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Absolute Trust

And Ruth answered, “I will do whatever you say.”  Ruth 3:5

    Recently, the Bible Study class I lead decided to study Ruth.  Now what makes this interesting is that the book of Ruth, as you know, is in the Old Testament and the past eighteen years I have led the study, this is the first Old Testament book we have studied.  In eighteen years, we have studied all the New Testament books more than once…the gospels several times, but never an Old Testament book.  You might ask why?  The answer is simple…me!!! 

    The fact that I am very comfortable with the New Testament along with the slight chance it could be possible I might be a little bit stubborn might help you figure all this out.

    Well, we’ll save that personality disorder for another devotional!

    The truth is that the study has been wonderful and full of insights about the unconditional love of God for us.  While the book is called Ruth, its probably a story about Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law.  After the death of her husband and two sons, Naomi’s life is completely empty…except for Ruth.  Even with the urging of Naomi to return home to her people and start a new family, Ruth refuses.  Her unconditional love for Naomi brings hope and joy back into Naomi’s life.

    Naomi recognizes the opportunity to bring Boaz, a wonderful God-fearing man into Ruth’s life.  She gives Ruth a set of instructions centered around Jewish traditions to bring this match together.  Ruth is from a foreign land and not Jewish.  She has every reason to question these instructions.  In today’s terms, the correct question would be, “you want me to do WHAT?”

    But unconditional love kicks in and Ruth’s simple reply is “I will do whatever you say.”

    If you asked me to name my top ten words, without a doubt trust would be in there…somewhere.  I love that word.  In fact, I love to trust and even more so, I want to be trusted.  And yet I think Satan would love to make us think trust doesn’t exist anymore…maybe that it never did.  And when we look around, it’s a pretty persuasive argument.   Sometimes I am tempted to ask “is trust anywhere in the world today?”

    Handshakes have been replaced with “put it in writing.”  Around every corner someone is using the trust of others to promote self.  Everywhere we turn….everywhere we look, someone is saying “trust me.”

    New phrases have taken the world by storm…phrases like “it seems like you can’t trust anybody these days.”

    Well can you?  Can you trust anybody these days?

    We long for that relationship where there is total trust…where you can share the inner most depths of your heart with no reservation…where you can listen to someone without wondering if there are ulterior motives…relationships where you can love without fear of rejection…where you accept and are accepted right where you are.  Every now and then we try the “trust” thing and when it hits us back in the face, it makes the next opportunity to trust even harder.  And when we’ve gotten our heart broken enough times, we finally give up and throw trust to the wind.

    It’s sad.  It’s sad to want to trust so very much and afraid to try and then to quit altogether because the pain is just too much.

    And then Christ comes along with His unconditional love and fills our life with hope…the hope that we can trust and trust absolutely.  We can trust Him.  He will always be there.  He will never let us down.

    And what is more, He fills us with His unconditional love and tells us to trust each other…total and absolute trust.  And yes, sometimes our hearts will get broken, but Christ will heal that brokenness so we can trust again and Satan’s lie will be exposed in the light of His unconditional love.

“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Love in Christ,

Billy

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