Our lives are filled with relationships, and we were created to be in close community with others. This five-day journey helps us understand that as we depend on Christ to do within us that which we cannot do on our own, we (and our relationships) will be strengthened and filled with the fruit of the Spirit.
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12.7.2023
About this devotional
Our lives are filled with relationships, and we were created to be in close community with others. This five-day journey helps us understand that as we depend on Christ to do within us that which we cannot do on our own, we (and our relationships) will be strengthened and filled with the fruit of the Spirit.
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Flourish in Kinship: A 5-Day Journey Through Ruth
5-day devotional with Flourish: A Mentoring Journey
Day 02
Locked
Gentleness
Day 03
Locked
Joy
Day 04
Locked
Peace
Day 05
Locked
Redemption
Ruth 1
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”
At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. 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 the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”
“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”
So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Galatians 5:22-26
Devotional
Parents and children. Friends and co-workers. Siblings and in-laws. Marriage and dating. Our lives are filled with relationships. They are amazing and challenging, inspiring, and just plain hard.
Isn’t it true that in many of our connections with those we love the most, we experience communication breakdowns, discouragement, and unmet expectations? As we depend on Christ to do within us that which we cannot do on our own, we (and our relationships) will be strengthened and filled with “the fruit of the Spirit.”
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. All are necessary when navigating relationships, but sometimes they can be seemingly lacking or straight-up missing in our lives!
Maybe patience with a child has been running short lately. Maybe life has thrown a curveball and peace seems slim-to-none in your heart. Maybe you’re just simply tired and your reserves are low, leaving you lacking kindness and gentleness toward others.
There is no shortage of relationships that can feel like they’re out of our control.
However, one thing that always remains true is that we have direct access to our God who made and knows each of us. When we put our faith in Jesus, we’re made alive in Christ and His Spirit lives in us. And with the Holy Spirit comes the fruit of the Spirit. As we learn to rely on and surrender to the help of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit will begin to saturate our lives and influence how we love others.
As we read through the story of Ruth this week, look for the fruit of the Spirit on display in this amazing story of love and redemption. Consider how you see – or might not see – His fruit showing up in your life in and through your personal relationships on a daily basis.
Ruth 2:8-23
So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”
At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”
“May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.”
At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.”
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”
So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
“The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.”
Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”
Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”
So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
Psalm 63:3
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
Devotional
Gentleness – meek, humble, compassionate – is strength under control.
For some of us, gentleness comes easily. We may be people who are gentle by nature. For others, we can be a little rough around the edges when it comes to how we deal with those in our lives. Or maybe we feel our circumstances determine whether or not we’ll choose to approach someone with gentle words and actions.
In the second chapter of Ruth, there are many expressions of gentleness displayed by Boaz toward Ruth.
It was customary in that day that widows and the destitute could come to a field, follow along behind the workers, and gather what got left behind to take for themselves. For Ruth to just show up in Boaz’s field and begin gleaning whatever might have been left behind by his workers took a lot of courage. Ruth, a foreigner – a Moabitess (Moabites were considered cursed and separated from God) – could have been rejected, treated poorly, tossed out. But we see in this chapter that Boaz goes beyond what’s customary and looks to protect Ruth and even make sure the workers leave a few extra stalks behind for her to gather.
Boaz accepts Ruth, despite her Moabite roots, and seeks to help and provide for her and her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi.
In the same way, God extends the gospel to those outside of the Jewish race, to the Gentiles. Think about ways that you’ve experienced the gentleness and kindness of God and how that impacted your heart – especially at times when you may have felt it was undeserving, and yet He gives freely. How do you see Jesus represented in the verses from today in Ruth 2?
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”
Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.
This, then, is the family line of Perez:
Perez was the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
Salmon the father of Boaz,
Boaz the father of Obed,
Obed the father of Jesse,
and Jesse the father of David.
Ruth 4:13-22
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
Romans 8:1-5
Devotional
Who doesn’t love a good dose of joy every day?
We all tend to gravitate toward the people, moments, words and expressions that lift our spirits and make us laugh a little in life! Good news brings joy and life to the heart.
But joy isn’t limited to good times and good things. The Holy Spirit is capable of producing great joy in our lives even in the midst of some of the most difficult circumstances.
The Greek meaning of joy is gladness, delight, contentment derived from confidence and assurance. Think through each expression of the definition of joy, particularly – contentment derived from confidence and assurance. The story of Naomi and Ruth captures the very essence of this joy. Ruth’s commitment and loyalty to Naomi is a beautiful expression of trust in God and peace in a time of severe trial and poverty. Ruth carries herself with such contentment and assurance, stepping out in faith and doing what must be done to help provide for herself and Naomi.
The result is the unfolding of a beautiful story of redemption.
This is true over our lives as well. Through faith, we step out in full assurance and belief in a faithful God who has already done it all. We believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that He is Lord. In that confession of faith and trust in Jesus, we are saved, redeemed, restored, set free. There is no greater joy than this!
Today, out of the overflow of joy that you know, and despite circumstances you may be standing in, look for ways to be intentional in your relationships through how you give generously from your own life, that others might see Jesus and know Him better.
One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for. Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”
“I will do whatever you say,” Ruth answered. So she went down to the threshing floor and did everything her mother-in-law told her to do.
Ruth 3:1-6
You will keep in perfect peace
those whose minds are steadfast,
because they trust in you.
Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.
Isaiah 26:3-4
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:9-21
Devotional
Peace is defined by words like tranquility, harmony, rest, quietness, contentedness, free from fear.
There are many things in life that can disrupt peace. But one of the most common disrupters of peace in our lives and the lives of others happens simply by the words we speak. We can impart peace and life, hope and joy, or death and cursing, evil and strife simply by the words we speak over each other. So powerful are our words that we’re instructed often in Scripture to be wise in what we speak:
Speak truth, not lies. [Psalm 34:13]
Set a guard over my mouth, Lord, keep watch over my lips. [Psalm 141:3]
The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. [Proverbs 12:14]
Make every effort to do what leads to peace and mutual edification. [Romans 14:19]
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, only what is useful for building others up. [Ephesians 4:29]
As you recall today’s Scriptures, think about how Naomi’s words to Ruth might have brought peace to her heart at such a significant moment.
As Ruth was about to do something very risky, Naomi’s words and the confidence she had in Boaz as their kinsman redeemer fostered peace in Ruth’s heart to carry out what was being asked of her.Ask God how you can be an agent of peace to people in your life today by how you choose to speak to them.
Meanwhile Boaz went up to the town gate and sat down there just as the guardian-redeemer he had mentioned came along. Boaz said, “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” So he went over and sat down.
Boaz took ten of the elders of the town and said, “Sit here,” and they did so. Then he said to the guardian-redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our relative Elimelek. I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line.”
“I will redeem it,” he said.
Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.”
At this, the guardian-redeemer said, “Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it.”
(Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing transactions in Israel.)
So the guardian-redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it yourself.” And he removed his sandal.
Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses!”
Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”
Ruth 4:1-12
and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1;12-14
Devotional
The book of Ruth is a beautiful picture of Jesus being foreshadowed through the person of Boaz, who shows up at the moment of greatest need to extend grace, mercy, generosity, and love by “buying” Ruth into a family and meeting her greatest earthly needs.
Boaz is literally called a “kinsman-redeemer.” In other words, a next-of-kin who was able to give Ruth hope and a future.
Through their bloodline would come King David, and through the line of David would come Jesus Christ, the perfect Kinsman-Redeemer whose perfect blood would buy us into an eternal family and give us hope and a future, now and forever!
Both Naomi and Ruth had experienced much loss and were doing all they could to make it on their own.
Boaz stands in and pays the price for both; Naomi to be restored to her land and for Ruth, a foreigner and gentile, to share the same rights. Boaz’s actions represent Jesus’ on the cross and the price He paid so that ALL people could become sons and daughters of the Most High, heirs of Christ Jesus!
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
We see all of these represented in the story of Ruth, Boaz, and Naomi – beautifully intertwined into this story of redemption. These are all within you, as well through salvation and the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, being beautifully intertwined into your own story.
Write out a prayer of praise and thanks today to Jesus for your redemption!
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