Naomi was married and had two sons. They were from Bethlehem and moved to Moab. There, in Moab, her husband died. Then her two sons married and they lived in Moab for ten years. Then her two sons died, leaving Naomi and her two daughters-in-law to fend for themselves.

Naomi told her two daughters-in-law to go back home and live with their mothers. The one daughter-in-law did, but the other one, Ruth, would not leave Naomi.

Last week, we shared a message of expressed gratitude, taken from an encounter with Jesus and ten lepers.  Only one of the ten returned to express his thanks to Jesus.  Unexpressed thanksgiving leaves people often feeling “taken for granted.”  One may feel thankful but unexpressed thankfulness is experienced as ingratitude to the other person in the relationship.  It is the expression of thanksgiving that leaves one feeling appreciated and accepted, not the emotion of gratitude.  Hearts naturally gravitate toward recognition and gratitude.

This morning, if I were to ask you for one of many things that you are grateful for, what would it be?  Salvation, family, health, opportunities, love, etc?  I want us to look at a lady who was in desperate need.  The one thing she needed more than anything else was grace.  If we were honest, many people wish that the riffraff would just go away or that they would be punished.  While some can be tough on people, who do things that trouble them and want God’s justice to be poured out, they themselves desire God’s grace.  In John 8:1 – 11, we come to a powerful story about compassionate grace, which clearly teaches that from the perspective of God’s perfect holiness, we’re all riffraff — we’re all sinners who fall short of God’s glory and desperately need, not justice, but mercy and grace. 

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There is a universal feeling of thankfulness that we all experience.  We all feel thankful at moments in our life.  When good things happen or we are finishing up a season that has been rough, we are thankful.  We all have emotions of gratitude, but when it comes to expressing thanks to others, it often doesn’t come naturally or effortlessly.  But when gratitude is not expressed, it conveys a message in the relationship with the other person of not seeing or recognizing that person or their efforts in serving.  And if you were to bring up the subject of one’s unexpressed thanksgiving, it makes you feel uncomfortable (could I at least get a thank you).  

Unexpressed thanksgiving leaves people often feeling “taken for granted.”  One may feel thankful but unexpressed thankfulness is experienced as ingratitude to the other person in the relationship.  It is the expression of thanksgiving that leaves one feeling appreciated and accepted, not the emotion of gratitude.  Hearts naturally gravitate toward recognition and gratitude.

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I was listening to a youth pastor this week by the name of David Marvin. He shared a statistic on selfies that was surprising to me. There are on average 93 million selfies taken a day and posted on social media. And there has become known a phrase, “death by selfies” where one is so focused on themselves that they don’t pay attention to their surroundings, and they end up in an accident and lose their life. Becoming self-focused causes one to become prideful and pride will bring death in one’s life, in one’s relationships, and even in one’s ability to have a relationship with God. We see this in scripture with what happened to Lucifer (Satan) in heaven when he became so focused on himself that he broke fellowship with his Creator and he was cast out of heaven. Even Jesus said of Satan that He had seen him fall like lightning from heaven. This explains why God repeats in his Word many times concerning pride why it is something He hates.

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Have you ever heard someone talking about someone you never knew, but because of their relationship with that person and the stories they shared, you felt like you knew that person?  One purpose for Jesus Christ coming to earth was to help us see what our heavenly Father was like.  Jesus, who has spent eternity past with the Heavenly Father, knows him well and gives us picture stories (parables) to show us what our heavenly Father is like.  It is in Luke 15 that Jesus gives us one of those stories so that you and I might see what the heavenly Father is really like.

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Stay Focus I Cor 15, 57-58 Stay Faithful II Thes 3, 1-3 (II Tim 2, 1-2) Stay Strong Eph 6, 10-11 Luke 10, 17 Stay Positive Luke 6, 45 Pro 18, 21 Stay Submitted James 4,7

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We have been taking a look at the book of Ezekiel and even though it mostly relates to Israel and Jerusalem, we have asked the question, how would this book be relevant for us today? What can we learn since “all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness?” The book was written over a 20-year period while the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity and God asks Ezekiel to do some strange things to illustrate how the Israelites had departed from Him and of the discipline to come and the destruction of Jerusalem. “Sin is a serious matter and bears consequences.” We have discovered that God is loving, patient and just, but God will discipline his people in order to bring them back into a loving relationship with Him. God gave Ezekiel an illustration of a young girl that had been abandoned and left for dead, and how He nurtured her back to health and gave her all she needed until she became of age and then took her as his wife relating to Israel; and how that she had prostituted herself with other gods and nations. Ezekiel addressed the surrounding nations in chapters 25 – 32 making it clear that God is concerned is for the whole world. Even though God had a covenant relationship with Israel, God’s intentions were to bless the whole world through the Israelites as God would bring forth His revelation and His Son through the lineage of Abraham to save the whole world (Gen. 12).

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We have been taking a look at the book of Ezekiel and even though it mostly relates to Israel and Jerusalem, we asked the question, how would this book be relevant for us today?  What can we learn since “all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness?”  The book was written over a 20-year period while the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity and God asks Ezekiel to do some strange things to illustrate how the Israelites had departed from Him and of the discipline to come and the destruction of Jerusalem.  “Sin is a serious matter and bears consequences.”  We have discovered that God is loving, patient and just, but God will discipline his people in order to bring them back into a loving relationship with Him.  God gave Ezekiel an illustration of a young girl that had been abandoned and left for dead, and how He nurtured her back to health and gave her all she needed until she became of age and then took her as his wife relating to Israel; and how that she had prostituted herself with other gods and nations.

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We have been taking a look at the book of Ezekiel and even though it mostly relates to Israel and Jerusalem, we asked the question, how would this book be relevant for us today?  What can we learn since “all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness?”  The book was written over a 20-year period while the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity and God asks Ezekiel to do some strange things to illustrate how the Israelites had departed from Him and of the discipline to come and the destruction of Jerusalem.  “Sin is a serious matter and bears consequences.”  We learned that God is loving, patient and just, but God will discipline his people in order to bring them back into a loving relationship with Him.

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In his early period as a prophet, he denounced his people for their sins and corruption. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 586, however, Ezekiel became the consoler and comforter of the exiles, holding out to them the promise of a return to the homeland and the restoration of the Temple and of the throne of David.