"It will come together." It's kind of one of those clichés. I don't like when
people say stuff like that to me. "It'll come together." I'll be stressed about a sermon,
and Holly will say, "It'll come together." I'll be like, "Yeah. It sounds good."
That's just a millimeter better than "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Clichés.
Yet I don't mean it in that trite way. It could sound like that. "Oh,
I know you lost your job. It'll come together." Could you tell the power company that for me? "Oh,
I know you're single and your friends are married. Don't worry. The Lord has a Boaz for you."
I'm not going to do it. She wants me to do it. I'm not going to do it.
There's an old thing online that says, "While you're waiting for your Boaz,
don't settle for Brokeaz…" All that. I'm not going to do it. Temptress!
It's a whole thing. In Christianity, the book of Ruth is usually identified by chapter 1,
verse 16, and it's always in the King James at a wedding. This is the famous verse of Ruth.
You're going to know it when I say it. You're like, "Huh? What's he talking about?" You'll
know it when you see it. This is the King James, where it says, "Whither thou goest, I will go."
You have to get the whither in there for the marriage vows.
Doesn't that sound like a wedding? "Whither thou goest…" You've never said whither in your life,
but now you're about to commit your whole self to somebody, and you're breaking out words you never
use. "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be
my people, and thy God my God." I'm not making fun of that verse. That verse in itself is a sermon.
That one verse shows you that when you decide who, you decide where. Now, this is not how we
think. We think, "I need to decide where I'm going to college." No, no, no. That's not as
important as who you hang out with when you get to college, wherever you go to college. I teach
that all the time, because who will ultimately identify not only where you end up physically…
Holly wouldn't be in Charlotte if she hadn't married me, because she wouldn't have been a
pastor's wife, or if she had, maybe the guy JJ she was talking to ends up somewhere else.
When you say yes to someone, you say yes to something
you don't know about at the time. The same with God. When you say yes to God,
he'll take you places you never thought you would go…when you say yes to him.
Who you say yes to, who you say no to, is very important. It's really important. Tell somebody,
"It will come together." I want you to get that in your mind so we can get it past your mind
into your spirit so that you hear it differently when I finish in a few minutes than you hear it
right now. We are all standing in a space in our lives where we are needing clarity on some things.
Maybe you're not in the same situation as Naomi and Ruth. Both of them being widows
were completely dependent on the kindness of someone else. Maybe it's not that bad
in your life. Ruth not only lost her husband when she lost Mahlon, but Naomi lost her son.
Naomi had already lost her husband Elimelek, and they were already in a strange place.
I want to talk to you about this, because
when you read a Bible verse in isolation, it's almost impossible to really make sense out of it.
I want you to have that app on your phone where they give you the verse every day,
but I don't want you to always read the Scriptures in isolation,
because if you just take it in isolation… Sometimes we don't
even read the whole verse and we quote it, and then we think it didn't work.
It's not that Romans 8:28 isn't true. "All things work together for the good…"
You just stopped in the middle of the verse. It said, "All things work together for the
good of them that love God and are called according to his purpose." It means God
doesn't decide what is good in your life based on your preference, but his purpose.
So then you go through something, and "This isn't good. How can this be good? God is good,
and this isn't good. What's going on? I thought it was all good." God didn't say that.
In the Bible, God didn't say that. He said, "All things work
together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose."
So his purpose comes first, not my preference.
His purpose comes first, not my plan. What happens to us is we get addicted to a plan, and
if it doesn't fit the plan, we want to throw it back to God and say, "Fix this!" But God doesn't
start with the picture called your plan when he is building the pieces of your life. He's God!
The truth of the matter is you can't really judge your life in isolation.
You can't really know when you're going through something whether it's good
or not. Don't judge it just yet. One Scripture says, "Judge nothing before the appointed time."
God will reveal hidden things and bring them to light, and the secret things will be laid bare.
Judge nothing…no thing. "All things work together for the good of them that love the Lord." Now,
if you love something else more than you love the Lord, Romans 8:28 is going to be hard for you. If
you love popularity more than you love God, when people leave you, you will think that's not good.
But if you love the Lord's purpose more than you love popularity,
sometimes you will praise God not for who stays with you, but for who leaves you,
because you believe the Lord is leading your life. Wow! It will come together. We make the
mistake of thinking everyone who starts with us will stay with us. It doesn't happen that way.
This is not a sermon about abandonment or divorce, but I do want to talk about those issues.
In the book of Ruth, you have this woman named Naomi who goes to a place called Moab where there
is something to eat for her family, and through no fault of her own, she watches her husband
and her sons, 10 years later, die in front of her eyes.
Her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, are committed to stay with her.
There is a reason this is not called the "book of Orpah."
She left. There is a reason I said, "Turn in your Bible to the book of Ruth." Ruth stayed.
Put this in your heart: whoever left you in your life, whoever walked away from you in your life,
was not part of God's purpose for your current season.
It doesn't mean they're bad. It doesn't mean they're evil. It doesn't mean you need to make
a voodoo doll and stick a pin in their left ear, trying to get them to have an earache.
It doesn't mean any of that. It doesn't mean you need to talk crap about them. It
doesn't mean you have to want them to fail. It doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a
new car to show them you made it, and drive by their house, and they're not even home.
It doesn't mean any of that. It just means… Can I preach?
God doesn't build my life on people who left.