Serving my way to the House of Bread

Ruth 1 (CSB)

Again they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law.”

But Ruth replied:

Don’t plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you.

For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God...

...When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her.

Judges 21:25 CSB

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.

Judges ends with one of the saddest commentaries on God’s people in all of Scripture… “There was no lordship in Israel (no unity in the people) and everyone did according to what pleased them.”

The greatest enemy of the church is not…culture wars…political parties…or anti-Christian agendas....

The greatest threat to the church is a people worshipping God with their lips, but worshipping themselves with their hands and feet.

I find that people are not so much turned off to Jesus, as they are turned off by the self-serving ways of people who claim to be Jesus followers.

There is something soul-corrupting about a life lived in service to self…

…Your life was created as a gift to others!

Genesis 2:18 “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.””

Why not alone??? Because it’s only in giving our life to another that we can truly be shaped into the image of God!

Ruth’s Story

Ruth is an unlikely example of

Serving in the House of Bread

Serving requires you leave your place of comfort.

Serving is about relationship not productivity.

Serving gets you in on what God is already doing.

Serving is a decision to choose God’s path over my path.