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Ruth, A Daughter with Integrity
What kind of woman do you think you are? Does your life compare to Ruth? Would you describe yourself as a daughter with integrity toward Jesus?
We compare ourselves to others to much these days. How we deal with mother. How we deal with children. How we deal with illegals. How we deal with ethnic backgrounds. We are stressed out by these dealings. Let’s see how did Ruth dealt with all of this?
Our Biblical Ground Work: Ruth
Ruth comes onto the scene as the wife of one of Naomi’s sons. He dies and his brother dies as well. Ruth is a young widow living with another young widow and her widowed mother-in-law. There is no men left and in those days men were the bread winners.
It is repeated to us over and over again that Ruth is a Moabite. A foreigner to the people of Israel. A relative of the people of Israel through Lot but a foreigner all the same. A relative of Naomi through marriage but nonetheless a foreigner.
Naomi was brought to Moab by her husband but is going home to Bethlehem without him. Ruth was born in Moab, but linked to Bethlehem through her husband family. She chose to remain linked to Bethlehem through her mother-in-law and she goes with Naomi to live in Bethlehem as a foreigner.
Ruth and Naomi need food so Ruth goes to glean in the fields. She is noticed because Boaz is supposed to notice her. He tells her to stay and work with his women and men so she does. We are told she works hard to provide for herself and her mother-in-law. She is mentored about Israelite living by her mother-in-law and soon lands herself a husband.
She is not only a foreign woman added to the lineage of her father-in-law’s family but into the lineage of king David and Jesus. Her whole identity was transformed for us with this story.
Our Biblical Life Lesson: If your whole identity is based in your integrity, your story can be as brilliant as Ruth’s.
On the surface it looks like Ruth has lost everything, her husband, her land, her family, her gods. We equate that lose to losing self. Ruth did not lose who she was in the process of serving Naomi. She was being herself. Her story is that of love, friendship, servant-hood and integrity.
We can learn to fill our relationships with integrity and still hang onto self in the process. There is great value in serving people with integrity but we need to place value on them first. All people have value but not always do we value them for the role they play in our lives.
I invite you to come in deeper with me in The Bible Gals community this week as we learn the Biblical Power Tools for valuing our integrity while valuing people.
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Biblical Boundaries Part 1: Awareness
The White Picket Fence book I have written was written because I saw a need for women to know they need to set boundaries in their lives. Humanity on the whole is pretty sloppy about what they will do and what they won’t do depending on who they are doing it with and where. I have been teaching teens and adults about boundaries for 12 years and encounter the same thing over and over. Why do I need boundaries? What good can come of having boundaries? Aren’t morals good enough? Most of the folks I have taught so far are not Christians therefore the reason I have for them is different than the reasons I have for Christians. For the unsaved the reasons are personal and for the saved they are Spiritual.
This week, you are becoming aware of the need for the “White Picket Fence”. With no fence to hold you back, you are free to roam into transgressions. whether they work for you or not. Think this week about being surrounded by a “White Picket Fence”, with our Jesus Christ as its foundation, and what a comfort it would be to have that fence surrounding you. Let us start first by going to the Word of God for the hope we will need to be successful. Kathleen Derbyshire; The White Picket Fence, 2017
In The White Picket Fence the characters deal with becoming aware they need boundaries. They are Christian but they have the same problems as non-Christians. The difference is we call them sin they call them bad habits. Real life is real life, saved or unsaved. The sun comes up on both of us and goes down on both of us. We all need to create boundaries in our lives so when the sun goes down at night we are safe. Boundaries keep us safe from others and ourselves. My book doesn’t talk of others invading our space but it happens all the time primarily because we don’t have a white picket fence that keeps them out. If we choose not to formulate, set and defend our own personal Biblical Boundaries we will never be able to keep others out of our space. As a Christian we are not to be doormats. None of the Biblical characters were doormats nor did they allow others to invade them. They endured for the Truth with those who would persecute them for the truth (read Acts). If someone is invading you for their good you need to put up a white picket fence and stand behind it. People who deliberately hurt you for their own good pleasure need to be stopped. You will be ineffective in the Body of Christ if you allow it to continue. With that said let us move on.
The characters in The White Picket Fence learn in the first week they must create boundaries if they are ever to reach any goal God sets for them. When God asks you to do something that is a goal He has set for you. Each character including the protagonist find God has given them a goal. Setting boundaries not only gets you to a goal in one piece but it changes your character alone the way. You will find when you begin to realize you need boundaries that if is about your character traits right from the start. We all have morals but those morals are blurry on most days. You might think stealing from the poor is wrong but stealing from the rich is okay. You might think lying to get out of trouble is wrong but lying to make a friend feel better is okay. Can you see where the blurry comes in? This is what I call a wavey line boundary. The wind, the day, the month, the mood or the friend can cause you to wave over to their side breaking the moral boundary you have almost set. If you keep jumping over your white picket fence one day your foot will get caught and a very large ditch will be there for you to fall in.
In Matthew 5:37 Jesus says, “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” He said this in conclusion talking about making vows we continuously break. The vows we make to ourselves mean just as much as the ones we make to others. What is more important than that is the last part of this verse. Any answer other than “yes” or “no” when that is required is from the evil one. When you set a boundary or vow to yourself and the answer is supposed to be “no” when you say “yes” it is from the evil one. In other words, you are not serving Jesus by catering to people against His will you are serving the devil. Make now mistake, even doing good can be from the evil one. If God has not asked you to do it than you are disobeying Him and serving Satan.
Setting and defending boundaries is not easy. If it were everyone would do it. The world is going to hell in a hand basket because of the works they are doing. We are to be set apart and doing the works of Jesus. That means setting Biblical Boundaries based on what God is asking you to do. If He is asking you to give more money then boundaries need to be set on your spending. If He is asking you to teach then boundaries must be set on your time learning. If He is asking you to serve the elderly then boundaries must be set on your time with the young. If He is asking you to write then boundaries must be set on your social life. Each time Jesus asks you to do something He expects you will do it. If you are not able to do it because of life constraints then change your life because what we do for Jesus will have a much larger impact on the world.
If you need help learning how to set Biblical boundaries The White Picket Fence, Crown for Life Pursues Biblical Boundaries will be available for purchase beginning in December. The last chapter is an instruction for you but I recommend you read the whole book first because our need to feel as if we are not alone will be met with abundance.
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Awareness Makes us Abound Part 1
There is no way to improve any of our life skills until we are aware of the actions we are taking to create our issues. There are general reasons such as the people we keep company with, where we choose to spend our nights or our environment. This is not an exhaustive list by any means but the point is still the same. General reasons for our life not being as abundant (John 10:10) as God has told us it could be are the “apparent to all” reasons. Anyone can guess these reasons therefore you are already aware of them! If you live in a crime filled neighbourhood I can guess you will either have crimes committed against you or you are committing them. If you keep company with drug addicts I can guess you will become a drug addict too. If you are spending your nights with a man not your husband I can guess you are committing adultery. These are not the deeper truths you need to know to improve your life skills. How did you get to this place in time starting from where you are now?
These issues are the result of the deeper lies causing you to be where you are today. We have done and thought many things up until this point to lead us to where we are. It is these lies we need to become aware of. Sometimes it takes effort to become aware of the lies we believed but I think we have to take the time to discover them. If we do not we will always be in crime, always fall into addiction or adultery and always fall into sin. What is worse than that is we will never see it coming therefore never be able to avoid it. We have buried them so deep only the Holy Spirit can make us aware of our deep lies leading us into sin. The Word of God gives us the way out because it is filled with the truth that can go deep. It is the Life Skills Encyclopedia I use for every lie I found myself believing. Let us go to the Life Skills Encyclopedia for awareness of the lies and to find the escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). When we become aware of the lies we have believed and our behaviour resulting from them we will either abound in foolishness or we will abound in knowledge. The Life Skills Encyclopedia has a lot to say about both. We will only discuss a few therefore I challenge you to search for more in your private time with God.
Abound in Foolishness
If you choose to remain in your lies even after you have become aware of them the Life Skills Encyclopedia has some pretty dire advice for you. Heeding it will change your life, ignoring it will cause you great harm. Proverbs 9:13 tells us “A foolish woman is clamorous; She is simple, and knows nothing.” Foolish women make a lot of noise to draw attention to themselves because this is the only way they know how to get it. Why? They are simple and know nothing about what they need. Knowing not what we need is detrimental to our health because we grab at anything including things that will hurt and destroy us. We will abound in foolishness throughout the whole day.
We are also told that the foolish woman pulls down her own house with her hands (Proverbs 10:14). Imagine taking the time and effort to build your house (figurative) then setting to work tearing it all down with your own bare hands. Destroying everything you have worked for, knowing your actions will destroyed, is painful and causes undo heartache. We don’t wake up in the morning with the intention of destroying yet when we continue to believe lies that is exactly what we do. We believe the lie, wisdom is well beyond us, and therefore we cannot attain it. We then continue to abound in foolishness throughout the whole day.
The last point, our foolishness does not just affect us it has a ripple effect. “For the foolish woman will speak foolishness, and her heart will work iniquity: To practice ungodliness, to utter error against the Lord, to keep the hungry unsatisfied, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.” (Modifications mine, Isaiah 32:6) Our family, friends (Saved and unsaved) and co-workers are watching us act like fools even after we call ourselves “Christian”. Foolish behaviour hurts people by our words and deeds. We set out to hurt people. We are loud and obnoxious tearing down every ounce of good works we have done in the past causing the alienation of the people around us. Abounding in foolishness has made our friends and family think us a fool.
Stop the Foolishness
We need to stop the foolishness by becoming aware of our lies and come to the knowledge of God which is truth which will allow us to avoid our destruction from lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). Too often today we are subjected to fools who think what they are saying is right, let us not be one. I want that we should live a life filled with abundance but if we spend every day tearing it all down abundance won’t last long. We can have abundance with little and we can have it with a lot. We can be foolish with a little and we can be foolish with a lot. If you are suffering from foolishness stop it now. We were fools before we knew God but now we know Him we need to put foolishness off. Do what you need to do to become aware of it this week (talk to a friend, journal or read the Bible to get revelation about it). Next week we will learn what it takes to abound in knowledge from the Life Skills Encyclopedia.
You can email me at kathleen@thelifeskillsstrategist.com anytime to ask a question or you can post your question in this comment section.
