Whoever wants a high bun must endure the pulling.” If you want to be a great warrior of God, a profound woman, a worker used by God, God is going to deal with you, God is going to work in your life, God is going to dig into your flesh so that the oil of His Word can fit inside you. Keep God at the center of your narrative, amen?

May God bless us this morning. Let us bow our heads for a moment. If you have heard something good, engrave it upon your heart and your spirit and absorb it. Those losses, those sufferings—I ask the Lord to give me the ability to apply to myself what I preach. Sometimes I get very excited about what I say up here, but when I leave here, I know that I have to apply it to myself as well. May God help us all to live the Gospel at that high level, at that profound level, at that complex level. We have a God who never changes His methods but who is always good and merciful.

Father, I ask that all of us may rise to the level of this precious text of Your Word, that we may follow the path of Ruth and Naomi and glorify You even amid our losses, the empty spaces, the seemingly unanswered prayers, the deficiencies and deficits of our lives; that we may always remember that You are present, You are there on our behalf, generous and compassionate God, involved in our dramas, even as their Author.

I pray for my brothers and sisters who are going through difficult situations at this time. During these Christmas days, they feel alone, they feel sad, they do not have everything they desire, they worry about their loved ones, and they are going through a bitter season in their marriages, their finances, or their health. Oh Lord, we ask that Your Grace accompany us. Thank You because Christ defeated principalities and powers; He defeated the principle of evil and death, and in Him there is ultimately no loss, there are no hells, there are no dead ends.

Help us to see the world and our lives through the perspective of Your beautiful Kingdom. We banish depression. We banish depression, we banish anxiety, we banish the sense of failure, we banish rebelliousness and bitterness, we banish the sense of being a failure and a victim, we banish questioning Your Love and Your Mercy, we banish resentment against our neighbors, we banish bitterness against our parents or teachers who did not give us what we needed or wanted, we banish dwelling too much on the bad memories of the past, and this morning we look toward Your glorious and radiant future, Lord.

I ask that the perspective of Your people be transformed this morning, Lord Jesus. Father, glorify Yourself in Your people, and we believe that You have good things for us, Lord.

My brothers and sisters, while you have remained here for a moment, I want to extend an invitation: if there is anyone who wants to give his or her life to Jesus Christ this morning and has not done so before, and feels led by God to do it now, I do not want to finish without opening that opportunity for someone who wants to say to the Lord, “Yes, I receive You, my God, my Lord Jesus Christ. Enter my life because I need You, and I know that in You I have the salvation and hope my life requires.” Is there anyone before we leave here? We want to pray for you and give you that opportunity to surrender your life to the Lord. We will wait a moment.

Amen. Thank You, Father; we worship You, we bless You, Lord. Thank You for this special service and for Your people who are here on this day, Lord. Thank You for everything we have dealt with this morning—Your mysteries, Father, and all Your blessings. In the Name of Jesus, thank You, Lord. Amen and amen.