Ruth

The past couple weeks have been me in search of discipline. I have been trying to implement more discipline into the major areas of my life. Those areas include spiritual, physical and financial.

Budgeting, exercise and diet, and the art of listening to God are things that have always consumed many of my thoughts, but have never been a success for me. The money always runs out too fast and too soon. The weight is gained back, the flab returns.  I seem "dry" spiritually, or God seems "distant". I've played the excuse card too often to not see that I'm the one responsible, and life is only going to get busier and more complicated anyway.

I realized that I needed to get control of my habits completely during this current phase of my life. I no longer play sports, so for the first time in my life I'm not required to work out. I no longer attend school ( at present) so working a full time job and managing my money and paying bills is necessary. And most importantly, I'm not inundated by spiritual paraphernalia through my school anymore. I learned how to make my faith my own when I went to Poland and then to college. Now I have to learn how to make my faith REAL and LIVING in a world that thinks its a joke.

A certain instance occured about 2 weeks ago where I found myself extremetly upset and angry and frustrated about something. I was ranting and raving when it hit me that I should "practice" listening to God and see what his thoughts were on the matter, fully expecting silence. So I asked God what he thought about it, and if he could give me soemthing to help me handle it? And immediately a name flashed into my head: Ruth. From the Bible. As in Naomi, Boaz, Ruth. I wasn't sure what it meant at first so I did some studying. Turns out I wasn't as familiar with the good ol' Ruth Bible story as I thought.  When I read it through my new "Wheaton College Alumna" glasses, I found some cool things that really were words from the Lord for me.

The Book of Ruth is of course a story about Ruth, but she isn't really the "lead" character of the story in the sense of stage time or lines. Naomi and Boaz get most of the costume changes and spotlight.  The story begins with Naomi, and Ruth is the newly widowed childless girl who takes a leap of faith and follows Naomi back to Israel (they were in Moab). Then Naomi tells Ruth how to go about fixing their situation. Ruth obeys. Set change, costume change: Ruth takes another step out of the boat and  goes and puts herself completely at Boaz's disposal. Pretty brave and bold. Then Act II is all about Boaz going to great lengths to secure Ruth as his own so he can be her kinsman-redeemer. Thus the story ends as Ruth becoming the great-great-great grandmother to King David, and ultimately our Savior Jesus Christ.

The part about Ruth not being the lead in the story definitely stuck out to me. But my handy dandy study Bible also pointed out her main qualities: She was loyal, obediant, and patient. Loyal to her new, if not strange, family. Obediant to Naomi, her motherinlaw and also to God. Patient in that although her entire existence rested on whether or not things fell into place with Boaz, she did not force anything or freak out (so far as I know).

I really think God was trying to tell me to be like Ruth. I know that this may sound simple to you who may be reading about this "like duh". But really- I think Ruth has everything I don't. So since then, I've really been trying to practice the disciplines of patience, obediance and loyalty. I've felt so much peace!

I've been reading and implementing Dave Ramsey's Financial Freedom book. I've been doing Tony Horton's P90X every day. I've been eating an all fruits, veggies, protien diet. And I've been resting in Jesus.
Now lest you think life has become breezy, my finances are great, and I look svelt and gorgeous, no. If anything everything seems to have become harder or more discouraging. But Ruth's situation was more dire than mine. And I will not quit. Like I said, I've not had peace like this in a while. God provides.