A Courageous Conversation About Your Future (Part 3)

A Courageous Conversation About Your Future (Part 3) Courageously Doing Something About What Happened to You , (NKJV) By: Pastor Jay Williams

First Big Question: What is going to happen to you? Second Big Question: What can you do about what already happened to you?

Review Part One: Four Things That Will Determine What Will Happen to You ()

Who you listen to (Adam and Eve listened to the serpent)

What you chose to do (They willfully ate the fruit)

How honest are you when you fail (They were silent until confronted)

The options your choices leave you with (The garden was no longer safe, )

Note: Five Tough Admonitions Naomi Gave To Her Daughter After Their Husbands Died

Sometimes you need to go back home because you lost everything

Sometimes you must leave this place and find a new place

Sometimes you can’t find help here, you must build a new family

Sometimes you must use the resources you have left and the lessons you have learned

Sometimes complaining doesn’t change anything (Ruth never complained)

Seven Things You Should Do After Something Happens to You

1. Make the Difficult Choices (Be honest about the difficult choices you need to make)

• Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.15 And she said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.”16 But Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God.17 Where you die, I will die, And there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, If anything but death parts you and me.”18 When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her.

2. Be Careful How You Categorize What Happened (Don’t unfairly blame God or yourself)

Now the two of them went until they came to Bethlehem. And it happened, when they had

come to Bethlehem, that all the city was excited because of them; and the women said, “Is this Naomi?”

20 But she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very

bitterly with me.

21 I went out full, and the Lord has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi

(pleasantness), since the Lord has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” Note: Ruth never joined in on Naomi’s bad moments

3. Be Careful How You View Returning (Sometimes you need to go back) • 22 So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the

country of Moab. Now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. Note: God took them from a barren place to a place in the middle of a harvest season

4. Be Careful Who You Start Over With (She started with fruitful people) • There was a relative of Naomi’s husband, a man of great wealth, of the family of

Elimelech. His name was Boaz.

5. Be Committed to Asking and Seeking Opportunity (Please let me go to the field) • 2:2 So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field, and glean heads of grain after

him in whose sight I may find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.”

6. Be a Standout With a Humble Attitude () • v5 Then Boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is this?”

6 So the servant who was in charge of the reapers answered and said, “It is the young Moabite woman who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab. 7 And she said, ‘Please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.’ So she came and has continued from morning until now, though she rested a little in the house.”

Question: What do people see when they watch you?

7. Let your work speak for you ()

• 11 And Boaz answered and said to her, “It has been fully reported to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. 12 The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”

Next Time: Courageously Rebuilding Your Love Life and Your Future Big Question: How do you find love the right way? Read Ahead (Ruth, Chapters 3-4)

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