Tuesday, 30 April 2019

Ruth and Orpah

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Question of the day: Will you be Ruth or Orpah? How is God calling you.

Answer: There is no right or wrong answer here (unless we ignore the calling of God - that could be trouble). Both women are faithful and obedient. Neither one of them sinned. They simply had different callings on their lives.

Orpah went back to her people. This is much like people who come out of churches to a Messianic lifestyle, but then, after a season, return to Sunday church. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But there is another calling, the calling of Ruth. This calling is described in Ruth 1:16-17 Ruth replied, "Do not plead with me to abandon you, to turn back from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May Adonai deal with me, and worse, if anything but death comes between me and you!"

It is a lifetime covenant to walk with the Jewish people as one who is home born. And Ruth became the great grandmother of King David, in the lineage of Yeshua. That is how God honored her commitment to connect and to be connected.

Don Finto (Papa Don) refers to this as a Ruth I and Ruth II calling. Ruth I (Roman numeral one) is a calling on all believers to love Jewish people. A Ruth II calling is a deeper call to go beyond love, to a deeper identification of a walk with God among and as part of the Jewish people. Both are valid callings of God.

Personally, I'm glad for all the Ruth I (Orpah like) people in my life, and I'm glad for all the Ruth II (Ruth like) people in my life. May each of us have the courage to fulfill the calling God has placed on our lives. In Yeshua's name, Amen.