The Scars We Didn’t Choose

Awesome.

All right.

Well, welcome to uh Church of the Grove.

My name is Jonah Faulkner.

I'm the student pastor here for Water Grove campus.

I'm excited for this morning, excited to be here, excited to continue our series called Scars.

So for me right now, it has never been more evident in my life than it is in this moment that I just simply cannot do life alone.

For those who don't know, me and my wife just have our first baby one month ago today.

He's a month old today.

Yeah.

He's incredible.

He's incredible.

But also, you know, a lot of y'all aren't kidding.

It's it's hard, right?

It's pretty hard.

But the thing I feel like me and my wife have kept coming back to over and over and over again the past month is how blessed we are with the people that God has put in our life.

We have felt incredibly blessed by the people that God has put in our life.

For one, um He's blessed us both with incredible families and parents and siblings.

Um and we're we're incredibly blessed in that front.

Um they're awesome.

They know way more than me and Reese do, so they've been really helpful.

Uh but he's also blessed us with the church family.

We have felt so loved, um, so cared for by so many of y'all.

Um so many of y'all had uh have prayed for us.

You've been generous uh with gifts.

Um y'all have cooked us food.

Uh the worst part about having a one-month old is the meal train ends, right?

Um but so many of y'all have cooked us food, and we have felt incredibly, incredibly blessed.

So I just want to say thank you, but but in reality, um, even before Peter's life began, God used this church, the people in the church, the people in our lives that He's blessed us with.

He used people to heal wounds that my wife and hat, my me and my wife had in a lot of ways.

But before Peter was born, my wife and I we struggled with infertility for about a year and a half.

And for a year and a half, we went through this constant cycle of praying, praying for a child, getting excited, just to have our honestly our hearts broken month after month after month after month.

And if I'm being honest, in that that year and a half, in a lot of ways, I honestly I grew bitter in a lot of ways.

I was angry, I was sad, I was in this place where where I wanted to comfort my wife, but at a certain point, I just honestly didn't know didn't know how to anymore.

I didn't have any words left.

I didn't I didn't have anything left.

I felt I felt hopeless in a lot of ways.

I started to question why God would allow me and my wife to to go through this when we're we're praying for a child.

We're trying to be obedient to the Lord and raise, raise children up for his glory.

I started to question God in so many ways, and this journey of infertility was was honestly causing wounds and scars that I never I never thought I would, I never thought I would have.

I was going through something I never imagined I would go through, dealing with something that I never imagined I would deal with, and I didn't understand why it was happening.

And uh what you know, while it felt like me and Reese were at our lowest, uh it just so happened that for the first time in the history of Church of the Grove, we decided to do a prayer and healing service.

Um it by no means was for us or or anybody.

We just, as a church, we saw people in in our church that just needed healing.

So we decided to do this prayer and healing service.

And if you're anything like me, when I heard those words, I became very skeptical, right?

I hear a prayer and healing service, and I honestly was a little skeptical.

Even though I know the truths and the stories that we see in scripture, there was something in me that was hesitant to believe that people's prayers would change things in my life.

And I don't know why, but there was something hesitant to believe that people's prayers would change anything, especially with our infertility.

But then me and Reese, we talked about it.

We decided to go to this service in faith, to put the skepticism to the side, the critical thinking to the side, and just go to this service in faith.

And when we got there, we asked a few people to pray for us and and lay hands on us.

We had people come up to us and pray for us and lay hands on us, following the the leadership and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And and when we when we left, we we left with the feeling of knowing that the church was rallying behind us, that the church was there for us.

We left full of hope and joy and joy, knowing that we don't have to walk through this alone, even if the Lord chose not to bless us with children of our own.

We knew that we didn't have to walk through life alone.

But the prayer service was on November 14th, and on November 29th, 15 days later, I'll let you do the math on that, but 15 days later, we found out that my wife was pregnant.

15 days later, yeah, praise God.

And to some people, this would be, you know, a huge coincidence.

You you call it whatever you want, but but here is what I know is that God heard the prayers of his people, and he chose to intervene and do something that only he could do.

He brought healing through people's prayers, the the laying on of their hands, us being obedient to scripture.

And and I share this because here's what I'm I'm trying to get at.

As as we've talked about this over the past few weeks, all of us have wounds, all of us have scars in some capacities, all of us have experienced hurt in some way in our lives.

Some of us have, like we talked about last week, some of us have have wounds and scars from from things we've done that that we regret.

Um we we have we have wounds from decisions that we we wish we didn't make or things we wish we wouldn't have said or things we wish we wouldn't have done.

But some of us have wounds that we never asked for, that honestly we had we have no say in.

We have no control over, maybe even wounds that we've inherited from others, wounds from abuse or or divorced parents, um, wounds from family patterns of addiction, diseases that we never thought we would have, loved ones taken away from us too early.

I would imagine that everyone in this room has been wounded in some way simply because life has happened.

We know that phrase, that life happens.

And here's the reality: life happens, and wounds happen, not because God is unjust, not because God does bad things to good people, but life happens and we experience wounds that we never asked for because we live in a broken, sinful, fallen world.

And in this broken and sinful world, the the the whole thing we're gonna talk about this morning is that we simply cannot do life alone.

The big idea is for this morning is that you don't choose every wound, but you can choose who you walk through it with.

You don't choose everything that happens to you in this life, but you can choose who you walk through life with, who you do life with.

So this morning we're gonna be in the book of Ruth.

Um, in some ways, we're gonna cover the entire book, all four chapters, but we're really gonna focus on the wounds and sufferings and the character of a woman named Naomi.

Wounds that she didn't ask for, but we're gonna see that it was through Ruth's friendship and commitment that God brought healing to the life of Naomi.

So I'm gonna pray for us and we're gonna hop right in to Ruth one.

Um, Father, we are grateful for your word.

We are grateful that when we don't have um answers for for life or or answers for the things happening, that that we have the truth of your word to not just fall back on, but to build our entire lives upon.

And God, I pray that as we open your word, that you would open your mouth, that you would um you would you would give us wisdom.

God, that you would soften our hearts to receive the truth that you might have for us this morning.

So as we draw near to you, would you draw near to us?

Uh we love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

Ruth 1, verses 1 through 5.

Ruth 1:1–5

Says this during the time of the judges there was a famine in the land.

A man left Bethlehem and Judah Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while.

The man's name was Elimelech, and his wife's name was Naomi.

The names of his two sons were Malone and Chileon, and they were Aphra Aphraithites from Bethlehem and Judah.

They entered the fields of Moab and settled there.

And here's where things turn in verse 3.

Naomi's husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons.

Her two sons took Moabite women as their wives, one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth.

After they lived in Moab about ten years, both Malone and Chileon also died, and the woman, Naomi, was left without her two children and without her husband.

So these verses, they set the context for everything else that follows this morning.

And again, we're going to kind of focus on the character of Naomi here for a second.

She leaves her hometown of Bethlehem, which is the part of the promised land, this land that God has given his people.

She leaves her hometown of Bethlehem with her husband and her two sons, trying to escape the famine that had come throughout the region, and she has ended up in the foreign land of Moab.

A foreign land.

She's a sojourner.

She has no idea anything about this culture, probably.

And once they settle in the land of Moab, her husband dies, and then after taking wives, her two sons die.

So here is where we find Naomi.

She's a childless widow in a foreign land.

To be a childless widow at this time would mean you are at the lowest of the lowest.

She had no one to support her.

She had to live off the generosity of strangers in a land where she didn't know anybody.

And Naomi found herself in honestly a tragic, desperate situation.

And here's what we can observe from this is that some of the hardest wounds in life are the ones that you never asked for.

Maybe even the ones that you never expected to actually happen to you.

But here in this story, life has happened.

Life has happened to Naomi.

She now has wounds and scars that she never expected to have and certainly never would have asked for.

She's feeling the weight that we often feel of living in a broken and sinful world.

Once again, all of us have wounds that we didn't ask for.

All of us in some capacity have been here where Naomi finds herself.

And here's the question that I would imagine all of us have asked ourselves, and probably what Naomi was asking ourselves in this moment is what now?

When life happens, what do we do now?

Sometimes we we numb it and we find things to dull the pain, even if it's just for a couple hours, but the pain, knowing the pain always comes back.

Sometimes we try to bury it.

We think that if we just tell ourselves that we're that we're not hurting and if we just ignore it for long enough, then it's gonna go away and we never really have to deal with it.

And then sometimes we just envy others.

And we spend the rest of our lives wishing that our life looked different, wishing that our circumstances were different, wishing that our lives were more like other people's.

So when life happens, what do we do?

Let's see what Naomi does.

In verse 6, it says, She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab.

Listen, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people's needs by providing them food.

Here's the observation I want us to take from this verse is that our response is our responsibility.

Our response is our responsibility.

When life happens and we are wounded, even by things that we never expected, never asked for, how we respond is our responsibility.

That that God in his sovereignty and even his goodness gives us, meaning that we can we can wallow and we can we can fall into a pit of pity, or we can press forward in faith and obedience.

We can allow pity and despair to swallow us up, or we can endure and press press forward, strain forward to what lies ahead.

And and when I say this, here's what I'm not saying.

Russ says it all the time.

I'm not saying strap yourself up by your bootstraps and be better, or be stronger, or grow up, or shake it off, or get over it.

If I'm honest, most of our wounds that are still hurting us are hurting us because we have that mindset.

Because we have that mindset of, oh, I just need to get over it.

I just need to shake it off.

I just need to be stronger.

So I'm not saying be stronger and move past it, but here's what I am saying: the God we serve is a God of healing, a God of healing, a God who does not want to leave us in a pit of despair or or stay in wallowing in pity, but but he wants us to live in the fullness of life that he has planned for us.

We cannot allow our wounds to keep us in the pit of despair.

And Naomi did something not a lot of people would do, even after being wounded, and at some point she in some capacities, even we're gonna see that she she probably felt a little betrayed by God.

In a little bit, we're gonna see that she even says that the Lord's hand was against her.

Even after being wounded, she returned to Bethlehem.

And why did she return?

It says that she returned because she had heard that the Lord had paid attention to his people's needs.

Naomi had every reason to doubt God's faithfulness, to doubt God's provision, and she could have lived the rest of her life in Moab, wishing that things were different.

But she returned.

She goes back to God's people, to the land that he has promised to his people.

Rather than wallowing, she trusted that the Lord would still provide, and she pressed on.

She kept going, but listen, she did not press on press on alone.

Let's read the next few verses, seven through thirteen.

Says she left a place where she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, and traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah, going back to the promised land.

And Naomi said to them, Each of you go back to your mother's home.

May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me.

May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband.

She's essentially releasing them, because they would have had an obligation to her, but she's releasing them to go and live a life of their own.

She kissed them and they wept loudly.

They said to her, We insist on returning with you to your people.

But Naomi replied, Return home, my daughters.

Listen to the to the hurt and pain that Naomi had to be experiencing.

Return home, my daughters.

Why do you want to go with me?

Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husbands?

Return home, my daughters.

Go on, for I am too old to have another husband.

Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you be willing to wait for them to grow up?

Would you restrain yourselves from remarrying?

And then listen to what she says.

No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share.

Because the Lord's hand has turned against me.

And real quick in this passage, I want us to notice how relatable Naomi is in this part of the story.

How relatable she is.

After she sets out for Bethlehem, it's almost like she comes to this realization and starts to realize that this might not be the best thing for her, her new daughter's in-law.

She realizes that she doesn't really have anything else to offer them.

If they stay with her, then they're going to end up just like her, childless and widowed in a land that they didn't grow up in.

So Naomi tries to send them away.

She freely blesses them to leave her.

She, in some senses, releases them to live a life that they want to live.

And it wasn't because she didn't want them to come with her, but she wanted what she thought was best for them.

She truly believed, as she says, that her life was much too bitter for them to share.

Naomi's heart is that she didn't want her story to become their story.

She didn't want her scars to become their scars.

And that's where I feel like we can relate to Naomi.

Oftentimes when we're hurting, we we have the tendency to naturally push people away.

Okay?

We have this tendency to push people away, not because we hate them or not because we don't want them to come with us, but because we don't want our story to become their story.

We have this mindset of I don't want to, I don't want to burden you with everything that I'm going through.

Oftentimes we believe the the lie that someone else won't understand what we're going through.

Or sometimes we we even think to ourselves, man, they they have enough going on as it is.

The last thing they need is to hear about my problems, to hear about my pain, my hurt, my wounds.

But here's what we're about to see, okay?

Oftentimes God brings healing to the deepest wounds through the deepest friendships.

Okay?

Oftentimes God brings healing to the deepest wounds through the deepest friendships.

And listen, okay, have y'all ever noticed when Russ really wants you to hear something?

He kind of gets like this.

Am I doing it right?

Listen, when we when we grow up, and we get out of college, we get out of high school, middle school, whatever, when we grow up, we get really crappy at friendships.

We get really bad at friendships.

And when I say friendships, I'm not talking about getting together with your boys on Saturday and watching football and you know drinking your beverage of choice.

That's that's not what I'm talking about when I say friendships.

Friendships is is having someone that knows you fully and loves you, anyways.

Having friendships is having someone in your life that is helping you bear your burdens, and you're helping bear their burdens.

Friendships is is truly doing life with one another.

And to give you a better glimpse of what I mean by friendship, we're gonna keep reading and we're gonna see the friendship of Ruth.

This is Ruth 1, 14 through 18.

It says again, they they wept loudly, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law.

But listen, but Ruth clung to her.

Ruth clung to Naomi.

Naomi said, Look, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and to her gods.

Follow your sister-in-law.

But Ruth replied, This is this is friendship.

She says, Don't plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you.

For wherever you go, I will go.

And wherever you live, I will live.

Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

May the Lord punish me and do so severely if anything but death separates you and me.

And when Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her.

She stopped talking to her.

So Naomi pleads with her daughters to go back, let her go.

Eventually one of them leaves, but then we see Ruth clung to her.

Ruth stayed.

Not only did she cling, not only did she stay, but she made her commitment to Naomi clearly known.

She says, Listen, wherever you live, that's where I'm living.

Wherever you stay, that's where I'm staying.

Whatever your people look like, that's gonna be my people.

Whatever God you serve, that's gonna be the God I serve.

There is nothing that's gonna separate me until my life here on earth is over.

That is friendship.

That is commitment.

That is the thing that we don't, we we aren't as intentional with, and intentional to make sure it's in our life with as we should be.

And here's what I want us to see again: that when Naomi was at the bottom of this pit of despair, the lowest of lows, God sent her a person.

He sent her a friend, he sent someone to do life with.

Naomi had scars that needed healing, and the healing ultimately comes as a result of the commitment and friendship that Ruth shows her.

So again, oftentimes God brings healing to the deepest wounds through the deepest friendships.

And just like Naomi, we have to come to this place where we are willing to let people help us.

We are willing to let people stay rather than trying to push them away all the time.

Even you even see it in Naomi a little bit, it's kind of like she just kind of gives up.

She's like, All right, then come on.

And it just says she stopped talking.

But at the end of the day, she allowed Ruth to stay.

She allowed Ruth to come with her and help her.

So after seeing Ruth's determination and commitment, Naomi finally stops trying to convince Ruth to return home, and she allows her to continue with her.

So let's keep reading 19 through 22.

So it says the two of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem, and when they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival, and the local women exclaimed.

Can this be Naomi?

Her people were waiting for her.

But she says, Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, she answered, for the Almighty has made me very bitter.

That's what Mara means.

She says, I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.

Why do you call me Naomi since the Lord has opposed me and the Almighty has afflicted me?

Now, one thing in this in this story that I feel like we can we can honor, we can respect about Naomi is her honesty.

I mean she was she was honest.

She was wounded and clearly hurting, but never once, never once in this story does Naomi try to hide or cover anything up.

Right?

Never once does she try to look stronger than she really is, or try to look happier than she really is.

Never once does she try to cover up pain and hurt with a fake smile.

But instead she is blatantly honest before other people, but also before God.

She doesn't hold anything back.

She's honest.

She made it clear that she felt like the Lord's hand had turned against her, that her life is bitter, that she went away full, but the Lord has taken away everything, and she now has returned empty.

But here's the most revealing thing about Naomi's heart is that she still returned.

Right?

She still came back.

She still trusted in the Lord's faithfulness.

And that's the thing about Naomi.

Listen, her theology, her theology is intact.

Her theology is good.

It's together, but her heart is broken in pieces.

Her theology is there, but her heart is broken.

She still believes God is in control of everything, or she wouldn't have come come back, she wouldn't have returned to Bethlehem to His where His presence was, where His people were, but her heart is obviously wounded, and she even believes that the Lord is against her.

And there's a word for what Naomi is doing here, and it's called lament.

It's called lament.

Lament is what faith sounds like when it hurts.

Lament is what faith sounds like when we're wounded, when life happens.

When we find ourselves in circumstances that we never asked for, never imagined ourselves to be in.

And if that makes you a little nervous, I want you to see how much of the Bible is written exactly like this.

There's an entire book of the Bible called what?

Lamentations, right?

Roughly a third of the Psalms are laments.

God gave his people words like, how, how long, Lord?

How long?

He gave them words like, will you forget me forever?

We see the words of Jesus on the cross that comes from Psalms 22 when he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

But here's the thing, we don't, we don't, we don't do this much anymore.

I don't do this much anymore.

We don't lament.

And somewhere along the way, we decided that that we have to be we have to be polite and polished with the Lord.

Somewhere along the way, we we came under this misinterpretation that prayer is supposed to sound nice.

And so we we we walk in here, we maybe sit down and and and read our Bibles in the mornings when we feel like we're in the worst week of our lives, and we pray things like Lord, would you would you just be with us?

Will you just be with us?

And instead, deep down we want to say, God, where are you?

Where are you?

How long are you gonna allow me to walk through this?

How long are you gonna allow me to walk through infertility?

How long are you gonna wait to heal me from this disease that I never imagined or thought I would have?

How long am I gonna have to suffer and see loved ones taken away from me what feels like year after year after year?

You listen, you are allowed to tell God the truth.

Okay?

You are allowed to tell God the truth.

He can handle it.

You are allowed to say when it hurts, he can handle it.

And contrary to what your parents might have told you when you grow up, you can ask God why.

You can ask him why.

And we can be honest with God as long as we are talking to him and not about him from a distance.

We can be honest with God when we're talking to him and not about him from a distance.

Listen, Naomi was honest about her pain, but deep down, we know that Naomi still had trust in the Lord.

She had trust in the Lord through it all.

So Naomi returns to Bethlehem after ten long years of despair and wounds and hurt and death.

She's bitter, she's empty, she's wounded.

But we see that she has two things.

She's got trust in the Lord, and she's got the arm of a trusted friend in Ruth.

And it is too through these two things that God begins to heal the wounds that Naomi had inherited, the wounds that Naomi never asked for, and it changed the course of Naomi's life, Ruth's life, the destiny of the nation of Israel, and ultimately it changed mine and yours eternal salvation.

So let's keep reading.

Ruth 2.1.

It says, now Naomi had a relative on her husband's side.

He was a prominent man of noble character from Elimelech's family, and his name was Boaz.

Okay, so I'm about to summarize the rest of the book of Ruth in 30 seconds.

As the book of Ruth goes on, Ruth becomes the main character, and she eventually finds favor with this man named Boaz.

Boaz shows kindness towards Ruth, but he goes out of her way to protect her, to provide for her.

Come to find out, this Boaz guy, he's not just a nice guy, but he is a family redeemer.

He has the ability within their culture, their times, to restore what had been lost and ultimately taken away from Ruth and Naomi.

And in God's sovereignty, he brought Ruth and Boaz together, and rather than leaving Naomi and Ruth widowed and childless, God brings healing to their lives, healing to their wounds.

This is kind of how the book of Ruth ends.

Ruth 4, 13 through 16.

It says, Boaz took Ruth, she became his wife, he slept with her, Ao, and the Lord granted conception to her, and she gave birth to a son.

And listen, the woman said to Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you without a family redeemer today, may his name become well known in Israel.

He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age.

Indeed, your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than seven sons has given birth to him.

Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and became a mother to him.

Listen, even though this book is mainly focused on the life of Ruth, it's named, you know, named Ruth for a reason, it's fitting that this book ends with the blessing of Naomi.

With the blessing of Naomi, the woman who said, I went away full, but the Lord has taken away everything.

He's brought me back empty.

That woman is now bouncing her grandson on her knee.

And imagine, imagine if Naomi never left Moab.

Think about how close Naomi was to possibly never experiencing the healing and restoration that the Lord had waiting for her.

But even when she couldn't see what the Lord was doing, she had trust in him and she had the arm of a trusted friend to get her through it.

But Naomi's trust in the Lord and trusted friendship with Ruth, it didn't just bring healing to her life.

But like I said earlier, eventually it would bring healing to the lives of millions of people, including you and me.

This is the last verse, or one of the last verses in the book of Ruth.

Verse 17, it says, The neighbor women said, A son has been born to Naomi.

And they named him Obed.

He was the father of Jesse and the father of David.

And according to Matthew 1, we know that 28 generations later, that Jesus, the Messiah, and the Son of God would come through the lineage of David and Jesse and Obed, and ultimately Boaz and Ruth and Naomi.

We can't afford to, again, there's no coincidences, no accidents in Scripture.

We can't miss this that while Naomi was at the bottom of the pit of despair, in her circumstance, in her life, God was working out his plan for eternal redemption through Jesus Christ.

Some of the hardest wounds are the ones that that you never asked for, that we never asked for.

And there is no way to know what everyone is walking in this room with.

There's no way to know how you're feeling this morning, but I am confident that some of you walked in this morning with wounds that you didn't ask for and circumstances that you never expected to find yourself in.

You may feel as if you're at the bottom of the pit of despair.

You may feel afflicted.

You may feel bitter.

You may feel like God's hand has turned against you and against your family.

And again, I may not know what your wound is, but here's what I do know.

And I can confidently tell you that even when you can't see it, God is working.

Even when you have no idea what he's doing, he's doing something, and it is for your good.

Russ says all the time even when we can't trace God's hand, we can trust his heart, knowing that he is working for the good of his people.

So two things that that's the first one.

Even if you can't see it, God is working.

The second one is this is that you don't have to walk through it alone.

Whatever it is that you may be walking through, whatever wounds you might be in desperate need of healing for, you do not have to walk through those things alone.

You don't choose everyone wound, but you can choose who you walk through it with.

So when you find yourself wounded, when you find yourself in a situation where life has happened just like it happened with Naomi, what will you do?

What is your response?

Will you continue to wander in the wilderness of Moab, possibly missing out on all the blessings and healing and restoration that God has in store for you?

Or will you pursue and return to the Lord in faith, knowing that he will work all things out for the good of those who love him, even when we can't see it?

Will you push everyone away and walk through life alone and live your life in isolation and loneliness?

Or will you allow God to bring healing through the church, through other people, through deep friendship?

Listen, we all have wounds, but but here's the reality.

We got to be honest with God and we gotta be honest with one another.

If we have wounds, let's be honest with God and let's be honest with one another.

Let's let's seek out healing and not be scared to admit that we need healing.

So here's two questions.

Our band's gonna lead us in response.

Two questions that I want not only want you to consider, but possibly even act out on in this room before we leave this morning.

The first question is this who is your Ruth?

Who is your Ruth?

Who is the the person in your life that that when life happens, that's who you go to.

It could be a spouse.

I think there's there's obviously value in having having friendships and walking through life with with our spouse.

If if you're not, then I would do it.

But also there's value in having it's there's value in having a friend.

A friend that you can go to when life happens, a friend that you can walk through life with, who bears your burdens, but you also bear theirs.

So when life happens, who's who's clinging to you?

Who's clinging to you, staying with you, staying committed to you?

And then the follow-up question is are you letting them?

Are you letting them in?

Are you letting them help you?

So here's the action step.

One, maybe your Ruth is in this room and you just need to go say thank you to that person.

You need to encourage them and say thank you.

Thank you for clinging to me.

Thank you for your friendship.

Thank you for walking through life with me.

But here's the next thing, if you don't feel like you have that person, then maybe start with someone in this room and just go up to someone and have an honest conversation of, hey, I need a friend.

I've shared that story before of a few years ago.

I went, he's his name is Brax Roberts.

We went and got breakfast, and I pretty much went to him and was like, hey man, I don't I need a friend.

I don't feel like I have friends.

I don't feel like I have a Ruth.

I don't feel like I have someone who's walking through life with me, and I need that, and I want you to be my friend.

So maybe that's a conversation you need to have with someone in this room this morning.

Find someone who can walk through life with you, who can cling to you, who can help bear your burden.

So that's the Naomi question.

The Naomi question is who is your Ruth?

But here's the Ruth question: Who's Ruth are you?

Who's Ruth are you?

Who around you is wounded and needs the arm of a trusted friend?

Who around you is hurting and scarred from simply life happening and needs someone to come in and walk alongside them and help lift them up and bear their burdens?

And will you be the person that clings to them?

Okay, so that's it.

That's the response.

Those two questions.

Who is your Ruth and whose Ruth are you?

And the action step is possibly moving around the room and talking to people face to face, just like in the good old days, and saying, hey, I really need a friend, or going up someone and saying, Hey, I know you're walking through this, and I I want to I want to pray for you.

How can I come alongside of you?

How can I help bear your burdens?

And if you're still sitting there and you have no idea where to start with any of this, I'm gonna, Russ is gonna talk about more here in a second, but I'm gonna go ahead and point you towards our community groups that are launching officially today.

If you're wounded in this room and you feel alone and you don't know where to start, then one of our community groups is is absolutely the place for you.

Listen, we've been talking about community groups for for the last month for a reason.

It's because we believe that's where God does the deepest work in our lives.

That when we're living in community, God brings life change through that.

Circles are better than rows.

It is through community groups that you experience the joys of belonging to the body of Christ, of meeting people that you get to walk through life with.

So that when life happens, you're not walking through life alone, but you're walking through it in the midst of deep friendship and community.

So who's your Ruth?

And whose Ruth do you need to be?

I'm gonna pray for us, and then y'all have freedom to respond and talk, pray for whoever you feel like you need to talk and pray for.

Father, again, we are grateful for the gospel.

Ultimately, we're you know beyond grateful for the hope that we have in the gospel and in salvation, in the completed and finished work in Christ, knowing, knowing, God, that we have victory, that we have freedom, that we have new life in the person of Jesus.

But God, I pray that in this moment, in this room, that you would use your people to bring healing where there needs to be healing, to heal wounds that need to be healed, to heal scars that need to be healed.

God, that you would use your people to show us what you're really like.

God, that in this room there would be honest conversations with you that maybe people in this room just need to take a second to lament and be honest with you in faith.

But God, also in this room, that there would be conversations where people are honest with one another, where people ask for help, people ask for friendship, people pray over other people, helping bear their burdens.

God, would you would you just fill us with your spirit?

And in this moment, would we respond as the body of Christ?

Father, we're grateful for the hope that we have in Jesus.

We give all glory to you, and we just invite you to draw near to us as we draw near to you.

We love you, we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.