October 22
The Valley of Decision
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
––Psalm 91:1-4
In God’s formula for growth, comfortable and familiar are usually not ingredients. Safety is not on the list. As we touched on earlier this month, when Ruth left every person and thing she’d ever known to follow her mother-in-law to a foreign land, comfort wasn’t on her list of priorities. Destiny fulfillment was. The same can be said of Saul when he chose to “switch sides,” become Paul, and work for the enemy—the rebel group following a radical Nazarene rabbi who was deemed dangerous by his former bosses.
Rather, when we grow, it is rarely familiar or comfortable. It is virtually always uncomfortable, full of risk and uncertainty. Do you ever wonder why God designed the growth process this way?
I believe it is because if it were easy, if it were comfortable, it would not require us to surrender ourselves to Him.
For example, when we fly the friendly skies, we blithely put our lives in the hands of two complete strangers: the pilot and co-pilot. It’s funny how we don’t give this much thought when we fly, yet we question why we need to utterly surrender to God on the faith journey. In essence, for us to appropriate our future—to achieve the destiny God has designed for us—we have to let go of our thinking, our own fleshly desires, and trust Him. Terrifying and sometimes confusing? Yes.
But it’s okay, because strong faith—like Paul’s or Ruth’s—starts with your very next decision. And the one after that. And so on. Ruth was not a superhero. She was an ordinary woman in the middle of very unfortunate circumstances (death of her husband and father-in-law) that were full of pain and suffering and loss and hurt. Real-life sorrow that we can all relate to because life is hard.
And what is God going to do with this no-name widow from a pagan nation? Because of her simple but powerful faith, He’s going to leverage her past in order to activate something that He started a long time ago (i.e., her future place in the lineage of Christ). In turn, Ruth’s relationship with God allows her to make the right decision in the present (i.e., to stick with Naomi), which will lead her into a powerful future she can’t imagine (i.e., redemption of the highest order).
Here’s the biggest part of the whole story. And it’s true for you and me: in the middle of the hardest decisions we’ll ever make in life, we never know what hangs in the balance. We don’t know how any given decision—seemingly big or small—will affect the path ahead. We must cling to God in that valley of decision—tenaciously, doggedly, as Ruth did. Our children are watching. Our unsaved friend or neighbor is watching. That person on social media who mocks our Christian posts is watching. Our grumpy, godless boss is watching.
Our legacy is not forged in a vacuum. In other words, one of the key pillars of Kingdom living is that we don’t do it alone. We need other believers; we need an Aaron and a Barnabas, an Elizabeth and a Mary Magdalene. If prayer and obedience are the pillars of this frightening but glorious faith journey in Jesus, then fellowship is the cement that binds it together.
Man of God, legacy involves others seeing our words and actions in real time—actions that are true, honest, and honoring of God. These words and actions—built upon the pillars of prayer and obedience over decades of God-directed decisions—form the sum total of our testimony. Our story. And others are watching.
Father, even when walking along blind alleys, give me the hope and vision to trust You that no matter what is coming around the next corner, You will not abandon me.