Ruth 1 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: Can We Not Love Each Other? - June 2, 2022

The Death House of Chungkai, Burma, was a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. One evening, a Japanese guard announced that a shovel was missing. He shouldered his rifle, ready to kill one prisoner at a time until a confession was made.

A Scottish soldier said, “I did it,” and the officer beat the man to death. The prisoners picked up the man’s body and their tools and returned to camp. Only then were the shovels recounted. The Japanese soldier had made a mistake. No shovel was missing after all.

Christ lived the life we could not live and he took the punishment we could not take to offer a hope we cannot resist. If he so loved us, can we not love each other?

Ruth 1

Naomi Loses Her Husband and Sons

 In the days when the judges ruled,[a] there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. 2 The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.

3 Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. 4 They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, 5 both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
Naomi and Ruth Return to Bethlehem

6 When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.

8 Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. 9 May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”

Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud 10 and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”

11 But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? 12 Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— 13 would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

14 At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

16 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. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 18 When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

20 “Don’t call me Naomi,[b]” she told them. “Call me Mara,[c] because the Almighty[d] has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted[e] me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”

22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Thursday, June 02, 2022

Today's Scripture
Ephesians 4:29–32

    Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.

30     Don’t grieve God. Don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted.

31–32     Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.

Insight

As believers in Jesus, Paul told us we’re to live differently from nonbelievers. Our lives are to be holy—set apart and devoted to God (Ephesians 4:20–24). Our speech is to be characterized by words that are truthful and that help, edify, build up, encourage, and benefit others (vv. 25, 29). Through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, we’ll put away unwholesome and abusive language, along with bitter, angry, harsh, slanderous, or malicious words (vv. 29–31). How we forgive others is the defining virtue of believers in Jesus. We’re to forgive as God has forgiven us (v. 32; Colossians 3:13). The evidence that we’re forgiven by the Father is when we’re willing to forgive others, for the forgiven believer in Jesus is a forgiving person (Matthew 6:12, 14–15; 18:21–35; Luke 7:36–50). By: K. T. Sim

Set Apart

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
Matthew 11:29

In November 1742, a riot broke out in Staffordshire, England, to protest against the gospel message Charles Wesley was preaching. It seems Charles and his brother John were changing some longstanding church traditions, and that was too much for many of the townsfolk.

When John Wesley heard about the riot, he hurried to Staffordshire to help his brother. Soon an unruly crowd surrounded the place where John was staying. Courageously, he met face to face with their leaders, speaking with them so serenely that one by one their anger was assuaged.

Wesley’s gentle and quiet spirit calmed an angry mob. But it wasn’t a gentleness that occurred naturally in his heart. Rather, it was the heart of the Savior whom Wesley followed so closely. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). This yoke of gentleness became the true power behind the apostle Paul’s challenge to us: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2).

In our humanness, such patience is impossible for us. But by the fruit of the Spirit in us, the gentleness of the heart of Christ can set us apart and equip us to face a hostile world. When we do, we fulfill Paul’s words, “Let your gentleness be evident to all” (Philippians 4:5).

Reflect & Pray

Why does today’s culture see gentleness as weakness? How is gentleness actually strong?

Dear God, remind me that Jesus displayed a heart of gentleness and compassion to His adversaries.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Thursday, June 02, 2022

Are You Obsessed by Something?

Who is the man that fears the Lord? —Psalm 25:12

Are you obsessed by something? You will probably say, “No, by nothing,” but all of us are obsessed by something— usually by ourselves, or, if we are Christians, by our own experience of the Christian life. But the psalmist says that we are to be obsessed by God. The abiding awareness of the Christian life is to be God Himself, not just thoughts about Him. The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God. A child’s awareness is so absorbed in his mother that although he is not consciously thinking of her, when a problem arises, the abiding relationship is that with the mother. In that same way, we are to “live and move and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28), looking at everything in relation to Him, because our abiding awareness of Him continually pushes itself to the forefront of our lives.

If we are obsessed by God, nothing else can get into our lives— not concerns, nor tribulation, nor worries. And now we understand why our Lord so emphasized the sin of worrying. How can we dare to be so absolutely unbelieving when God totally surrounds us? To be obsessed by God is to have an effective barricade against all the assaults of the enemy.

“He himself shall dwell in prosperity…” (Psalm 25:13). God will cause us to “dwell in prosperity,” keeping us at ease, even in the midst of tribulation, misunderstanding, and slander, if our “life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). We rob ourselves of the miraculous, revealed truth of this abiding companionship with God. “God is our refuge…” (Psalm 46:1). Nothing can break through His shelter of protection.

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

The vital relationship which the Christian has to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him.  The Psychology of Redemption, 1066 L

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Bible in a Year: 2 Chronicles 17-18; John 13:1-20

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Thursday, June 02, 2022

No Such Thing as a Secret Sin - #9234

A few years back, the stress meters on Wall Street hit some new highs all because one man had been recording his telephone calls. Yeah, one of Wall Street's movers and shakers had been caught in the middle of some very profitable but very illegal stock dealings. And in order to reduce his possible penalty, he agreed to record his calls for a few weeks. Well, when that news broke, oh boy, they found out that he had been caught and that he had been dealing for weeks with the recorder running! Well, a lot of Wall Street lawyers got some very frantic phone calls.

And many powerful people remembered with regret what they had said and what they did the last few weeks. Now, maybe you smile a little bit at the picture of those people scrambling around and saying, "Oh, man! What did I say on the tape?" Not so fast. Imagine in your life now all the things you've said and done in the last couple of weeks. All of them, including the ones you thought no one knew. What if someone had recorded every conversation and every action in the last few weeks? Someone has.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "No Such Thing as a Secret Sin."

Our word for today from the Word of God is from Psalm 90:8. David says, "You have set our iniquities before You" (of course he's talking about God) "our secret sins in the light of Your presence." Now that's interesting. He says, "Those things that I thought were a secret..." Well, that's probably not even the right word to use. They weren't secret sins because God, You knew all about them all the time. In other words, "God's recorder has been running every minute of your life" the audio recorder, the video recorder, they're always running.

So, there's no such thing as a secret sin, because if God knows, you're caught. It just might be that right now you feel there's a sin you've been getting away with; it's a lie that no one's caught you in, a transaction that was based on deception, and guess what? So far it's gone pretty well. Something you cheated on; words you thought no one heard you say; someone that you secretly hate or talk against.

Well, like those people on Wall Street, you'd never do it if you knew it was being recorded and that it would be played back. Well, God's commitment is that one day what was done in secret will be literally "shouted from the rooftops," openly judged unless you deal with it before God does. You say, "Well, then are there some things that I need to deal with?"

Well, don't call your attorney on earth like they did on Wall Street. Call your attorney in heaven.

1 John 2:1 - "If we sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ." Your step right now is to agree with God and call that sin what it is. And then you need to make your way to the cross of Jesus, where that very sin - those very secrets - were paid for. And say, "Lord, please apply Your forgiveness to this sin; I'm done with it." And leave it at the foot of Jesus' cross. And leave there clean; leave there free of the fear of discovery, and free of the fear of how God is going to deal with you later on.

Today God stands ready to forgive and remove every sin you've ever committed in your life. To in His words, "bury it in the depths of the sea." Today could be your day to be forgiven, to be clean. And that happens when you go to Jesus and say, "Jesus, what You died for, I want. I believe You died for my sinning, and I am Yours." If you've never been to Him to be forgiven, if you've never asked Him to be your Rescuer from your sin, let that happen today.

We'd love to help you with that. Just go to our website. There's information there that will help you be sure you're forgiven, clean and belong to Him. The website's ANewStory.com.

And live today, even in the places where you're all alone, expecting to see and hear everything you do replayed, because God's recorder is always running.