20th September 2026 : Ruth and Naomi

Ruth and Naomi

Well, it's wonderful to be back once again. Some of you were here last night. I don't know if the lady's here that was going to give a testimony. I prayed to a lady last night who had a problem with her neck. I don't think you're here, are you? Oh, you're there. Is it still okay? Come and testify then. You know, testimony is something very, very powerful. The Bible says they overcame by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony. So when we testify to what God has done, it not only seals that in our own life, but it encourages other people. Because then you feel, well, if God did that for somebody else, then he can also do that for me. So do you want to just quickly share what happened last night?

For about six to seven months, well, for a year I'd got a bad back. At Brian and Paula's I got prayed for. And the back completely has been healed. But my neck never stopped and every time I've been like a puppet, every time I move it cracks and you can feel it. And it's not painful. It's just cracking up on my head. So I got used to it. And then I had some mental problems this past month. So last night you asked if people needed healing physically or emotionally. And I didn't say about my mental side of it because just push that down, keep it in your box and push it to the side. So you prayed for me and my neck's completely healed. No cracking. Hallelujah. And I woke up this morning, all the way it's just been flushed out. Amen. Hallelujah.

Amen. Hallelujah. Okay, let's pray. Yeah, Father, we just want to thank you for this time, Lord. We give you all the praise and we give you all the glory, Lord. I just thank you, God, for this opportunity, Lord, to come into your presence, Lord, and to release your word to your people. And I pray, God, that we will have hearts to receive, hearts to understand, ears to hear, Lord, eyes to see. And I ask, Lord, that you will speak through me what is on your heart, Lord, for each and every one of us, Lord. And God, we will give you all the praise and all the glory in Jesus' name, amen.

So as I was asking the Lord, You see, God sometimes keeps changing things. When I was actually traveling here, I'd got something completely different on my mind. And then last night and then this morning, God suddenly started putting something else on my heart. So I'm like, okay, let's just go with whatever God is doing. And I just kept hearing, it's a new day. And I was getting that song in my head. It's actually a secular song. It's a new day, it's a new dawn, and I'm feeling good. And I don't really listen to secular songs now, but sometimes God can speak to you through something. He can put something.

And so what I felt that God was saying was in our lives, it is a new day, it's a new dawn, and we're going to feel great. And God is going to release us from all of the stuff and all of the junk of the past. And he says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come. Hallelujah. And maybe you're here and you can testify that yes, your life used to be in the pit, but then Jesus came and lifted you up and made things all brand new. Maybe you're here and you haven't yet experienced that. Maybe you're still in that place where everything is dark. Well, there is a light. Jesus said, I am the light. Whoever walks with me shall never walk in darkness.

So I don't know where you are today, but Jesus is offering you a new day, a new life. He says, forget the former things. Do not dwell upon the past. Now, of course we're going to still remember the past. Of course we're going to hopefully learn from the past. But he says, don't dwell. What is the difference? The difference is when you dwell, it means you constantly live there. And there are some people, even Christians, even people who love the Lord. But when you talk to them, you will hear them saying, oh, you know, I had a relationship 25 years ago. They can tell you every detail and how they were hurt and how from that time they were never able to move on with their life. Because she's still dwelling in the past. And when we dwell in the past, we can't take a hold of the new that God has for us.

So if we're still in that place, we need to come and say, God, I'm still hurting, I'm still grieving, but I don't want to be in this place. I want to let this go. I want to let it go. Come and surrender it at the feet of Jesus. Come and surrender it at the cross and then leave it there. Sometimes we come with our hurts and our pains and we bring it to the cross then afterwards we pick it up again and go back. We need to leave it at the cross and pick up the joy and the peace and the new hope that God is giving to us. It is a new day.

You know, when God created everything, it says there was evening and there was morning. I want to encourage you that if you have been in the evening, morning is coming. And there's a wonderful song that's often played at Easter time. It's a, I'm not sure if it's African or black American man, but he goes all through and then he says, but it's only Friday. I don't know if you ever heard that one. Can't remember all of the, you know, about how the devil thought he put Jesus on the cross. The devil thought he put Jesus in the grave and how the demons were laughing. And he says, but it was only Friday. Sunday is coming.

And maybe in your life, The enemy has thrown all kinds of things at you to put you down, to disappoint you. You've been through marriage breakup. You've been through losing your job. You've been through abuse. You've been through sickness. You've been through mental health, whatever it is. And the devil has thrown all kinds of things. But I want to encourage you today, it's only Friday. Sunday is coming. In fact, Sunday has already come. It's already come. We're not waiting. It's already come. Because on that third day, just when the devil thought that he'd won, there was a shaking. There was a shaking. And Jesus rose up and he said, Behold, I am alive and I hold the keys of death and hell. He has risen victoriously so that we can be free from every curse, every sickness, every bondage, every sin. There is new life that is available for each and every one of us.

And in Isaiah 42, verse nine, it says former things have taken place, but new things I declare. You know, we've all got things in our past, haven't we? Even if we are the most holiest of persons, theres still stuff that we've all been through. But it's not about the stuff we've been through. It's how we're going to relate to it and how we're going to move forward from it. And God can take a hold of that and He can use it for His glory. You can be a blessing to other people with the things that you've been through. But we have to hand those things to God and allow His healing to come. In Psalms 30 verse 5, it says that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

You see, Jesus never promised that we would never, ever go through anything. He never promised that we would never have any problems in our life. But he said they're only supposed to be temporary. We're not supposed to stay there forever. We're supposed to come out the other side. You know, even Jesus went through the wilderness, but he didn't stay there. He went in full of the Holy Spirit, but when he came out, he was in the power of the Holy Spirit. So in the midst of the wilderness, God can heal us, God can empower us, and we can come out of that place in a much higher place. But some of us get stuck. And we're still there 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, still telling the same story about somebody that hurt us. And I'm not trying to trivialize the things you've been through. I'm just trying to say we can't be stuck there. We have to be healed and come out from that place and allow what we've been through to make us into a greater person, a more powerful person and someone that God can use for his glory.

In Song of Songs 2, verse 11, it says, the winter is past. The spring has come, the season of singing has come. I want to declare to you there's a change of season that God wants to bring into your life. And with a change of season, there has to be a change of the things you wear and the change of the things that you do and a change of the places that you go. The places that you go when it's winter, the things you wear when it's winter, the way that you behave when it's winter is different to how you behave and the things you wear and the places you go when it's spring. Is that true? Even in the natural? If you came when it's now 30 degrees, when we had some of those heat waves, and you want to put on your big winter coat, you're not going to be comfortable because the season has changed. And that heavy coat has to come off so that you can enjoy the season that you are now in.

And sometimes we do that same thing in our spiritual seasons. We put on the burdens, we put on the heaviness of oppression and hurts and pains and all of these things that we've carried in our lives. And then God says, the season is changing. The spiritual winter is over. And I want to bring you into the springtime where things begin to come alive. Where there is singing. Where there is new life. And yet sometimes we're trying to walk into that new season with the heavy burdens of the winter time. God says, no, those things have gotta come off. Like when Lazarus came out of the tomb, he came out, but he still got the grave clothes around him. But Jesus said to the people standing nearby, take off the grave clothes and let him go.

I think it's very interesting that Jesus himself did not take off Lazarus' grave clothes. He told the people, take off his grave clothes. He has given that job to the church. We pray for one another and we take off the grave clothes we take off the heavy burdens and the oppressions and the things that we have been carrying and we begin to encourage one another we pray for one another and we release one another into the new season. I want to declare over this church as well it's a new season, it's a new season. The old has gone and the new has come.

And God is going to do something amazing that you could not even imagine. Even if God was to begin to reveal all of it to you, you could not even. But God is saying this is a time and this is a season to seek God in a way like never before. He says, you have never been this way before. Therefore, you must stay close to the ark and follow the presence of God because I'm taking you over into a new land, a land flowing with milk and honey, a place where there's going to be rest and a place where things are going to begin to be easy in the Spirit because there is a fresh favour, a fresh wind of favour that is over this church. There's a shift that is coming over this church. There is a change of season that is coming over this church. I declare it. I decree it. I call it to be from this day in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah.

So the winter has passed.

I want to look at a book concerning new days. It's in the book of Ruth. Now you'll find the book of Ruth after the book of Judges if you're not sure where it is. And whenever we look at this book, most of the time I preach it on the lines of Ruth and how Ruth came from the land of Moab, a cursed place, and she broke through into her blessing. But I want to also look at Naomi in this situation. So in the book of Ruth, I'm just going to give you just the background of this story. A man named Elimelech took his wife Naomi and their two sons to stay in the land of Moab because there was a famine in the land of Bethlehem where they were staying. And so Elimelech decided, let us go away from this land of famine and let us go and live temporarily in the land of Moab so that we cannot starve from the famine. But when they got there, after some time, disaster struck.

First of all, Elimelech died. Now we're not told what he died from. But then it says that the two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, they then married Moabite women. And sometime later they both died. Now again, we're not told what they died of, but there's two things here that I want to bring out. Number one, I don't believe that they were supposed to be in the land of Moab, that maybe it was just a good idea, not a God idea. And secondly, I don't believe that Elimelech's sons were supposed to have married the Moabite women. Because if you know anything about the background of the Moabites, in the book of Deuteronomy, it says that no Moabite is allowed to be in the assembly of the Lord and do not even seek friendship with them.

So if they were not supposed to even seek friendship surely they were also not supposed to seek marriage. So were they out of the will of God? Was it a good idea rather than a God idea, even though we know, of course, that God turned the whole thing around? And sometimes we find ourselves in a wilderness because we've moved out of the will of God and we've tried to work things out in our own understanding. But I want to tell you that through the grace of God, even your mistakes, he can turn them around for his good and for his glory. The second thing that I want to bring out from this is it is very strange that the father dies in this land and then the two sons also die in this land. Something was going on.

Was this a generational curse that had been allowed to come upon them because they were walking in a place that they were not supposed to be? And maybe some of us, we've experienced a lot of strange things that have gone on in our family. And things do run in family lines and there are such things as generational curses. And even doctors will tell you that some sicknesses run in family lines. Sometimes you find cancer runs in family lines, sometimes you find that heart conditions run in family lines. But also even more than that, and I found this a lot when I've been working in Africa, but I don't believe it's just for Africa. I believe it's everywhere, that you find in some families, somebody always dies. Somebody always has a marriage breakdown. Someone always has mental health breakdown. Someone always has poverty. Someone always has cancer. And it's like, you know, we know that we all go through some things in life, but sometimes you look at some people and some families and you think, this is not normal.

If you ever found like this, this is not normal. Not normal. Sometimes people have told me different things and then I've listened to their story and I'm like, this is not normal. This is not normal. Okay, so my mother died and now my sister died and now my child has died and now my grandchild, I'm like, it's not normal. Something is going on. And here we have this situation where the husband died, then one son died, then another son died. What's going on? And maybe you're here today and you've been experiencing that in your family.

Well, I have good news for you because the Bible says in the book of Galatians, when Jesus went to the cross, he became a curse for us so that we can inherit a blessing. And if today you realize that this is like a pattern that is going down your family line, and one of the big things in this country that can sometimes cause those generational things is actually Freemasonry. Can cause untimely death, can cause sicknesses and all kinds of different things. If there's been anything like that, in your family background and you've not been set free from it it's not been broken you need to ask the Lord to break that off of your family line. So these things can occur and we're wondering like why does this always happen to me and maybe we've thought oh you know we, we, we're just unlucky in this family. It's more than unlucky but there is an answer when we come and say, God, forgive me of my sin, forgive my forefathers of their sin. Jesus, I believe you became a curse for me. I can be set free. I can be set free.

So now Naomi is left just with the two daughters-in-law. One was called Orpah and the other one was called Ruth. Naomi decides, let me go home. What do I have now here in the land of Moab? My husband has died. My two sons have died. Let me go home. She learned that the famine now had ended in her home in Bethlehem. So she said, let me go home. So she speaks to her two daughters-in-law and she tells them, I'm going home. I wish you well. Stay here. Find another husband. And it says that they both cried, but Orpah said, okay, bye-bye. And she stayed.

But Ruth, she decided this was her opportunity for a new beginning. And this was where her life began to change. She made a decision. She said, where you go, I will go. Your God will be my God. So she changed allegiances. She was no more going to worship the false god. She said, now I'm going to worship the true and living God. That's when things began to turn around. That's when the curse on her life began to break. She said, don't urge me to leave. Where you die, I will die. I'm not leaving you. Naomi said, okay. And so the two women, they begin making their way back to Bethlehem.

Now, this is the part now where I want to bring out something else. In Ruth 1, from verse 19 through to 21, it says, the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. And when they arrived, the whole town was stirred and the women exclaimed, can this be Naomi? So now the women in the town, as Naomi and Ruth are coming back, they're looking, can this be Naomi? Naomi's coming home. And she said, don't call me Naomi. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me. The Lord Almighty has bring misfortune upon me. This was how Naomi was feeling when she came back home to Bethlehem.

The women were waiting. Is this Naomi that left many years ago? Is this our sister that we see coming and she has another lady with her? We don't know who the other lady is, but is this Naomi? Naomi says, don't call me Naomi. Don't call me. Call me Mara, which means bitter, because I went away full, but I've come back with nothing. And one day in our lives whether we feel bitter, I wonder whether we feel like, God, why has all of these things happened to me? I feel so empty. I feel so bitter. I feel like there is no hope left for my life. And I want to encourage you, if you've been feeling like that, restoration is coming. Restoration is coming.

And the amazing thing is that the restoration would come through the most unlikeliest of person. She was actually walking with the woman. That would be the key to her restoration but nobody would have known it. She was a Moabite from a cursed background, a cursed people, a cursed line of people. And here was Naomi, who was now calling herself Mara, coming back with a young woman from a cursed line. Nobody would have imagined that woman was going to be the key to both of their breakthroughs. And sometimes God connects us with people but we miss the connections because they don't look how we think they should look. And right throughout the word of God, we see that so many times the blessing of God is packaged in a way that we would miss it.

Even Jesus, He didn't come, did he, how people imagined. They thought Messiah, they thought the king. They were expecting him to be born in a palace somewhere, but no, he was born in the stable with the animals. It wasn't how they imagined. And you remember when Jesus then was standing and looking over Jerusalem near the end of his time and he wept over Jerusalem and he said, if only you had known the day of your visitation, but now it will be hidden from you. A lot of them, especially the Jews, they missed it. Some of them are still waiting for Messiah. They didn't believe he was Messiah because it wasn't packaged how they thought. And sometimes we're waiting for our blessings, we're waiting for our connections, we're waiting for our open doors, we're waiting for the things that God is, and we're looking for something that is packaged, how we think it. And then we miss, we miss what God has for our life.

But the restoration began, the restoration began, because, I'm not gonna read all of the story, but Ruth then says, let me go to the field. And I just think that God is so amazing. You know, the Bible says the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord. And I wonder how many fields there were in Bethlehem, because they came back at the start of the barley harvest. So Ruth said, Let me go to the fields. Let me see if I can just pick up leftover grain. And the reason why she knew she could do that was because in the book of Leviticus, God made provision for the poor. And people were told, don't pick up everything in your field. Leave the edges like for the poor so they may have something to pick up. So Ruth went to the field saying, let me just pick up any leftover grain. And in that field, the owner was Boaz, who was going to be her future husband. And she worked with such humility and such a beautiful attitude that Boaz began to notice her.

You know, one of the keys to your new day, because there was coming new days for both Ruth and Naomi, wasn't there? And the new day, one of the reasons why it happened was because of Ruth's faithfulness and her attitude on her way to the breakthrough. You see, she went into the field and she was humble. She could have gone into the field angry, couldn't she? She could have gone into the field saying, why did my husband die? Why did I have to come here? Why did I have to be doing this? And she could have been there doing it because of a necessity, but with attitude. And if she had done that, her story would have been completely different. Because Boaz noticed her, said, who is that?

What made Boaz say, who is that? I believe it was the humility, the humbleness that made Boaz notice her. And sometimes when we are bitter and we're hurt and we're angry, we portray something that tells everybody, stay away from me, I'm angry. Don't come to me. Life has been hard to me. And what happens? We push all our blessings away. The things that may have come to us, but now we push those people and those blessings that would have come through those people. We push them away because of our attitude. And then what happens? Things get worse. And then our attitude gets worse. Oh wow, we see. We need to allow God to bring healing so that we can still be walking in gentleness, even if we may be feeling angry and hurt on the inside, but asking God to heal us so that we become approachable, not prickly.

There's many prickly Christians, isn't there? You looking at me? Talking to me? And we wonder why nothing works for us. We don't get favour. We don't get divine connections because we're too prickly. But Ruth wasn't prickly. She had every reason to be, but she wasn't. Boaz says, who is it? Who is it? And the story goes that she ends up marrying this man. And such an amazing turnaround. She goes from being the woman that was just picking up the leftover grain to being married to the owner of the whole field. I mean, only God could do that. Only God could do that.

And then it gets even more amazing because they have a child called Obed. And Obed actually means servant or worshiper. And the blessing comes not only now to Ruth, but also to Naomi. In Ruth 4, verse 13, it says, So Boaz took Ruth, she became his wife. Then he went to her and the Lord enabled her to conceive. She gave birth to a son. And the women said to Naomi, Praise be to the Lord who this day has not left you without a kinsman redeemer. May he be famous throughout Israel. He will renew your life and sustain your old age. For your daughter-in-law who loves you and is better to you than seven sons has given him birth.

So this breakthrough, its not just for Ruth. Yes, now Ruth, who lost her husband, comes to a new land. She gets now a new husband, a rich husband, an influential husband, has a child. Yes, her life is turned around. But also Naomi, her mother-in-law, her life now, instead of being Mara, being bitter, now God begins to fill her life with fresh things. Now she's got a grandson. And the women say, he will renew your life and sustain you. Your daughter-in-law is better to you than seven sons. And Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. And the women living there said, Naomi has a son. Of course it wasn't, you know, she was the grandmother, but yeah, because she was now going to be responsible for jointly caring for this son. And they named him Obed. And the most amazing thing here, we were talking about generational curses.

Obed, it says he was the father of Jesse and the father of David. What is the line of Jesus is the line of David. So I always think this story is so amazing. How did a woman who was from a cursed background, not allowed in the assembly of the Lord, manage to break through all of that to marry Boaz and have a child in the line of Jesus Christ? She broke through that generational curse.

And for Naomi, who came back saying, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara because I'm bitter and my life is empty. Because she took a chance on an unlikely person her life was restored. She had a daughter-in-law who loved her more than seven sons, the people said. Now she's also got Boaz and now she's got her grandchild, Obed, who's in the line of Jesus Christ. So this whole story, this was a new day. It was a new day.

And I want to ask you this morning, what is your new day that you need? Do repeated patterns happen in your life? Today it needs to be broken. And it's broken because of the cross. It's broken because of the blood of Jesus. It's broken because Jesus became a curse so that we might inherit a blessing. What are the bitter things that we've been carrying around? Have we been unable to let go of the hurts and pains so that we can move forward into the new life that God has for us? Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

And I wanna pray for you today that God will release you into a new day. It's a new day, it's a new dawn, and you're feeling good. Let's just stand up onto our feet today.

Father, we thank you and we bless you, Lord God. We give you all the praise. We give you all the glory, Lord. I just want to pray right now, Lord, for every person here, Lord. You know, God, what they have been through. You know what they are going through, Lord. You know, Lord, that the bitter things, Lord, that have been in their lives. You know, God, the generational things that they have passed through, Lord God. You know all of the pains, Lord, disappointments, Lord God. All of those things, Lord, that have been upon their lives, Lord. I just want to pray today, Lord, that You will give each one of us, Lord, the ability to lay those things down at the cross. To lay those things down at the cross, Lord, and you will take our bitterness, you will take our emptiness, you will take our sadness, you will take our confusion. You will take, Lord, the disappointment. You will take all of those things, Lord God, and you will begin to replace it with new hope, Lord, new healing, new vision, Lord God. Lord, where we felt empty, Lord, you will begin to fill us, Lord God. You will begin to fill us, Lord God. Father, I thank you, God, that you're going to bless, Lord, the latter part of our life, Lord, more than the former part of our life, Lord. There's going to be a grace lot. There's going to be a grace lot that's going to come upon our lives.