Ellis

Ellis

Community, in this testimony message, every one of us can preach this message on a personal basis ourselves. You don’t have to be a preacher to preach this. This is just a reflection of who God is and our own resources will validate or confirm this message.

You can write a message yourself, and if I had time, I would invite you to pen down in your own words from your own life when God was more than enough for you. You don’t need to ask anybody, you already know. When God did more than you expected or deserved.

But then that’s what God does. He delights in doing “exceedingly and abundantly above more than we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).” But that’s why we must trust Him. He is always working behind the scenes on behalf of His children; always! even when it doesn’t look like it or feel like it. He is taking us to a certain place. When we are bitter or angry or upset because of the way things are in our lives, we are bitter, angry and upset for nothing! And that’s why we walk by faith and not by sight! That’s why we don’t let our eyes dictate what we believe.

The eyes are funny, tricky and they can blow things out of proportion because we ought to know that we have a God who loves us exceedingly, and always has our best interest at heart; that He’s bringing something good out of this; that the steps of a good man (or woman) are ordered by the Lord (Psalms 37:23).

In the book of Ruth, Naomi was bitter and broken by the death of her husband and her two only sons. It doesn’t get much worse than this; her whole family is gone! Now because there was a famine where they were. It was probably because the nation had left God, and it spread to the land of Bethlehem where they lived.

We don’t know why a famine should hit the city which means “House of Bread”… but a certain man named Elimelech went to live in Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons. His wife’s name was Naomi. While there Elimelech dies, and Naomi is left with her two sons. The two sons took wives of the women of the land from Moab, one of which was named Ruth. And they stayed there for about 10 years.

But then her two sons died also leaving their wives to be widows and their mother without sons; without a husband to provide for her, and no sons to take up the slack.

She finds herself in a bad place. Most women who are married and have children hope that at the least if her husband dies before she does, that her sons would one day bury her, and not the other way around. Why would God allow her to leave her homeland with a family and happiness and then take them from her? Now she is preparing to go back home without a family and with nothing. She felt like she had been dealt a bad hand and that the hand of the Lord was against her.

But understand community that Jews were not to mix with the Moabites where they went (Deuteronomy 23:3). God forbade them to do so; they were supposed to be there until the famine was over and then go back to Bethlehem but ended up staying there in Moab 10 years. It must have seemed evident with all this negativity that the hand of the Lord was punishing her. Community, have we ever wondered in our lives why certain negative things happened to us, why it seemed that the hand of the Lord was against us and why the Lord took certain people that we loved away from us?

There’s a certain family that I knew that comes to my mind when I think about that; not that this was the case, but I remember thinking as a youngster about how one tragedy after another happened to them. Death, tragedy, accidents, loss, house fire — out of all the family members only one of them is alive today.

Naomi had little choice but to leave Moab and return home, hearing the news that the Lord was providing bread in her homeland of Bethlehem. No doubt she felt abandoned, lonely, cursed, hopeless and discouraged. With only her God she returns to Bethlehem. Now her daughter-in-law loved her. No doubt she was a mother-in-law; indeed, the kind that every woman wants. She was the kind that did not meddle in her sons’ marriages and her daughter-in-laws respected her for that. All mother-in-laws need to take a page from Naomi.

After her sons died, she being a good mother-in-law encouraged them to return to their mother’s house. One left but Ruth stayed. She said, “for where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay; your people shall be my people, and your God will be my God: where you die, will I die, and I will be buried beside you (Ruth 1:16-17).”

What love!

But community, when things are at their worst, God is at His best. Remember that. Remember that our setbacks are actually our setups.

Ruth marries Boaz. Together, they have a son named Obed. Obed is the father of Jesse; Jessie the father of David; and David is the ancestor of Jesus Christ. Through it all Naomi learned that God is more than enough. Community, no matter your situation, remember God is more than enough.