“Call her back.”
I felt God’s nudge when I hung up the phone with the call center representative. After making an appointment, I had felt led to ask her if she needed prayer for anything. She gladly consented and shared her needs. I prayed with her on the phone and then hung up. I then heard God’s nudge to call her back.
I put my head in my lap and groaned in exhaustion. This woman hadn’t been the first one I had talked to that day. I had been on and off the phone for two and half hours, and she had been the fifth woman I had talked to. I had no idea I would be on the phone so long when I had called in the morning to make an appointment.
Yet, with each person I talked to I felt God’s nudge to witness, encourage, or pray for the person on the other line. Each time I got off the phone, I felt God’s whisper to keep calling. Therefore, I hadn’t planned to make appointments for my entire family, but I went ahead and scheduled appointments for the rest of my family that I had planned to do on a different day and listened to God’s voice with each new person that came on the line. I had had some breaks in between, but I hadn’t eaten lunch as of yet and needed to get my kids off the bus. When I felt His voice once more with the fifth person after a good portion of my day had been taken up already, I felt irritated. I was hungry, cranky, and tired. As an introvert, I found it anxiety-inducing talking to strangers on the phone just to make regular appointments — let alone have spiritual conversations with said strangers.
“Lord, why would you ask me to do this? Am I even hearing from you?” I voiced in disbelief. The verse “Not my will but yours be done” popped in my head, but I dismissed the words. Surely, God’s will for me on that day wasn’t to talk to the majority of the call center. I felt a resistance rising up in my heart. This had been a day in a series of days this week where God had asked more of me than I felt I had to give. While I often had God assignments in the course of my days that stretched me, the assignments that week had been much more relentless and time-consuming to the point that I questioned if I was even hearing from God.
Shortly after my pity-party, I read in the study I am going through how Lysa Terkeurst’s daughter felt led to fast and pray for a family all day long. Her mom — yes, Lysa, the Bible teacher — tried to talk her into only fasting a portion of the day, but she insisted. The all-day part got my attention when I read it. Yes, I knew God really wanted me to call the fifth woman back. So, after some grumbling, I picked up the phone once more the next day and called. I had to leave a message and missed her call. I called back once more and was told she would call me. I explained what I was doing to the woman on the line helping me and must have sounded insane, but perhaps she was the person that needed to hear the story.
Whatever the case, I finally felt a release when I just went ahead and did what God asked. However, I am still praying about some other assignments from that week because God brought me to my breaking point, and I felt that I left some unfinished steps. I wanted to do what He asked, but I didn’t realize that I had drawn up boundaries for Him. I had places that I didn’t want Him to go and lines that I didn’t want Him to cross. I didn’t even know I had those limits, but He showed me exactly where those were.
A Woman Who Perseveres Past Her Breaking Point
All of us have breaking points. Certain aggravating circumstances present themselves and we hit a wall and feel that we can go no further.
“I can’t!” we cry to the Lord. Yet, to get to our desired destinations requires that we push beyond our feelings of exhaustion, doubt, or discomfort in the moment.
In Ruth 1, Ruth and her sister-in-law, Orpah, faced an important crossroads. After their father-in-law and husbands died, they set out with their mother-in-law from Moab for Judah. However, after they travelled with Naomi some of the distance, Naomi urged them to go back.
The journey had been long and hard up to that point, and it had no promise of getting easier. If they continued with her, they would be traveling to an unknown place and would have to rely on the kindness of others. Notice the reaction of the daughters-in-law in Ruth 1:14-16:
Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. ‘Look,’ said Naomi, ‘your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.’ But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.’
What can we learn from Orpah and Ruth’s different reactions when brought to their breaking points?
1. Getting to our promised land requires that we continually move forward, not back.
The point where Orpah parted from Naomi and Ruth was possibly at the Jordan River. To go forward meant to push into the land promised and given to God’s people, but to turn back at that point meant moving backwards into a land that stood as an obstacle between the Israelites and the Promised Land when the Israelites initially set out to possess the land. Orpah traveled some of the distance with Naomi and Ruth, but then she got to a point where she would not go any further. Her words indicated that she was a caring daughter-in-law, concerned about her mother-in-law and attached to her, but her faith did not sustain her past a certain point.
Therefore, though she cried tears when faced with the prospect of going back, she made no move to stay committed to the course she was on. Therefore, even though she had traveled some of the distance and may have even intended to travel the entire distance, she turned back and returned to her gods. Ruth on the other hand, as we discussed last week, “clung” tenaciously to Naomi and declared, “Don’t urge me to leave you to turn back from you. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God” (v. 16).
All of us have places that will be breaking points for us if we’re not careful. We may traverse a certain distance with God and even do it quite cheerfully, but then turn back when we face unexpected trials or simply lose steam in our walks with Christ. When we’re tempted to turn away from God, we can confess our struggle to Him, ask Him to renew our resolve, and ask Him to help us make it past the point that threatens to break us.
2. Pushing forward means pushing past the opposition.
Ruth not only persevered in her tough circumstances by travelling from Moab to Judah by foot and dealing with all the emotions she must have felt as a widow, she also pushed ahead when opposing voices told her she didn’t have to take such a difficult path. When God calls us to a particular course, we will have naysayers that urge us not take the course. These may be people who are not in close relationship with God or these may be godly people who may not know or understand what God is telling us.
Naomi urged Ruth to return to her people so that she can find “rest” once again in the home of new husband (v. 9). Although Naomi was a godly woman, she tried to persuade her daughters-in-law to return to their family and gods so that her daughters-in-law would avoid the suffering and hardship that would most likely be inevitable if they continued on with her.
In their day and time, a woman’s role centered around being a wife and mother; therefore, her daughters-in-law only hope of finding security and provision they needed would be in the home of a husband. Naomi was concerned that if her daughters-in-law travelled with her that they would lose all chance of finding husbands as she had no more sons and was too old to bear more. Ruth understood that the only rest she needed was that which she found in Naomi’s God. So, she maintained her insistence that she go with Naomi and Naomi relented. However, Ruth’s move was bold as she, a widow, had no promise of provision or protection in Judah.
Ruth not only had to firmly hold her own when Naomi attempted to persuade her to go back, she also had to maintain her position when Orpah decided to turn back. Orpah and Ruth were both Moabites. They could have helped and supported each other once in Judah, as they both would have been foreigners. They had developed a close relationship as sisters-in-law, and no doubt Ruth was disheartened and discouraged when Orpah decided she could go no further.
What can we learn from Ruth’s actions here? Godly friends are good, and we should seek out godly counsel. But our decision to follow God will be tested. At times, God will allow us to walk through circumstances where we feel alone and others don’t rush in to give us the support we need or may even draw back from us when we forge ahead with God’s plans. Even in those circumstances, as Ruth does here, we should not be discouraged from going on but keep walking down the path God has for us.
3. Our breaking points may not be far from God’s blessings.
Even though it appeared that Ruth would only find more tragedy in leaving behind promising connections in Moab and going to Judah, she, in fact, by choosing to follow God, walked straight into unimaginable blessing. However, she could not have known what awaited her down the road leading away from Moab. What if she had followed Orpah and turned back at the point when circumstances looked and felt the worse? What if she hadn’t trusted God in her bleak circumstance — and turned back to her gods?
Sometimes our biggest blessings await us on the other side of our pain. While it might appear that nothing but suffering and hardship await us when we walk in God’s way, we see when we fast-forward in the story (Ruth does indeed find a husband and bears a son in the lineage of Jesus!) that God can work in our most difficult situations and turn them not only for our good but His glory. A.A. Thomson says this in The Biblical Illustrator:
How unfit we are to judge of an unfinished providence, and how necessary it is, if we would understand aright the reasons of God’s ways, that we should wait and see the web with its many colors woven out! Three short months, during which those dark providences were suddenly to blossom into prosperity and joy, would give to that sorrowful woman another interpretation of her long exile in Moab. When the night seems the darkest we are often nearest the dawn. Begin to tune thy harp, O weeping saint and weary pilgrim! ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand.’ Learn to wait. When the great drama of our earth’s history is ended … God will again pronounce all to be ‘very good.’
Conclusion:
All of us will reach places in our spiritual walks that threaten to break us. “I can’t take another minute of this, God,” we may shout. We may want to turn away, escape to worldly distractions and comfort. We can learn from Ruth, though, that a woman who perseveres is a woman who finds blessings on the other side of her pain.
While me may not always know or understand why God allows what He does or why we’re in the situations we’re in, we can trust that all works for good for those who love God and walk in His ways.
Update: A few months after writing this post, I got a better understanding of the reason God had me call the woman at the call center back. Some time after this day of phone calls, I called to make another appointment and recognized the woman’s name on the phone as the woman God instructed me to call back. I told her I recognized her name and reminded her of the conversation we had previously had. She ended up being a different woman with the same name, but our conversation opened up a door with this woman where she told me that she was Muslim. We talked for a few moments about Christianity, and I shared a little with her about my faith. She was very open to talking with me, and I believe that I planted a seed with her that day. God had her in mind all along, although His plans did not make any sense to me months prior.
Related Resources:
Ever been in a bad situation and it just gets worse? Check out the other posts from the this series “Hope When You’re at the End of Your Rope: Lessons From Ruth on Trust, Surrender, and Healing.” In the study, we look at the story of Ruth where will draw lessons the next few weeks on the hope we have when life gets hard, and we feel abandoned and in need of rescue. This post is adapted from the second post in this series. Check out the other posts: Part 1: Why God’s Way Is Always Best, Part 3: The Blessings of Following God, Part 4: Trusting God When It Doesn’t Make Sense, Part 5: There Are No Shortcuts to God’s Promises, and Part 6: Walking Into All God Has for You.
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*Updated and adapted from post published November 21, 2019.
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