Our heavenly Father, the Omnipotent God, all sufficient God, our provider, our defender, our sustainer, our help in ages past, our very present help, hallowed be Your name. Father Lord, we thank You, our declaration this morning is that You are God and You are God forever, glory be Your name forever more.
Father, we thank You for sustainance, we thank You for the privilege of life, we thank You, Lord, that we are gathered before You, Father, we thank You because this morning You are honoring us with Your presence, glory be to Your name forever more. My God and my Father, we pray, oh Lord, this morning that through Your word Lord, You will speak to us, You will touch us and transform our lives in the mighty name of Jesus. And from this day, Father, Lord, You will help us to make better choices, to take better decisions that will lead us to our destinies in the mighty name of Jesus.
Father, we thank You for what You’ve done in the past, thank You for what You will do this morning and what You will yet do again and again, glory be to Your name forever more, in Jesus wonderful name we prayed. Praise the Lord! Praise the living Jesus!
Good morning, daddies and mommies, God bless you in the name of Jesus. I’d like to appreciate my father in the Lord, daddy thank you for this privilege, the Lord will continue to lift you higher and higher in the mighty name of Jesus. Praise the Lord!
This morning, brethren, very quickly, we’ll go through the Book of Ruth 1: 1 – 18 (MSG) but I’ll stop in between. 1 – 2Once upon a time – it was back in the days when judges led Israel – there was a famine in the land. A man from Bethlehem in Judah left home to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The man’s name was Elimelech; his wife’s name was Naomi; his sons were named Mahlon and Kilion – all Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They all went to the country of Moab and settled there.
3 – 5Elimelech died and Naomi was left, she and her two sons. The sons took Moabite wives; the name of the first was Orpah, the second Ruth. They lived there in Moab for the next ten years. But then the two brothers, Mahlon and Kilion, died. Now the woman was left without either her young men or her husband. (I’ll go quickly to verse 11). 11 – 13But Naomi was firm: “Go back, my dear daughters. Why would you come with me? Do you suppose I still have sons in my womb who can become your future husbands? Go back, dear daughters – on your way, please! I’m too old to get a husband. Why, even if I said, ‘there is still hope!’ and this very night got a man and had sons, can you imagine being satisfied to wait until they were grown? Would you wait that long to get married again?
No, dear daughters; this is a bitter pill for me to swallow – more bitter for me than for you. God has dealt me a hard blow. 14Again they cried openly. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye; but Ruth embraced her and held on. 15Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is going back home to live with her own people and gods; go with her.” (Now, let’s take note of verse 16 to 18) 16 – 18But Ruth said, “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I live. Your people are my people, your God is my god; where you die, I’ll die, and that’s where I’ll be buried, so help me, God – not even death itself is going to come between us!” When Naomi saw that Ruth had her heart set on going with her, she gave in. And so the two of them traveled on together to Bethlehem. Praise the Lord. What a fairly long passage, God will help us this morning.
The topic before us this morning is “Your Decisions Determine your Destiny,” Hallelujah! Let’s quickly look at the two key words there – decision and destiny; you can’t define decision without going to the word decide, the root word. So to decide is to make a final choice or judgment about something, things, event or people, to make a final choice.
Many of us remember this program years back, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? You know after the guy would say the question and the person answers, he will say final answer? That’s a decision. To make the final choice, to choose or to do something especially after thinking about many possibilities, should I take strawberry, ice cream, should I take vanilla, should I take plain, after looking at the various options you take one, that is a decision to choose between one possibility or another. Praise the living Jesus!
In a social gathering, many of us go to different social gatherings and they have all sorts of things packed – there’s table for rice, all sorts of rice, white, red, yellow, green, and then you have amala, you have all sorts and then is time to go and eat. There are many people who are thinking which one should I take? Eventually you pick one, that’s a process of decision. But you find some people who say ah it’s difficult to take one, what do they do? You take amala, you take rice, you take eba and put ewedu, that’s indecision. Praise the living Jesus!
Now what is destiny? Destiny is what will necessarily happen to a particular person or to something in the future. Destiny is something foretold or inevitable, it is the cause of event held to be in place by a supernatural power, in this case God Almighty. Praise the living Jesus! There’s the place of divine divinity in destiny, when God has destined, but there’s also the place of humanity in destiny. There are things that you can do also to shape your destiny as we will see very soon.
Now the topic before us like I said earlier is your decisions determine your destiny, you can look at it in a different way and say your future is a function of your choices. Now let’s take some lessons; life is about decision making, brethren, and one of the greatest abilities that God has given to us as humans is the power of free will, power of choice, ability to decide on our own.
In Genesis 3:15-17, God called Adam and said to him, you can eat of this tree, you can eat of this one, you can eat of this one but do not eat of that, and left them. But what happened? Man decided that this one that God said we should not eat, because Satan said is good, I will eat it, that’s a decision. Praise that living Jesus!
Every day in life we are faced with decision, in Deuteronomy 30:19, the Bible says, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, (I will paraphrase it), what do you want to choose, is it life or death? I’ve shown you the way of life, I’ve shown you the other side, choose life that you may live, but He did not compel life on anyone, He just said choose.
So God has given us the power of choice, we make all kinds of decisions every day, every hour, every minute; financial decisions – should I spend this money, should I invest it, should I buy asoebi or should I put it into savings? The money you spend on feeling good, somebody else decides to keep his own, after 3 years both of you compared notes and the feeling good asoebi has become tattered or is faded or is no longer in vogue but the person’s money continues to grow in the bank, it’s a decision that we make.
Must you buy the latest phone model when the one you have already is still working? Some people say I want to be part of what’s reigning and some people says it’s still working, why change it? We take relationship decisions, you nurture your relationship, everybody we meet at any point in time has something to do in our lives either today or sometime in the future, so you take time to nurture relationship.
Some people have neighbors, they don’t carefully nurture the relationship, then one day the neighbor becomes a governor and then say he’s my neighbor, I want to see you neighbor. How would he welcome you when you didn’t treat him well when he was your neighbor? So we nurture relationships. Then also take moral decisions, there are moral decisions that we take every day. Many of us, recently it circulated, there was somebody whose account was credited in error by bank with a big sum of money and there’s this debate should I return it or not return it?
It’s a moral decision, whose money was it, it was somebody else’s money and he says I will not release it, if it was you, 1 billion naira credit to account, what would you do, will you return it to the bank? We make moral decisions every day. Yes, you want to get well, you want to get rich, but not in a crooked manner. Praise the Lord.
We make marital decisions. There is a tough time, this period is hard, things are not working well, is that a reason why you must pack out, woman? Oh, we make marital decision, the mistake she made, yes, is that a reason why you must go out and go and look for a spare outside?
Then we make spiritual decisions. We are here this morning to seek God in spirit and in truth, and there are people who says who is God that I would look out for Him. Spiritual decisions. We make decisions about relocation, people say oh things are wonderful in Nigeria, I want to try it elsewhere, and some people say I want to remain here because you cannot make money elsewhere in the world like you would do here.
Decisions everybody make, and young men, young ladies make decisions every day. Is it Sister Esther? Is it Sister Evelyn? Is it Sister Aisha? At the end of the day you settle for one – decision making. Praise the living Jesus. Many people want to become doctors but they don’t go to university, how do you become a doctor? Because you have to go and study, you have to go through housemanship, you have to do all sorts and then you are conferred the title and you begin to practice. Anyone who goes to become a doctor without going through those precises is a quack doctor, because you cannot graduate from a school where you did not register as a student. Praise our living Jesus!
Now we read from the book of Ruth, let’s take some lessons for our lives from this book; the first lesson or the first thing we see is the power of choice. Like I said earlier, God has given us all the power to choose and He will not compel anyone. That passage says there was famine in the land of Judah, there was famine and a Elimelech looked at it and said I hear that in Moab there is abundance, people are building houses, they are buying new cars, in fact somebody got to Canada in 3 years he started sending Lexus home, do you know what they are doing?
So Elimelech now said okay, I will take my family and go, it was a decision, they did not send him out of the country, they did not compel him to go, he decided that he was going to leave. I believe that there were other people in the same land of Judah who were going through the same things who also decided to remain in Judah. We take decisions. Praise the living Jesus!
So he left, he and his family left and he took that decision knowing fully well that Moabites were the archenemies of Judah – of the people of God, but he didn’t mind. He said it’s better to go to the enemy’s territory and be able to flourish, to live, to buy motors, than to stay with God where you are praying and fasting for where the next meal will come. It was a decision. Praise the living Jesus.
Brethren, we are a sum total of the decisions that we make. That means the decisions that we make is a reflection of who we are. Hallelujah. We are free to choose, we are not victims in any way but we must choose right. In life you must take a side, there’s nothing like I don’t decide, if you don’t decide life will decide for you. Praise the living Jesus.
Then the second lesson that we’ll take from there is that the choices we make have consequences. A decision come out of the choice, the choices that we make have consequences, the choices we make will eventually determine the quality of life that we live. All the parties in that passage took decisions; Elimelech chose to go, his wife Naomi chose to follow him, the sons, maybe because they were still minors, they didn’t have much say in it but eventually they also decided, when they got to Moab, contrary to the law of God, to marry Moabites – decision.
Orpah and Ruth also decided to marry out of the Moab group, to marry into the land of Judah. Decisions, but all decisions have impact in the lives of different people but we’ll look at just two of them because of our time.
First, Elimelech, the decision he made, what were the consequences of that decision? Looking back, we can tell that he made a wrong decision, but many of us will probably have taken the same decision if we were in the situation because we want life to get better. A closer look shows that he relocated to Moab knowing fully well that Moabites were their enemies, he decided to look at the physical – there’s wealth there, there’s abundance there, there’s food there, rather than to look at the spiritual, what is God saying.
Matthew 6:33, the Bible says, “Seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you,” he went to seek refuge in the arms of the enemies in time of famine rather than look onto God to see what God would do for him. He chose to walk by sight and not by faith, oh, it’s happening there, but do you know what happened, when eventually Naomi decided to go back, you know why she went back? She said they said there is now abundance in Judah, the place where he ran away from because he was walking by sight, there was abundance 10, 15 years after – faith.
What is a trigger or what is the trigger for your decisions? Is it by what you see or is it by what God is saying? There are many people, you want to go and God says stay here, this is where I will bless you – decisions. Praise the living Jesus! Now the consequences of his decision, very tragic, very brutal consequences; he died, his two sons died, his death would have brought difficulties and challenges to his family, the happiness in that home would have disappeared overnight – negative consequences of his decision.
The family he left must have lived like destitute at some point if he was the bread winner for the family, he never reaped the fruits of his labor and he never lived to even see the abundance in his homeland even if he was planning to go back home later in life – consequences. Every decision we make has consequences.
Let’s look at Ruth also and the consequences of her own decision; in retrospect, we can say that Ruth made the right choices, the right call. The first choice Ruth made was that as Moabites, she knew that the people were people condemned by God, and she said I will not continue to live in condemnation, there’s a guy who is a Jew, let me get married to him so I can come under the covenant of the Jews – one right decision.
If you know something is wrong and you know somebody is doing it right, you can actually make a change, don’t insist on doing the wrong things. What else did she do? After Naomi decided that they wanted to go back home, even when it made sense for her to go back like Orpah – and by the way, Orpah didn’t do anything wrong, she made a pragmatic decision to go back.
The woman told her, “you are still young, you are still looking beautiful, another man is looking for you, go, don’t come and be a widow for the next 50 years of your life.” So she said, “Thank you, mama, for releasing me,” it was a mutual parting. But then Ruth said, I will not leave you (decision), your God will be my God, your people will be my people; where you go, I will go, where you die, I will die, where you are buried, I’ll be buried, I’m in it with you. And when Naomi saw that she could do nothing about it, she said okay, let’s go.
But that decision turned out to be the right decision because later in life, she got married again to Boaz, perhaps the biggest man in that village at the time and then she became the root from which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came from. She would never have come into that lineage because God will not go and bring an outsider to bring Jesus from, but God saw her heart, God saw her decision, God saw her ability to take the right decisions and said come, I need somebody like you. The decisions we make have consequences.
The final point that I want to take in this is that when we choose, it ends there as far as our role is concerned, our choices then go on to bring its consequences, those consequences we have no influence on them. I don’t know if you understand. If for example I choose to take 10 bottles of Coke in a day, my choice, Coke will not say don’t take me, but what happens because I have taken the coke to me, I can’t help it anymore because coke says I’m now in charge. I hope you understand that.
Now when we choose, it ends there and then our choices now go ahead and do what they want to do and we cannot change it. Praise our living Jesus. Elimelech took a choice, it was clear that he decided to go to the enemy’s territory, he decided to look for food in the presence of his enemies notwithstanding what the consequences will be. But then when the consequences came, the Bible didn’t tell us how he died but perhaps the people were like ah why is this stranger trying to make it in our midst, let us take care of him, he could not have managed that consequences or seen it coming. Praise the living Jesus!
In Genesis 26, Isaac also, he wanted to leave Gerar and God said to him, stay here, he had a choice – God, please I’ll come back, that’s one choice, God please, don’t be annoyed o, but I have to go now and come back but he said yes sir, he made a choice and then God said because you honored me, then God made things to happen in his life for which he did not have control. Brethren, that’s why we must be very careful about the choices that we make.
There are various examples in the Bible (which I pray my time will permit me to look at). Now, if the choices that we make, which ultimately become our decisions, are very important to the lives that we live subsequently or to our destiny or to where we end our lives, then the process of making those choices must be of importance to us. Praise the living Jesus!
So let’s quickly look at guide or how do people make decisions. First, we find these days that a lot of people make their decisions from social media, so they look at it, somebody is trending and the person is looking well and all that and the person says I don’t live under any man’s roof, nobody can control me, nobody can do this and all that, and then the ladies also say I don’t want to live under any man’s roof, it’s not true, it is that the man threw her out because she was not good, but that’s the person you want to follow.
Social media is what it is. How many of us have ordered items on social media before? You order the thing, it’s meant to be my size and then when you get it, it’s halfway, that’s what social media gives you. So if you take decisions from social media, it will give you halfway answer, they will not tell you the truth. Praise the living Jesus.
Some people also make take decisions from various navigation tools. I’ll combine this together; some called oracles, they said let me consult the oracle. Who is an oracle? Oracle is a god without eye, the Bible says they are gods that have no eyes and they are gods that have no ears, they cannot hear, they cannot function, and they are gods that need to be carried by you unlike our own God that carries us. Praise the living Jesus! So the oracle will necessarily mislead you.
I know a few times in football, they go and consult oracle, who will win this tournament and at the end of the day it was a different winner, oracle will mislead. And there’s one powerful oracle that many of us use, we want to travel from here to Awe and then you say oya, put up the map and it’s saying take Egbe, it’s the fastest route, by the time you get somewhere a trailer has stopped in there, the oracle could not have seen that but God can see it ahead and say don’t go that way. Many times I’ve used that map and I land up in traffic, bigger traffic than I was running away from. Praise the living Jesus.
Then many times we consult other people or ourselves, mobody can give you more than they have. We used to have one landlady who once, when we just got married, called my wife and said I like you people, you are just married, (we are just barely two three months in marriage), she said please anything you need come to me, let’s talk. We went together, when we saw their lifestyle we said this one is not good for us, we didn’t go back. Praise the living Jesus!
Then you can consult God and this is the biggest oracle if we must use the name ‘oracle’, He is the creator of heaven and earth, He created you for a purpose, each and every one of you, and He knows the reason why He created you; not only did He know the reason why He created you, He knows how to take you around to be what He wants you to be, and then He knows all things about you.
He knows when you’ll be sick, He knows when you’ll be tired, He knows when He will carry you and He has all powers. Even if anybody says you are getting too far, He has the powers to silence them and say this one is mine, I must take him or her to where he needs to be. He’s our best guide.
So now going back to the story of Ruth, Elimelech and all that, it will appear that Elimelech took a decision from his head and from what he saw, even though Ruth was a Moabite, my understanding of the matter is that the moment she came into the house of Eimelech as a family, she saw God that even the ones that carried the God didn’t see. And she began to walk with this God, which was why she said, “You want me to go back to idol worship?” She was saying to Naomi, no way, that your God, I must go there to serve Him.
She had already embraced God and there was something in her that was saying don’t go back and that’s the Spirit of God, that’s the way, brethren, that we can take the right decisions at all times so that it can end well with us in the mighty name of Jesus.
Let’s look at a few biblical examples; in Daniel 1:8, the Bible says Daniel proposed in his heart that he will not partake of the king’s meal. It was a decision even though in the real sense it wasn’t meal like that but let’s assume that the king set a table for captives, people who were hungry, destitute, the king set table you say you will not eat, who are you, they were too hungry, everybody was bombarding it and Daniel said no, why, because something in him says no, you are not for this place even though you are here and what happened, he became one of the three presidents in the land.
Consequences of his decision, and he became the biggest of the presidents, second only to the king. He served under four kings, he used four kings, he finished them like clothes. Praise the living Jesus.
What about Joseph? We all know that story, Genesis 39; Potiphar’s wife said yes, I can see prospect in you, young man, let’s start dating, he said no way, he took a decision. The Josephs of today would have used madam properly.
Let’s take one more; Abigail, very interesting, in 1 Samuel 25; Abigail’s husband was Nabal, Nabal was fairly rich, he had servants, he had flocks and all that. So at a point in time when his servants took the flock out, David’s servant helped to guide them so that armed robbers and all that do not waylay them. So they got back home safely and they now sent a message to Nabal, please find something for the boys who helped you and Nabal said which boy, they said David’s boy; he said which David, that one that was running away from his master, he ran down David.
So the servants of David took words back to him and David was annoyed, he was ready to come and destroy Nabal and all his household, read 1 Samuel 7:25. Then one of Nebal’s servants went to his wife, Abigail, and said madam, something is happening o, Abigail said please prepare a feast for like 400 people, let us take to David; servants, you take ahead, then she also rode after, and when she met David, she knelt down, respected David, prayed for him and also prophesied that he will be king, when he became king don’t forget me.
She had a choice, she could have said my husband was right, why should we give our hard earned money to that person, to that vagabond? But she made a choice. The consequence of her choice was that 10 days after, God killed Nabal and then when David heard, he said go and bring that woman to be my wife and she became his wife and became a queen. Choices.
In conclusion, brethren, as we conclude, there’s a message for the youths here before I conclude, all those examples I gave, they were all youths about 30 of age at that time, the best time to make the wisest decisions of your life is in the time of your youth, don’t sell out the pride of youthfulness, don’t follow the trend, follow divine leading. Don’t seek to be popular, rather, you should seek to please God always.
David was a youth, Daniel was a youth, Joseph was a youth, Isaac was a youth, Ruth was a youth, Abigail was a youth, they all took the right decisions, you can also take the right decisions with divine guidance.
As we close, we know that God will not force anyone to take decisions, yet if anyone is a sinner and dies a sinner, the consequences of sins are waiting. You will ask why would God not then force people so that they would not go to die as sinners? Because God has given us power of choice.
I would like some people to make choices this morning; you are here this morning, probably you’ve been making wrong and wrong decisions, your life is trending in a way you don’t like it and you know it is because God is not in your life or even it appears as if you are making the right decision but the Bible says the wicked is prepared for the day of destruction, if you don’t have God in your life, that destiny is doomed already.
We would like you to surrender your life to Jesus Christ, and by the way, is the best decision anybody can take, the best choice. Surrendering to Jesus Christ is surrendering to life, not surrendering to Jesus Christ is accepting the devil which is death which is eternal fire…
[Altar call]
Brethren, let us rise up. Let’s begin to pray and say Father, we thank You, thank You for the privilege of life, thank You, Lord, for the ability to hear these words, there is no one of us who is already fulfilled destiny, we are still work in progress, thank You because I have an opportunity to still make the right choices. Thank You, Father, in Jesus wonderful name we prayed.
We’re going to pray and say Father, You have given me the power to choose, please help me to make the right choices always, help me, Lord, to make the right choices in the mighty name of Jesus. You’ve given me the power to choose, help me to make the right choices in the mighty name of Jesus.
Then we’re going to pray and say Father, I have made some wrong decisions in the past and I now know that they have consequences, by Your mercy, by Your power, please cancel all negative consequences of previous wrong decisions that I’ve made in the mighty name of Jesus. Cancel it Lord in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we have prayed.
And finally we are going to pray, Father from today, help me to make the right choices that will lead me in the path of life, that will lead me in the path of destiny in the mighty name of Jesus. Help me oh Lord, help me Father, please help me to take the right decisions from today, right choices that will lead me to fulfill my destinies in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You Father.
