The Cross and the Eternal Glory # 35

What We Have Come To (continued)

She may not know about that ban, that Divine edict. Perhaps the reason for this decision she came to, to go with her mother-in-law, Naomi, from her country, into the land of Israel was just that she felt it was something she must do. Probably, she had weighed it up, though about it, considered it, and then Naomi had done everything to dissuade her, to get her to go back, and not to accompany her. But if we had asked Ruth, why it was that she decided, and was so decided about it, the probability is that her answer would have been, "Well, I cannot explain, I cannot give you any reasons for it, but I just feel it is the thing to do. I have got to do it."

You know, that is very often the only reason at the beginning, why people come to Christ. They feel somehow that they have got to do it, they cannot explain or give reason, but, "Well, that is all. I just felt that I had to. There was an urge, a constraint, a something working in me, and all I can say about it is I felt that I just had to do it. It was a big thing. I had thought about it. I had weighed it up. I had faced what it might involve, but there you are, I could not get away from it."

And I think, probably, that is exactly how it was with Ruth, because you see, the word "costs" attached to this, costs enough to discourage and even to disconcert; it was no small thing as Boaz said, she left her father and her mother and her country, to go into a strange land; and one of our verses says, "unto a People that thou knewest not heretofore" (Ruth 2:11). There were costs attached to it that they might, if it had been just faced as something in itself, might have been regarded as something she could not do, she could not hep it, I just had to, the urge, the constraint, the drawing, the something working in me was more than all my reasoning, all my argument and every other consideration." And you know, dear friends, that is just it, for as it proved, although she did not know it and could not explain this thing at all, she could not define it, it came to be seen afterward that there was a Mighty Will at work upon her. Yes, all undefined, all unexplained, without any bribes or any offers, or any prized or anything to try to get her in mind to go this way, there was this working of God, this working of God.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 37)