Ruth 2:12: “The LORD repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”

May 7th, 2023 by Pastor Ed in devotional

Ruth had surrendered herself to God in the first chapter. This verse in chapter 2 was a prayer, or a blessing, spoken over Ruth by Boaz, her kinsmen. It acknowledged that the rewards in her life were from the hand of God, and were a result of her surrendering to Him. How often do we stop to consider this truth for those who have surrendered to Him? Once we surrender to Him, then everything, everything, we have is from His hand. Oswald Chambers said it this way:

Once this is done [surrendering], the remainder of your life will exhibit nothing but the evidence of this surrender, and you never need to be concerned again with what the future may hold for you. Whatever your circumstances may be, Jesus is totally sufficient.

Boaz also used a familiar picture of God’s protection found in the psalms to assure Ruth that God was taking care of her. “Under whose wings” is a picture of safety and refuge:

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me!
For my soul trusts in You;
And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge,
Until these calamities have passed by. (Psalm 57:1)

There is an enormous gap between what we think we can do and what God calls us to do in His kingdom. Our ideas of what we can do for Him, or even what we want to do for Him, are trivial and insignificant in comparison to God’s ideas for us, which are huge and completely beyond our ability to accomplish. This fact helps us, when God’s desired results come about, to be only slightly tempted to take the credit ourselves because we remember that it was impossible for us to have accomplished it on our own.

“LORD, have Your way in us today. Do Your work as You see fit; we surrender afresh to Your direction and will.”