Today's Boaz

The blessing soul will prosper, and he who waters will also be watered himself. Proverbs 11:25

The training message on Boaz brought a new light to me. The Lord has shown me some important characteristics of Boaz in his care for the needy ones. What a pattern he has become to me, even to bring forth Christ, which could be applied to my Christian life today.  

Now Naomi had a relative of her husband’s, a man of great wealth, from Elimelech’s family; and his name was Boaz. Ruth 2:1

Boaz was such a wonderful person, rich,  willing, caring, generous, and redeemed Ruth, a widow, filled with debts from a cursed generation. To redeem someone’s property is one thing, but also to redeem that person’s, the dead person’s wife to become his wife is unimaginable. He took care of others’ birthright setting a pattern for us to take care of our own enjoyment of Christ as well as others’ enjoyment of Christ too.

Boaz is a wonderful type of Christ. We must all be Boazes today. There are many saints in our midst who have lost their enjoyment of Christ. They once enjoyed Christ in the church life in the recovery, but somehow they got offended by a person or a certain situation, became stumbled, did not attend the meeting, and became backslidden. The Lord needs to raise up many Boazes, who have some amount of riches in order to redeem others, who have lost their enjoyment.

But we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those who are weak and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us – each of us please his neighbor with a view to what is good for building up. For Christ also did not please Himself, but as it is written, The reproaches of those who reproached you fell upon me. Romans 15: 1-3

Today there are many dormant, backslidden saints who need to be restored. Paul says in Ephesians 3:2, he was given the stewardship by God to me for you. Such stewardship, such a rich ministry, was given to Paul not for himself to boast before others. But he says, This ministry is to me for you. 

All the riches that the Lord has given to us in His recovery are not for ourselves only. Yes, we enjoy them; we grow by them so that we can have the maturity of life so that we can be rich in Him to become genuinely spiritual. 

From this record concerning Boaz, we see the principle of incarnation. God wants to recover all these ones, all these Ruths, who had once enjoyed Him, her husband. But now her husband died, so she lost her enjoyment of the birthright. 

The God-ordained way is that we should not just always expect people to come back to the church. But we have to go to where these people are. They are in their poverty, in a needy situation, and they are just like the Ruth, who’ve lost their husband.

So the Lord has to raise us up, brothers and sisters, to be today’s Boazes. Someone who is a real Boaz and is rich in the enjoyment of Christ will pay the price to bring such saints into the full enjoyment of Christ. By shepherding others in this way, he will have even more enjoyment of Christ, the greatest enjoyment of Christ; day by day we should take care of others’ enjoyment of Christ—Prov. 11:25; Acts 20:35; 1 Pet. 5:1-4.

As said in Proverbs 11:25, that the blessing soul will prosper, and he who waters will also be watered himself. If we take care of others, you will find that you yourself are being taken, are being taken care of first. When you bless others, you find that you are being blessed first. The waterers are being watered first by the Lord.

If today in the Lord’s recovery there can be many such Boazes, what a, what a revival there will be. We should not be only praying for revival, and we should not only pray that God would do something. God is waiting for us to be today’s Boazes to redeem the Ruths who are lying all over, all around us.

Those who become like Boaz are pillars in the church life (one of the pillars in the temple was named “Boaz”—1 Kings 7:21); in the Scriptures, the pillar is a sign, a testimony, of God’s building through a transformation in practicing the Body life—Gen. 28:22a; 1 Kings 7:15-22; Gal. 2:9; 1 Tim. 3:15; Rev. 3:12; Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:11-12.

This message stirred up my spirit to care for the needy saints, especially those I did not contact for a couple of months now; to follow them up and shepherd them into the church life.

The blessing soul will prosper...

Lord, grace me and enlarge my heart to take care of the needy saints and become one like Boaz to bring forth Christ into others.