Supermarket Girl – Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ruth decided to continue the fasting beyond the week that had been assigned. She decided that she really did need to understand this seemingly new thing that God was doing in her life. She felt disoriented as far as making money was concerned. She had never been in a position of not being paid her fees for extended periods of time by all of her clients, all at once. She was confused because she thought that at any given time, some clients may be cash strapped but others would be able to pay up and tide her over. That assumption had been proved wrong and she had began to appreciate that her need for God as her boss was not as superficial as she had been treating it in the past. She wanted to draw closer to Him and have him clear up the confusion for her. She wanted to know how she should be thinking about her situation and what she should be doing. She was in uncharted territory.

It came as a great relief for her when she started reading her prayer of Jabez book and realized that it was exactly about the situation she was in. She had been cruising full speed into growing her business and praying for more blessings from God. When the pace she was moving at came to a screeching halt due to uncertainty, she started to feel like a fish out of water and thinking that she had gone too far and bitten off more than she could chew. She did not know how to get herself out of the bigger commitments she had found herself in.

The author of the book she was reading told her that in actual fact, the position she was in now is the same position Jabez found himself in when he prayed that prayer. He had come to a realization that Jesus was not in the business of moving in reverse gear. Jesus was in the business of enlarging territories and therefore, if you found yourself in enlarged territory, the thing to appreciate is that it is not by your own power or might that you will continue growing.

Zechariah 4:6 – 6 So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.

It is by the Spirit of God that territories are enlarged to enable Christians continue the work that their God has set out for them to do at the higher levels he was taking them to. As God enlarges your territory, your dependence on Him must increase until you are totally submitted to His will and direction. There was nothing strange about how Ruth felt. She was in the right place and in the right state of mind for what was happening to her. What she needed to understand is that from now on, she must seek God’s guidance on what to think and what to do every morning. She must therefore increase her prayer life as her dependence on God increased.

Ruth found a lot of comfort in that teaching and decided to do as the author had recommended which is that she should pray the prayer of Jabez every morning for the rest of her life. She had never considered herself a prayerful person and was nowhere in the vicinity of imagining herself becoming a prayer warrior.

For the first time in her Christian life, Ruth decided that she would start waking up to pray with the aim of becoming the prayer warrior for her family. She sat down and wrote out what challenges she had been facing and which she had left alone believing that there was nothing she could do to turn things around in those areas except to just leave them to God. One of her children was not as focused on studies as she would have liked. She decided to pray for a change in him. She had a close friend who was battling alcohol so she included that too. She decided to even pray for losing weight and becoming fit so that she invited God into her exercise and diet routine as well.

She thanked God for giving her something to do about everything that disturbed her. She knew prayer was a good thing but she had always found difficulty in praying until now.