Steps Of Faith

Steps of Faith

Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!”

Ruth 1:16-17

You may be familiar with William Penn, a Quaker who appealed to the king of England to establish a Quaker settlement in the New World. The king offered Penn “an extraordinarily generous charter,” and he became the New World’s largest private landowner, controlling more than forty-five thousand square miles, and created the province of Pennsylvania in 1681. Within months Penn had parceled out land to mostly rich London Quakers, but soon Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, Huguenots, and Mennonites joined them. The first sizable group of Amish arrived in America around 1730 and settled near Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

William Penn’s “holy experiment” in religious tolerance changed the settlement of our nation. Because of their religious beliefs, men and women left their homeland and crossed oceans. In the Bible, Ruth, who was from Moab, declared that she would follow her mother-in-law, probably because of both their friendship and her faith in God.

What values do you hold deep in your heart? Are any of those values strong enough that you would cross seas and travel into foreign countries for them?

Three years ago God asked my husband and me to leave a good job and our beautiful home in order to move two thousand miles away for a ministry job. We traveled in a U-Haul rather than a ship or buggy, but the journey was still hard—not only for the distance but because of the life we left behind. Yet God was with us.

Because of the faith of their ancestors, the Amish found a place to flourish. The faith they live today is made possible by the steps of faith their ancestors took long ago.

Dear heavenly Father, show me any area in my life where I need to take a step of faith to follow You. I’m thankful, Lord, that You go with me.