A Great Love Story: Ruth’s and Ours | Part 1 – How We Are Greatly Loved!

1 John 4:19 (MSG)

First we were loved, now we love. God loved us first.

God Expresses His Great Love In – Ways!

Ruth 1:1-5 (NLT)

In the days when the judges ruled in Israel, a severe famine came upon the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah left his home and went to live in the country of Moab, taking his wife and two sons with him. ² The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife was Naomi. Their two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in the land of Judah. And when they reached Moab, they settled there.

³ Then Elimelech died, and Naomi was left with her two sons. ⁴ The two sons married Moabite women. One married a woman named Orpah, and the other a woman named Ruth. But about ten years later, ⁵ both Mahlon and Kilion died. This left Naomi alone, without her two sons or her husband.

God uses painful circumstances and consequences to – us!

Psalm 119:71 (CEV)

When you corrected me (with hard times) it did me good because it made me learn …

Proverbs 20:30 (GN)

Sometimes it takes a painful situation to make us change our ways.

God uses painful circumstances as corrections to – us!

Hebrews 12:7-11 (MSG)

This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, ⁸ the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? ⁹ We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? ¹⁰ While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. ¹¹ At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.

God uses painful struggles and circumstances to – us!

James 1:2-4 (NLT)

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, (well-developed not deficient in any way!)

God Expresses His Great Love In – Ways!

Matthew 1:5,6 (NIV)

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,⁶ and Jesse the father of King David.

1 Samuel 22:3,4 (MSG)

David petitioned the king of Moab, “Grant asylum to my father and mother until I find out what God has planned for me.” David left his parents in the care of the king of Moab. They stayed there all through the time David was hiding out.

Ruth 1:16-17 (NLT)
Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. ¹⁷ Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!”

Ephesians 1:4-5 (NLT)

Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ … ⁵ God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

“I am loved, chosen, and adopted by God!”