Ruth 1:19–21
The truths that are found in this message apply to anyone who has received a Word from the Lord and has set his heart to walk with Him in that Word.
In our seeking God, we may be pressing toward the goal which we see, only to have God say, “Here is one thing that is preventing you from reaching that goal: The goal you are looking for is not the goal that I want for you. I want you to move in the Kingdom in My perfect will.” The dealings of the Lord upon us can become very heavy in order to accomplish that goal. It would be a tragedy to see our burden of intercession accomplish only the goals which we have in mind. As the Lord brings us into each new level of intercession, we find that it comes with a greater understanding of the next goals and objectives He has for us.
Why is it that occasionally some people become bitter and critical in the Church? They will acknowledge that God brought them there by a revelation-word to their hearts; yet they complain, “The people did not treat me right. They did not make a place for me, and I have had problems. Now I am disillusioned.” Wherever God has placed you is a good place to test whether or not a person will be a prophet. God knows what He is doing; and just when you get your life arranged so that everything looks good, several things seem to go wrong. That gives you an occasion to say, “I have a grievance. I am going to be bitter now.” Many times people actually look for an excuse for bitterness because it is in their heart to be bitter. They cannot see the plan of God; they do not understand what He is doing. It is then that we must have faith that God knows what He is doing.
Often in the Bible people had an occasion to become bitter and critical, yet they did not. Consider Joseph. As a boy, his brothers hated him to the point that they wanted to kill him. Finally they decided that there was no profit in that, so they sold him to Midianite traders who took him into Egypt to be a slave—their own brother! (Genesis 37:26–28.) He certainly could have been very bitter about that. Next he was thrown into prison because of his moral integrity when Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him (Genesis 39:7–20). Now there was a man with a grievance! But instead of becoming bitter, he walked with God and became a prophet. He prophesied over other inmates in the prison and even interpreted Pharaoh’s dream. God saw Joseph’s heart and his determination to follow after the Lord; and within a twenty-four-hour period he was out of the prison and sitting on the throne of Egypt, governing the destiny of many nations (Genesis 40–41).
You may go through problems and disappointments in wherever the Lord places you. When you do, you can either be burdened to see your desperate situation met by God, or you can build up a bitterness. There are people who have become bitter and left the local churches. In time the root of that bitterness will be so deep that it will have conditioned, stalemated, and locked them in. Whether you are right or wrong in a situation is never the real issue at all. God even orders your steps so that you will go through circumstances in which you are wronged. If you allow grievances to build up, you will never see anything but the thing that went wrong.
Perhaps you have never considered the fact that God gives you a Word and a commission and actually leads you into a situation where difficult things happen to you. God does that! The life of Naomi is a perfect example of this. After becoming a widow and then seeing both her sons die, Naomi returned to Israel with a Moabite daughter-in-law (Ruth 1). The people asked, “Is this Naomi, the woman whose name means ‘pleasant’?” She answered, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara” (which means “bitter”), “for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” Ruth 1:20. Notice the play on words; it is filled with subtle sarcasm. Naomi was saying, “El Shaddai, the Almighty, the Great-Breasted, Bountiful One, did this to me. He has dealt with me harshly and bitterly.” The fact that she used the name El Shaddai rather than Jehovah is very significant. If she had used the term Jehovah she would have been saying, “The Ever-Present One led me through, and He is still with me.” But she said, “El Shaddai, the Great-Breasted, Bountiful One, who gives us all good things, has made my life bitter.”
When this bitter reaction comes up in people, it is because they do not have enough faith. If you have a burden, you will be like Ruth. Ruth was the one who stood strong. She told Naomi, “Entreat me not to leave you! I am determined that where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Where you die, I will die; and where you are buried, that is where I will be buried!” (Ruth 1:16–18.) Why was she determined? It was not because of Naomi. In fact, Naomi herself is rather insignificant in this story. The book of Ruth reveals the determined faith of the woman who was to become the great-grandmother of David.
God had ordered the situation that Naomi and her family faced. During a famine, they went to Moab. Why? God had been looking for that one girl who could put the proper input into the man who would be “a man after God’s own heart” (I Samuel 13:14). He chose David’s great-grandmother from a nation outside the tribes of Israel. When David came forth, his declaration was, “My heart is fixed” (Psalm 57:7). That quality of spirit went back to his great-grandmother; her heart was fixed, and determined! She had the burden. She had met God, and she was determined to walk with Him.
What is in your heart? Are you discouraged because you moved out on a Word from God and now nothing seems to be working out? Would I be sarcastic to say, “Go ahead; get bitter!” That seems harsh, but you must face it: How much are you on your knees seeking God, and how much are you just complaining? How much are you seeking to see the will of God done? Who told you that walking with God would be easy, that you would face simple problems and smooth relationships? The fact is that you have been thrown into a situation in which you need a meeting with God.
The issue is not so much what you learn anywhere the Lord places you; it is what God puts you through while you are there that counts. Afterward, you realize that you would not trade that experience for anything (Hebrews 12:11). That is the way the Lord makes prophets.
Although you can listen to a sermon many times and never exhaust its truths, just trying to grasp sermons will not make you a prophet. Many of the Words that come from the Lord are the product of days of seeking God with fasting and prayer, while stacks of work and many problems are ignored. Solve all those problems and all that work today, and there will be another stack tomorrow. What I am most concerned about is the Spirit of the Lord resting upon the people. The anointing must be there. Everyone must be reaching into the Lord to accomplish what He has set before us to do.
The burden is not so much to help the “babies” who are having problems because they refuse to listen to what God is saying, but the burden is for those who refuse to respond down in their hearts and to determine that their local body will be what God wants it to be, a school of the prophets. The burden is for the few who are doing too much, those who are living beyond their physical endurance and strength.
If there were a more consistent burden upon everyone, we would accomplish so much more. Yet some do not realize that seeing the will of God accomplished requires hard work.
The Lord made the following statement, and He is still saying it: “Look, the harvest is ready. The Gospel of the Kingdom could go into all the world. Entreat the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into His harvest field” (Matthew 9:37–38; John 4:35). Christ was not speaking about those who will do just enough to get by, hoping to learn how to be some kind of “new-style preacher.” He is looking for laborers, prophets of God, bond servants who will go out and work with their hands. They will sew tents or do whatever they have to do in order to see God’s will accomplished (Acts 18:3). They will go anywhere in the will of God and sit ignored for a year, if that is what God requires. This must be their attitude: “Here I am, and I will be here until God moves me.”
There are people who try not to appear bitter, yet you can see that they are not submitting to the dealings of the Lord correctly. Joseph was one who did submit. Years later, when his brothers who had sold him into slavery found themselves at his mercy, they thought, “Now he will kill us!” But Joseph said, “You meant evil against me in what you did, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive” (Genesis 50:15–21).
Understand that God’s ways will bring you into a position requiring faith; and God will allow you to face situations in which you could find real reasons to become critical. God has done this with me, but I came to grips with my reaction to these situations. I am not worried about becoming bitter over the heavy work load, the responsibilities, and the constant pressure; for those problems are easily solved by delegation.
Consider what it was like for the Apostle Paul. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee; and concerning the Law, he was blameless (Philippians 3:4–6). No fault could be found in Paul, except that the will of God was not being done in his life because he had not opened his heart to Christ. So the Lord dealt with him; and within a short time people were trying to kill him! He could have looked back to his excellent reputation and become bitter when he wrote, “Now we are being called the scum and the offscouring of the earth” (I Corinthians 4:13). Where did his reputation go?
II Corinthians 12:7–9 tells how God put a thorn in Paul’s side by sending a messenger from Satan to buffet him. He prayed three times for it to be lifted, but God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you.” All of this happened because something was being accomplished in Paul by his maintaining a right spirit. He had to fight demons as if they were swarms of hornets, and at the same time do the will of God—and do it with a right spirit. He had to serve God without any bitterness. When he finally finished, he said, “I fought a good fight; I finished the course; I kept the faith. There is a crown waiting for me” (II Timothy 4:7–8). When he was on trial, he said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision (Acts 26:19). God met me, and that was it. I did not stop to evaluate the circumstances, the persecutions, or anything else. I had a Word from God, and I followed it!” As always, the war is over the Word God speaks to us.
Are you wasting your time even reading a message like this? Do you find it reaching your heart? Are you saying, “I have some praying to do to straighten out my spirit. I must get rid of the bitterness and make sure that my spirit is right. I have to find out why I am here, because I am determined to become a prophet of God.”
Can you see how useless it is for you to go around complaining about everything that is wrong with Shiloh, or wherever else God has placed you? If all the problems were corrected today, God would upset many of them tomorrow because He does not want you to be in a perfect place. He wants your circumstances to be like a furnace. Then as you walk through it, you will come out as God’s miracle, if your spirit is right. You will be like the three Hebrews in the book of Daniel: The ropes will be burned off, and there will not even be the smell of smoke on you (Daniel 3:27).
May God give us immunity when we go through the furnace, so that we come out without even the smell of smoke upon us. We do not want the stench of bitterness clinging to us when we come through the dealings of the Lord. We are to walk right through everything God sets before us with a heart like Job, who said, “When He has tried me, I shall come forth as pure gold” (Job 23:10). Job said that because he knew he had a perfect heart; God called him a man whose ways were perfect before the Lord (Job 1:8; 2:3). Be determined that your spirit will be right!
This Word must burn in your heart. This is what lifts you up into a true walk with God. Those who are constantly reacting to their circumstances and showing a bad spirit never really walk with God. Then there is the one who receives a Word from God and makes that Word the basis of his life; he walks with God.
God could have solved any of the problems that any of us face long ago; but in many cases we have not yet learned enough from our problems for God to remove them. Look down deep into your heart and see if there is a root of bitterness left from a time in the past when you were wronged. Perhaps you are covering up a bitterness in your heart.
Bitterness is a perennial root. Something may have happened to us many years ago, and now we may think that everything is fine; but a root of bitterness could spring up and defile many (Hebrews 12:15). We must dig out our deep roots. We cannot allow a root of bitterness to remain in our hearts, for it may spring up later and cause us to stumble. God forbid that any one of us should fail in the grace of God and draw back (Hebrews 12:15). God says, “If any man draws back, My soul will have no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10:38). We want God to have pleasure in us.
God asked Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job lately? There is nothing you can do to him; he is immune to you” (Job 1:8). God knew what He was going to do to Job. He stripped away Job’s immunities and allowed Satan to test him. God had to take a man who was perfect before the Lord, and then perfect him with a perfect spirit from God. Although that man was perfect in all of his ways, God still had to deal with him and bring him to the place where he repented, saying, “I abhor myself” (Job 42:6). It is a mystery how He does it, but God always finds something that is yet imperfect in the perfection He has worked in us. He is able to bring to the surface and deal with every area where we have not appropriated His likeness, His wonderful nature. I am doing my homework on this Living Word; I suggest that you do yours also.
This Word was born out of much prayer concerning many important areas of need among God’s people; and in the Spirit the cry came back from the Lord, “Remove the bitterness.” I was expecting something else than what I experienced; we all have been looking for something else. Not one of us anticipated what we are getting. But consider that when God looked for a great-grandmother for King David, He looked for someone who could experience much hardship and still have a right spirit. He tested her spirit. You have no idea how much God has for you. You have no idea of the blessings that He has in store for you. But you are not serving Him for the blessings; you are serving Him for the privilege of serving Him. That is what discipleship is all about.
As the Lord opens new doors for us all to move by the Spirit into many things, let us remember that our main concern is the quality of our spirit before Him, rather than the mechanics of what we are doing. Our cry is not for the Lord to teach us how to write good music. Our cry is this: “Lord, deal deeply with us as You did with David so that he could become the sweet psalmist of Israel” (II Samuel 23:1). We are not asking the Lord to teach us to be great administrators like Daniel; but we seek for Him to give us a heart like Daniel’s, one that never swerves. Three times a day his windows were opened toward God’s presence (Daniel 6:10).… he possessed an extraordinary spirit. Daniel 6:3a.
In the course of God’s dealings with us, He allows periods of time for our spirit to catch up to the level on which we are to be in the Lord; then He opens up the gates and allows another flood tide of His dealings to sweep over us. It seems that God is always throwing us into the deep end of the pool, doesn’t it? But that is the way we learn to walk with Him.
Who knows what a man may say or do during moments of God’s dealings with him? I choose not to regard too seriously the things that come up out of the depths of a man’s spirit when God is plowing deep. I choose rather to see what God said over that man before the plowing began. Even if a man gives up, that is not a good enough reason for the oneness with him to be broken; we have the prerogative of not breaking the oneness. We will refuse to do so! We will obey Jude 22–24: And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy …
Ask God to remove any bitterness from your heart, particularly if you feel that God and everyone else has neglected you. If you are going through His dealings, you are not being neglected. In fact, no matter how much or how little attention the Body gives you, that cannot remove the hand of God from you because He has chosen you. The only issue is this: Do you think you have reason to be bitter over your grievances? If God gave you a commission, then you have no reason. If He made you an elder or a deacon, if He spoke a Word over your heart, then do not go on complaining over your circumstances; get rid of the bitterness!
Once you know what God is working on in your heart, then you can work on it also. When your heart is right, then the door is open for God to work through you what He is wanting to do in His perfect will. In everything you do in the Lord, remember that you do not have to please any man. The only requirement is that you have a right spirit and know that you are pleasing God (II Corinthians 5:9). Then He will make everything else conform to what He wants.
Pray for the apostolic ministries (Ephesians 6:19; Colossians 4:3). Pray for one another. The quickest way for us to see the door opened to everything that has been set before us in our intercession is for all of us to humble ourselves before God and see that His will is being done in our hearts. Then God will bring His blessing. The climate is right for Him to work His miracle, but we must not shut it off. We must let God deal with our hearts. If we have a right spirit, we will go through His dealings without bitterness.