What better way to begin any new year than to get the right life perspective that leads to success. Normally, we love to start the year right so we can end right, meaning we get the results that our hard work deserves. We equate hard work to success which we usually see as better financial standing among other things. And rightly so. Only question is our idea of success and better financial standing. What's true sucess, really?
21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. [Ruth 1]
13 "It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” 20 “Don’t call me Naomi (pleasant),” she told them. “Call me Mara (bitter), because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 "Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
Perhaps this is how you feel, too--broken, poor, humiliated and punished. You want to start the year blessed but "misfortune" is all the Almighty brings on you. You feel punished, but why? You're puzzled. For what reason has GOD afflicted you? You don't see any reason, but maybe you've been blind to a disobedience in your life? Maybe some hidden sins or an unforgiving spirit? However, even after sincerely repenting of all that, the song stays the same.
Did Naomi and husband start the year wrong? I don't think so. In fact, they started it right. GOD's concept of "right" is different from ours, as HIS concept of "success" is worlds apart from how we see it. Like, success was when Jesus was abandoned by his disciples, rejected by the people he fed and healed, and crucified like a criminal, besides feeling forsaken by the Father. No doubt, if this were to happen to you today, "successful" is the last thing people (even church people) would label you with. Accursed is more likely.
I don't know, their wrong move may have been leaving Bethlehem during the famine to probably save their wealth for themselves? Didn't they want to share their blessings with needy folks in Bethlehem? Did they go to Moab for selfish reasons and consequently went out of GOD's will and suffered the consequences? But no, they went to Moab "full" because that was GOD's will for them--to leave while blessed. This is what I believe. GOD led them to Moab, lose everything there, take Ruth to Bethlehem to meet Boaz and start a family lineage leading to Jesus' birth.
Perhaps, being sorely emptied is the only way you learn to rely solely on the LORD.
GOD intended them to leave "full" and then lose everything in Moab to suffer the "cross" chosen for them to crush their spirits, humble them, teach them how to have no one and nothing to hang on but GOD alone, and take them back to Bethlehem "empty." Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. It's powerful when GOD empties you. You're being molded for something big. Perhaps, being sorely emptied is the only way you learn to rely solely on the LORD and see how everything else is useless. This is genuine success.
"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." [Psalm 51.17]
Hard Work Doesn't Always Lead to Success
What we need to understand is that not all hard works always lead to success--success as the world understands it. You may even look like a loser to the world, unproductive, resultless and fruitless, a total waste, an unfaithful servant, the servant who hid his talent in the ground. But that's how the world sees it. GOD sees differently. HE chooses the weak, rejected, useless, losers and despised, those the world belittles. Some servants GOD commended in the bible looked like losers from start to end:
There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, [Hebrews 11]
Faithful and yet none of them got what was promised. They looked unsuccessful, defeated and pitiful. The worldly church would never have recognzed their value. Yet, in the heavenlies which the uninitiated barely see and understand, they were "commended for their faith," and received something much better than what the "blessed" on earth got:
40 "God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect."
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