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For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Meredith Brock:
Hi, friends. Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I am your host, Meredith Brock, and I'm here with my co-host, Kendra LeGrand.
Kendra LeGrand:
Hey, Meredith, I'm excited for our friends to get to hear today's teaching from our friend and co-worker Meghan Ryan. We just finished recording with her. And if you're in a season where you really need to see evidence of God's faithfulness in the midst of your circumstances, this episode is for you.
Meredith Brock:
Absolutely, it is a good one. And I want to remind our listeners about the resources we link in the show notes for each and every single podcast episode. If it's not already part of your podcast listening routine to do so, be sure to check out the show notes each time so you don't miss any of the free links or free resources or upcoming studies we might be doing. And if you haven't already, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. Doing so really helps us reach even more listeners and ultimately spread the gospel, share more about Jesus. And that's our goal here at Proverbs 31, which is to help women around the world get connected to God's Word so they can know the Truth and live the Truth because it really will change everything when they do so. All right, friends, enough from us. Let's go hear from our friend Meghan.
Kendra LeGrand:
All right, friends, I am so excited to be in the studio today with our teacher. She is a friend but also our copywriter at Proverbs 31 Ministries, Meghan Ryan. Meghan, how are you?
Meghan Ryan:
I'm good. Happy to be here.
Meredith Brock:
Aw, we're excited to have you. Well, Meghan is originally from sunny Florida, not just any part of sunny Florida. I feel like it's like the most infamous part, like 30A, guys.
Meghan Ryan:
Yeah, the Gulf Coast.
Meredith Brock:
Meghan moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, from 30A. Not sure what happened there, but I'm very grateful she did. She has been with us at Proverbs 31 for about three years now. She's been a host on the podcast before, but let's give her a proper teaching introduction today, shall we? Like Kendra said, Meghan is the promotional copywriter at Proverbs 31 Ministries. And if you've gotten a promotional email from us, chances are Meghan wrote it. She's part of several writing projects at Proverbs 31, like titling study guides, and she even wrote a First 5 study guide recently. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but she did the whole thing by herself, which is pretty amazing. And some other really exciting projects she has been a part of are rolling out later this year.
But I also need to add a shameless plug-in here on her behalf and share with y'all that she signed her very first book contract last year. We are so proud of her, and she'll be spending this entire year writing that book. And so that's a really, really big deal, really big deal. Meghan, I genuinely do not know how I convinced you to move from 30A to this lovely metropolis of Charlotte, North Carolina, but I'm sure glad that you made the decision to come be on staff here at Proverbs 31, and I am excited to learn from you today. So why don't you take it away?
Meghan Ryan:
Absolutely, so funny you bring up the Florida to Charlotte thing because we'll start there. I moved to Charlotte about three years ago, and I did not know a single person in this city. I had been here one other time, and it was for an interview so hadn't really spent much time here. I had a pretty comfortable life. I lived in my hometown for several years after I graduated college and kind of had built community and things like that. And so when this job opportunity came about, I took a massive leap of faith and thought, "All right, I feel like the Lord's calling me to do this, so I'm going to move." And everything about that was very scary. I felt very insecure, uncertain what the future was going to hold, because I was so used to where I had been.
And over this past year, I've spent a lot of time in the book of Ruth. And so I know as women, we kind of gravitate toward books like Ruth and Esther because they are the solo-female-named books in the Bible. And so I felt like I knew the story pretty well. But after spending some time deep diving into it, I see it in a completely different way and honestly love it more than I did before I started this study. One verse that's pretty popular in the book of Ruth that I've always loved is Ruth 1:16, which says, "But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God."
Now, Ruth was saying this to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and what I didn't know was just all she was giving up by expressing that to Naomi. She was forsaking everything she knew that was familiar to follow her mother-in-law and ultimately to follow God. She was forsaking her own people. She was forsaking the gods that her people worshipped. And we often look at Ruth like a love story between her and Boaz, which in some ways it definitely is. But it isn't just between the two of them. It's also between Ruth and Naomi, and also between God and one individual family and His people, the Israelites.
And so I also just love that this book is really ordinary. If you spend any time in the book of Ruth, it's not like some of the other books in the Old Testament where there's crazy miracles happening like a cloud by day and a fire by night. It's just very [ordinary] people walking through their everyday life and just struggles that I know we can all relate to, like grief and loss and trying to fit in and finding your place.
And so there's no mention of God speaking to His people either in the book. It's just watching how He's working behind the scenes, which I think is very applicable to how our lives work. We're not seeing massive miracles happening most days. We're just going through our day-to-day lives. And in some of that, it can feel very uncertain and it can be really easy to feel insecure.
And so like Meredith said at the beginning, part of my job at the ministry is getting to title some of these study guides that we do. And so we get a group together to brainstorm ideas. And what we want to do in our titling is show people who will potentially buy them what this book has to offer you in your day now, because God's Word is relevant to our day-to-day lives. I think often we can feel like the Bible is far away from our reality, when in fact it actually is addressing the very things that we are facing.
And so with this particular book of Ruth, we have a study guide coming out, and I actually got to co-write it with our friend Wendy Blight, who we all love and adore and has been on the podcast several times. And when we were looking at titling the book of Ruth, we were looking at, “How do you think Ruth felt as she's making this big decision to forsake her people?” And we said, “She probably feels really uncertain about what's going to happen, but she's taking a leap of faith and trusting God.” And how many of us really feel that way? I know I've had moments in my life where I wondered, Is God going to go with me? Has He gone before me? Am I going to be able to trust Him as I take these steps forward? But Ruth and Naomi had two very different reactions to this step of faith they're taking.
So I'm going to show you guys two passages in Chapter 1. So Ruth says, as I read earlier, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lᴏʀᴅ do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you. And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more” (Ruth 1:16-18, ESV). Now, Naomi's response when she decided to go back to Israel from Moab after losing her husband and her sons, she says, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lᴏʀᴅ has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lᴏʀᴅ has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:20-21, ESV).
So, Kendra and Meredith, in context with Ruth, if you experienced massive grief, you're going back somewhere; then you're not sure how people are going to receive you, which of these two responses do you think you would lean toward, Ruth's response or Naomi's response?
Kendra LeGrand:
What an icebreaker. I think my personality is to be a little more positive, and I don't want to disappoint people, so I wouldn't be as confident as Ruth, but I feel as if I would be a little more like Ruth than Naomi, but only because I wouldn't want to look like I was losing it. I'd want to look like I got it together and I'm confident.
Meredith Brock:
I don't know. All I can do is pull from my past experience, and I've done a lot of leaving my people and starting something new, and I like a challenge. And so I think I probably wouldn't be quite as chipper as Ruth was. I probably might be a little bit more like, "All right, well let's do this. Pull yourselves up by the bootstraps. It's time to get going." That's probably how I would be.
Meghan Ryan:
Yes, I think externally I would like to think that I would respond like Ruth, but I think a little bit internally I'm the opposite of Kendra, which is why we're such good friends, in that I'm a very glass-half-empty kind of gal. So I think I would be more likely to respond like Naomi, at least internally ask God, Why have You done this to me? And I felt that way when I moved to Charlotte. I remember, my parents ... we unpacked my entire U-Haul. We're sitting in the living room, and I look at them and I said, "We need to put it all back in and go back. I can't do this. I don't want to do this. What have I done? I just left everything I love for something I have no idea how it's going to turn out." And my dad looked me dead in the eye and said, "We're not packing the U-Haul back up. The Lord called you here, and you have to trust, and we're not going to let you walk away from that," which was a good dad thing to do.
But I think it's very interesting ... the book of Ruth; do you know she actually speaks the least out of any of the characters? So Naomi actually speaks the most. And in a lot of Old Testament books, the book is named after the character that is the most present in speaking. And in this situation, the author chose to title the book Ruth, which I think is interesting because she doesn't speak as much as Naomi does. But I think that was because the author was drawing us to pay attention to how she responds because she chose to follow God. And not only did she choose to follow God, she chose to obey her mother-in-law, who at times ... she had some very unconventional advice if you ever get into the book of Ruth. And also she was a foreigner welcomed in. It was a big deal for a book of the Bible to be named after a foreign woman. Women were not as valued in terms of the culture at the time. And so God made a way for Ruth to not only become an Israelite, but the biggest spoiler of this is that, she actually is one of the women listed in Jesus' lineage, which I think is a really big deal.
And so maybe you're in a place where you're questioning, Do I have a place? I feel very insecure and uncertain about where I'm at and where I'm going. Maybe you're questioning God's faithfulness toward you, whether it's specific circumstances you're facing or years of wondering where God is and what He's doing. It can be really easy to look for something that's going to make us feel safe and steady, but when those things are no longer there, it's hard to know where to turn.
And so this is why I admire Ruth so much. As she said in Ruth 1:16, she chose to leave everything familiar, clinging to the Lord. And so she trusted God's faithfulness even without knowing Him that well or knowing what the outcome would be. And there are three ways we see that she did this in the book of Ruth. And one was she committed to go and stay where God called her. So regardless of whether or not she would be accepted by the people in Israel, she decided to believe God was going to be with her, and she didn't wait for God to show up in a specific way. She simply followed where He was leading her. Two, she chose to cling to God as her God. When it would've been much easier to follow after the gods and the life she knew, she put her identity in the Lord regardless of what was ahead. She was making a pact that said I'm going to trust that You are with me and that I am Your daughter. And finally, she trusted and followed Naomi's advice. Naomi grew up and knew God's character, and Ruth chose to trust her and follow after what she told her to do even if it felt unconventional at times.
And so like Ruth, we have a choice to cling to what's comfortable or to look for our security in God. Unlike Ruth, we have God's Word. We can see all over the Old Testament and in books like Ruth that He is faithful, that He is proven to keep His promises. And so she's going off experiences of her family, but we get to go off the experience of just years and years of proof that God is faithful.
But I don't know about you guys; “faithful” feels like a word I don't use in my everyday life outside of the context of God. I'm not describing my friends as faithful. Maybe I say the word “loyal,” but faithful isn't an everyday word I use. But I think it's one of my favorite attributes of the Lord because it speaks to His nature. There's a firmness and consistency of God in His relationship with us in that He's unchangeable; He is constant. He's always going to keep His promises, which makes Him worthy of our trust. And when He's totally trustworthy, we can look to Him as the thing we cling to, the thing we find our identity and security in. And so I just think God's faithfulness is one of the attributes that helps me walk forward when I'm uncertain of what is ahead.
But one of the things that was really ironic is as Wendy and I started writing this study, we wrote it about a year ago now, I found myself more insecure and uncertain than I had ever felt in my entire life. I had some changes in personal relationships, some things shifting at home. I was wondering where on earth God was and what in the world He was doing. And in those moments, I felt a lot of fear and like my life was out of control. And as I was studying this book, I just kept going, "Am I going to be able to finish this? I just feel so uncertain about what's ahead. And this just feels very difficult to put all this time and effort into studying this book." But I think it was such the kindness of the Lord to show me in this story that even though none of those circumstances I just listed out in my life went the way I thought they would: I had a relationship end and some friendship changes in ways I didn't want them to; I was struggling with some mental health and physical health things, and some of those situations even now are kind of painful to think about.
But in the midst of all that, Naomi and Ruth and Boaz kind of became like my friends. I saw myself in this story because they were so ordinary and just trying to navigate everyday life and trying to be faithful and obedient each step of the way. And as I wondered if God was working in my life when He often seemed silent and hardly visible, I noticed that He was working in their life when He felt not visible and that they couldn't hear Him or see Him. And I found Him to be more faithful than ever before. As I saw the ways He moved in their life, I could cling to the hope that He was still moving for me too.
And maybe some of you like me know the end of this story, and I did too. But as I dove in, it was the little details that made the happy ending of the story a lot sweeter. Because when you actually look and see the pain they experience, and you can put yourself in a situation of, yeah, I've experienced that pain too, it makes the end just that much better. And I'm reminded that because of God's Word, we get to know the end of our stories too.
But what happens here in the middle is what makes that ending so much greater. Jesus is the same God ... Jesus is the man who would come through this very family, that He is our salvation; He's going to make everything in our broken world new again. And we can cling to a happy ending that's on the way. And God is working while we wait.
So my prayer for those listening today is that you would find God faithful when you feel insecure and uncertain, that you would find the same God who worked out the details in Ruth's life is the same God working out the details of your story today, and that it just brings you a lot of hope. I think I can say now after studying this book that I trust God because He is a faithful friend, and I hope that you can say the same as well. When we feel insecure, God's promises are sure. And when we feel uncertain, God's faithfulness remains.
And so, Meredith and Kendra, I would love to know, as you can look back at moments in your life, where are some glimpses that you see God's faithfulness? Maybe not in big, noticeable ways but in those small little details that God was working out something in your life maybe when you didn't see it.
Meredith Brock:
Well, I'm going to turn the tables on you a little bit, Meghan.
Meghan Ryan:
OK.
Meredith Brock:
Are you ready?
Meghan Ryan:
I'm ready.
Meredith Brock:
This is a pretty cool moment for me to sit here and listen to you teach this because I sat pretty close to you during this season of you moving to Charlotte and trying to find community and trying to figure out where you fit in here and wrestling with wanting to go back to Florida and sometimes going back to Florida and working from Florida and me wondering, Is she going to come back? And watching you know that you're a glass-half-empty kind of gal and work through that and wrestle through it and watching God put the book of Ruth into your life at that specific time is a picture of God's faithfulness, of the little things that He does for us to say, "Hey, you're on the right track now," just like you said.
You said those three points she committed to following through. You did it, Meghan. You did it. You committed to say, "God called me to Charlotte. I'm not loading that U-Haul back up. I'm going to stay here even in the discomfort of this whole situation. And I don't like it, but I'm sticking with it." And then you have clung to God through the book of Ruth through so many different things. And then to watch you lean into friends in your life and trust them or mentors or whoever to help you navigate this season in wisdom. I see your journey as a picture of God's faithfulness, and just sitting here is a reminder of it. It is a real blessing to me.
Meghan Ryan:
Thanks for saying that.
Kendra LeGrand:
That's hard to follow up with. I just want to just shine a light on you really. But me personally, I've seen God's faithfulness in the friendships that He has allowed to follow me through many, many years from high school to college to young adult. Friendships are hard to find, especially after you graduate high school or college. Just becoming an adult is a weird, awkward situation. And He's just been very faithful to put certain people in my life. You've encouraged me. I remember crying with you at a Clean Juice because I just couldn't figure out where the joy was in my life. But there's just been ... God's faithfulness has shown up in people He's placed in my life.
Meghan Ryan:
Yeah, that's good. And I think just to end this, the ultimate proof of God's faithfulness is really found in Jesus, the same Jesus who's one day ... we see come through the lineage of this exact family in the book of Ruth ... is going to come and make all the things in our life, in our world, new. And so when we find ourselves feeling insecure, uncertain, we can remember God is faithful because He sent His Son.
Meredith Brock:
So good. And y'all, can we just pause and talk about the fact that God chose to come through the lineage of Ruth's family. And y'all, this is just for our listeners today, if you have not read the book of Ruth, it is full of scandal.
Kendra LeGrand:
Yes. We love scandal.
Meredith Brock:
I know, but it kind of blows my mind that God could have chosen any family, any family to come through. He could have chosen the royal family of Great Britain, which there's some scandal there. We just won't even go there. But that He chooses every day dysfunctional people as messed up as we are to come and work through us. And I don't know, if our listeners today, maybe they haven't read the book of Ruth and maybe they're just sitting in a situation of like, "God can't possibly use me or speak to me. He's not going to call me to take a step of faith because I'm too messed up." Y’all, He called Ruth. He called Naomi. He called Boaz in that story. It is amazing. And so I hope our listeners today are walking away with just hope that God does speak. He has called you into His Kingdom and to live and work through you. So, Kendra, any final thoughts that you would want to share with our listeners?
Kendra LeGrand:
Yes ... OK, Meghan, I have a few thoughts, but I also want to ask your opinion on something because you are very wise.
Meghan Ryan:
Yeah.
Kendra LeGrand:
And so what would you say to the girl who's on the cusp of making a big change? You were in Florida, and you're like, "OK, got this job offer at Proverbs. Do I leave the familiar, which is really comfortable and a good place to be and the sun is always shining, to go somewhere where that's not necessarily the case?" It's raining today.
Meghan Ryan:
Yes.
Kendra LeGrand:
So what would you say to the girl who's on the cusp of change? What advice would you give?
Meghan Ryan:
It's not going to be easy, but I think ... I can look back now and even look back at the small moments leading up to the point of feeling like Charlotte is home ... that the Lord is with you. And I think remembering He has gone before you and you can walk confidently in that. You're not going to see it and feel it and experience it every day, but I think my relationship with the Lord is so much deeper from taking that step of walking on the water and moving forward. And I think just don't be afraid if it looks different than you thought it was going to. I think remembering that just because it isn't easy doesn't mean it's wrong. I think a lot of people expect there to be like, "If God calls me to move to Africa, my house is going to sell tomorrow," not that the Lord's calling you to move to Africa. But your house might not sell tomorrow. Or, "If the Lord's calling me to take this new job, it's going to be better pay and better co-workers." And it might not be.
But I think part of our spiritual walk is learning to trust the Lord and that He's working things out in us, maybe not necessarily out and around us. So it's a big step, but I think I would've missed so much if I hadn't, not just in my relationship with the Lord but so many other great things that season has brought me. And so I think just remembering that there's hope on the other side.
Meredith Brock:
That's really good. Great advice, Meghan. Especially, I think choices look different as you get older. I'm significantly older than both of you, and just the steps of faith look different. And I think in seasons of coming out of college or coming out of high school, you're faced with a lot of really big decisions really, really fast. And so I hope some of our listeners today who are in that season of life can grab hold of this and be encouraged.
So thank you so much for coming on the show today, Meghan. If this teaching was something you resonated with, I am so excited to let you know there's a study guide, like we've been talking about, that Meghan wrote and titled Finding God Faithful When You Feel Insecure or Uncertain. It's available for you to purchase. And we've linked it in our show notes. This study guide pairs with our free First 5 mobile app. So go ahead and download that today too.
Kendra LeGrand:
Also, we want you guys to connect with Meghan over on her website and download a free resource called "In the Middle: Three Steps to Navigating Transition in Unexpected Life Changes." You can grab it on her website, alwaysmeghan.com. And that's M-E-G-H-A-N.
And that's all for today, you guys. So at Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything.