A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships

by Paul E. Miller

Overview

Having successfully helped readers develop a solid prayer life with the best-selling release of A Praying Life, author Paul Miller applies his expertise to an even more important issue—love. After all, love is what holds all things together, it's what we're looking for, it's what we all need, and it's what we must learn how to give. But loving people is hard. Our neighbors, friends, kids, spouses, and even our enemies require a relentless, self-giving demonstration of love that only God can produce within us. Taking his cues from the perseverance and faithfulness portrayed in the book of Ruth, Miller sheds light on a biblical portrait of love that is sure to give us hope and transform our souls. Here is the help we need to embrace relationship, endure rejection, cultivate community, and reach out to even the most unlovable as we discover the power to live a loving life.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433537356
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	01/31/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Paul E. Miller (MDiv, Biblical Seminary) is executive director of seeJesus, a global discipling mission that mentors through seminars, cohorts, and interactive Bible studies. He is the bestselling author of A Praying Life and J-Curve. Paul and his wife, Jill, live in the Philadelphia area and have six children and fifteen grandchildren. Listen to the Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller podcast or learn more at seeJesus.net.

Paul E. Miller (MDiv, Biblical Seminary) is executive director of seeJesus, a global discipling mission that mentors through seminars, cohorts, and interactive Bible studies. He is the bestselling author of  A Praying Life and  J-Curve. Paul and his wife, Jill, live in the Philadelphia area and have six children and fifteen grandchildren. Listen to the Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller podcast or learn more at seeJesus.net.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

SUFFERING: THE CRUCIBLE FOR LOVE

Suffering is the crucible for love. We don't learn how to love anywhere else. Don't misunderstand; suffering doesn't create love, but it is a hothouse where love can emerge. Why is that? The great barrier to love is ego, the life of the self. In long-term suffering, if you don't give in to self-pity, slowly, almost imperceptibly, self dies. This death of self offers ideal growing conditions for love. So, not surprisingly, this book on love, the book of Ruth, begins with the descent of Naomi's family into a crucible of suffering.

Naomi had a dream. It was a simple dream of a husband, children, and grandchildren. With a few deft strokes, the narrator paints the death of that dream, the death of her entire family. Suffering sneaks up on her, tragedy on tragedy.

In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. (Ruth 1:1–5)

Ancient readers would have been intrigued and possibly troubled by the family's move to Moab (see fig. 1.1). The Moabites were the hillbilly cousins of the Israelites, the result of an incestuous relationship between Lot and one of his daughters. Mo means "who" and ab means "father." So Moab, reflecting its murky origin, is the land of Who's Your Daddy?

Bad blood grew between the cousins. When the Israelites tried to pass through Moab on the way to Canaan, the Moabite king opposed them by bribing the prophet Balaam to prophesy against them. When that backfired, the women of Moab seduced the Israelite men. The Israelites regularly called Kemosh, the Moabite god, "filth" or "loathsome." One day Yahweh would crush Kemosh in a pit of manure (Isa. 25:10–11). Moab meant trouble. And trouble is what the family found in Moab.

Naomi's losses would be staggering for any culture, but in the ancient Near East for a mother to lose not only her husband but also her sons was the epitome of suffering. A leading management consultant posed this hypothetical situation to American men: "Your mother, your wife, and your daughter are all in a sinking boat and you can rescue only one of them. Who do you rescue?" Sixty percent would rescue their daughter and 40 percent their wife. All would leave the mother adrift. Sorry, moms. The consultant then posed the same question to Saudi men, and every one of them said they would rescue their mother. Why? In the traditional cultures of the Near East, mothers have no identity outside the home. Their daughters marry and leave while their sons remain, forging a powerful mother-son bond. Their sons are their life.

Naomi has lost her life. She has entered into a living death. Where we see a sharp line between death and life, the Hebrews saw a gradation. Living outside of Israel, the Promised Land, is already a partial death. Now with the death of her husband and two sons, Naomi's life is functionally over. It no longer has meaning or purpose. If you have experienced deep, sustained suffering, then you know Naomi's frame of mind. Death would be a relief. You might not commit suicide, but if your life ended you wouldn't care.

Naomi's tragedy is a series of downward steps. First Elimelech dies, but hope is not lost because her two sons find Moabite wives, and their sons could carry on the family name. But the two wives, Ruth and Orpah, are barren, so Naomi has no grandsons to carry on Elimelech's name — that is the heart of Naomi's tragedy. The death of her two sons seals that tragedy. One of the families in the oldest clan of Bethlehem, the Ephrathites, has died out. So Naomi doesn't just lose her husband and two sons; she loses her future, her reason for living.

There is a remnant though. In ancient Near Eastern culture, the wife moved in with the husband's family. Daughters left home; brothers and their families stayed. Brothers lived together, even after their father died, maintaining their inheritance as common property. Psalm 133 reflects how good it is when "brothers dwell in unity" (v. 1). So both Orpah and Ruth have been living with Naomi for some time. Now Naomi is left with the empty shell of a family, a fragile, highly vulnerable family. "Ruth, Orpah, and Naomi are headless. There are no husbands, no fathers, no sons to take a protective role." Because of her age, Naomi is not likely to remarry. She has no trade or means of support. All exits were closed.

Where Is God?

We get an inkling of Naomi's internal struggles from the meaning of the names. Bethlehem is actually a two-word name like New York. Beth means "house," and lehem means "bread." So Bethlehem means "house of bread," possibly a granary or a reference to the abundance of food. Naomi's husband's name, Elimelech, means "my God is king." Naomi means "pleasant." The two sons' names are Mahlon ("weak") and Chilion ("frail").

Ancient readers took names seriously. If we listen like an ancient reader, this is what we hear:

In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of the House of Bread in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Who's Your Daddy, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was My God Is King and the name of his wife Pleasant, and the names of his two sons were Weak and Frail. They were Ephrathites from the House of Bread in Judah. They went into the country of Who's Your Daddy and remained there. But My God Is King, the husband of Pleasant, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Weak and Frail died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

Can you hear the irony? A famine in the House of Bread? God Is King is dead? Pleasant's husband and sons have died? Reality is mocking God. In other words, because Naomi hopes in God, her grief intensifies. When God does not meet our expectations, it opens the door not just to despair but also to cynicism, to shutting down our hearts with God.

Don't Flee the Crucible

Suffering is the frame, the context, where we learn to love. Sometimes it is a sucker punch — the phone call from the doctor or the note from the spouse — but most of the time it slips up on you, bit by bit, as it did Naomi and Ruth. Then comes the day when you realize that you hate your life, and you want out.

The Disney dream not only fails to prepare us for the crucible, but it also makes the crucible far worse. We come into relationships expecting the best, and often discovering the worst. The shock of encountering the ugliness of sin leaves us floundering.

We have much to learn about love from this story, but all we need to know at this point is this: you can't flee the crucible. Love will not grow if you check out and give in to the seductive call of bitterness and cynicism — or seek comfort elsewhere. We have to hang in there with the story that God has permitted in our lives. As we endure, as we keep showing up for life when it makes no sense, we learn to love, and God shows up too.

George fled the crucible. Overwhelmed by the demands of love, he set out on a false pilgrimage. He had listened to a modern myth that says, "Love is a feeling. If the feeling is gone, then love is gone." Hollywood has no resources to endure in love when the feeling is gone. Actually, that's the point when we are ready to learn how to love.

Hints of Resurrection

One of the oddest things about deep suffering is that the sun comes up in the morning. Life limps along. So after our quick thirty-thousand-feet overview, the narrator of Ruth takes us to ground level, and we watch three women, the remnants of a family, trudging along the road from Moab.

Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the LORD had visited his people and given them food. So they set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. (Ruth 1:6–7)

Naomi and her daughters-in-law, in keeping with a wider definition of family, instinctively operate as a unit. But strikingly, Orpah and Ruth have decided to leave their families, their entire social network, and their cultures to live with their mother-in-law in a foreign land. In traditional Eastern cultures the daughter-in-law became a servant of the mother-in-law. This led to a tremendous amount of abuse. Even in the West, we joke about the mother-in-law–son-in-law relationship only because the real deal, the mother-in-law–daughter-in-law relationship, is often too painful. That Ruth and Orpah prefer their mother-in-law gives us some sense of how remarkable Naomi must be.

Naomi is doing the one thing essential for pilgrimage: she is enduring, hanging in there, literally putting one foot in front of the other as she heads back to Bethlehem. But how do you hang in there? Where do you get the power to love when you don't get any love in return? How do you face living alone? The answer is simple: hope. You can hang in there if you know the end of the story.

A glimmer of hope leads Naomi back. Yahweh ("the Lord") has visited his people. It isn't just that weather patterns have changed; God is involved. We're at ground zero of what makes love possible, of the difference between Disney and Christianity. Disney is groundless human optimism. The gospel is real divine hope — God breaking through into the story of my life, creating resurrection. This glimmer of resurrection hints of good things to come.

Teresa saw a hint of resurrection when she started praying for men to come into George's life. Two weeks later, seemingly out of the blue, I had this thought, "Contact George." We can endure in love if our God acts in time and space. Hope is critical to love.

CHAPTER 2

LOVE WITHOUT AN EXIT STRATEGY

As the three women walk down to the Jordan River Valley, the full weight of the implications of Naomi's daughters-in-law returning with her dawns on her. The first words of a biblical character are often a clue to his or her character, and Naomi's first words are filled with a thoughtful love: "But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, 'Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me'" (Ruth 1:8).

Naomi begins by blessing Ruth and Orpah, by thinking about their futures. She blesses them twice. First she asks that the Lord would "deal kindly" with them. The phrase translated "deal kindly" is actually hesed, a word unique to Hebrew that combines "love" and "loyalty." She wants God to do hesed love with them.

Understanding Hesed Love

Sometimes hesed is translated "steadfast love." It combines commitment with sacrifice. Hesed is one-way love. Love without an exit strategy. When you love with hesed love, you bind yourself to the object of your love, no matter what the response is. So if the object of your love snaps at you, you still love that person. If you've had an argument with your spouse in which you were slighted or not heard, you refuse to retaliate through silence or withholding your affection. Your response to the other person is entirely independent of how that person has treated you. Hesed is a stubborn love.

Love like this eliminates moodiness, the touchiness that is increasingly common in people today. When my father, Jack Miller, began to observe this phenomena in the 1970s, he said, "It is like people don't have any skin. They are all nerve endings." Moodiness often begins with accumulated slights or the day just not working. Our inner spirits momentarily give up on life, and we stop caring how we affect people around us. Self is set on hair trigger. If we do hesed, that is no longer the case. It doesn't mean that we don't have moments and days when we have the cranks or share how fragile our spirit is; we just refuse to let it affect us. Hesed is opposite of the spirit of our age, which says we have to act on our feelings. Hesed says, "No, you act on your commitments. The feelings will follow." Love like this is unbalanced, uneven. There is nothing fair about this kind of love. But commitment-love lies at the heart of Christianity. It is Jesus's love for us at the cross, and it is to be our love for one another.

When feelings are the standard, we are left adrift on a turbulent sea. Every good feeling becomes a new path, so we become good at starting to love, but bad at finishing. Soon we are lost and alone in a maze of relationships.

When we get lost, we hunt for an escape. It is easy to appear to be doing hesed, when in fact you've exited a relationship emotionally. If someone has hurt you, you may slip into emotional revenge, hunting for bad news about that person or just running a magnifying glass over his or her character. Or you exit in your mind by creating or nourishing a world that doesn't exist. Guys can be drawn to porn; women to romance novels.

Because hesed love isn't centered on the fairness, it can reset quickly. For instance, if you've had an argument with a spouse or friend, you may be tempted to pull away, to distance yourself. Sometimes that distancing is appropriate, but more often it is a silent mini-revenge, a way of punishing the person for hurting you. But with hesed love, after an argument, even when tension is in the air, you don't allow your spirit to pull away. You move toward the other person; you don't allow an ugly space to grow.

Why is hesed love so important? Because life is moody. Feelings come and go. Pressures rise and fall. Passions ebb and flow. Hesed is a stake in the heart of the changing seasons of life. Words of commitment create a bond that stands against life's moodiness.

Ruth and Orpah have already been showing Naomi this one-way love. Naomi's comment suggests this: "May the LORD do hesed with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me." Naomi is asking God to show them the same hesed that they have shown her.

Understanding Rest

But Naomi isn't finished. She has a second blessing: "The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!" (Ruth 1:9). The Hebrew word for "rest" is manoah and is related to Noah. It means "a place of settled security," a place where shalom (peace) takes place. In a sense we are all hunting for rest.

Naomi's faith is striking. She assumes that Yahweh can bless her daughters-in-law in Moab. In the ancient world, gods were hardwired to ethnic groups and their land. Winning a war meant that "our god beat up your god." So Kemosh, the god of the Moabites, is strong in Moab but weak outside of Moab. Ancient people would assume that the same is true of Yahweh: strong in Israel but weak outside the borders. But the Hebrew Bible — along with Naomi — insists that Yahweh is not just a local deity but the God of the whole earth. He can bless even in Moab.

The Structure of Love

We can sense the strength of Naomi's character behind her kind words. She begins her double blessing with two sharp commands: "go" and "return." She is not negotiating. She is ordering. She has to be strong. She is taking the most precious thing in her life, her family, and destroying it for the sake of love. Because of her love, she has to push away what she loves the most, destroying the only thing she has left in the world, her only reason for living. She can't change her life, but she can improve the lives of her daughters-in-law. We are watching hesed in action.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "A Loving Life"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Paul E. Miller.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: A Love-Hate Relationship with Love,
Part One COMMITTED LOVE,
1 Suffering: The Crucible for Love,
2 Love without an Exit Strategy,
3 The Lost Art of Lament,
4 Love Is Not God,
5 Death: The Center of Love,
6 Entering a Broken Heart,
7 Discovering Glory in Love,
8 Loving against My Feelings,
Part Two THE SHAPE OF THE JOURNEY,
9 The Gospel Shape of Love,
10 Love Lands,
11 Love Protects,
12 The World Moves for Love,
13 Humility: The Path of Love,
14 Love Creates Community,
15 Love Invites Resurrection,
16 Love Burns Its Passport,
Part Three LEARNING TO THINK IN LOVE,
17 Thinking in Love,
18 Rightly Ordered Love,
19 Discovering God on the Journey of Love,
Part Four LOVE WINS THE DAY,
20 Wisdom in the Pursuit of Love,
21 Love Celebrates,
22 The Legacy of Love,
23 Love Is Forever,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
Works Cited,

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the most honest, timely, and helpful book I’ve ever read about the costly and exhausting demands of loving well. And at the same time, A Loving Life is the most faithful, alluring, and encouraging presentation of God’s love for us in Jesus I’ve fed on in years. These two themes go hand in hand. Through the biblical story of Ruth, Paul Miller gives us hope, not hype—the freedom to suffer well, stay present, and live expectantly in all of our relationships. Thank you, Paul, for making the gospel more beautiful and believable to me.”
—Scotty Smith, Pastor Emeritus, Christ Community Church, Franklin, Tennessee; Teacher in Residence, West End Community Church, Nashville, Tennessee

“Every once in a great while one reads a book that is so profound, so fresh, and so life changing that you can’t get it out of your mind or your heart. A Loving Life is that kind of book. Walk with Paul Miller, Ruth, and Naomi to the place of real love, and you’ll never again settle for a substitute. Read this book, rejoice in it, and give it to everyone you know. They will bless you for giving it to them as I bless Paul Miller for writing it.”
—Steve Brown, Host, Key Life radio program; author, Three Free Sins: God Isn't Mad At You 

“Reading this book nourished me deeply. With caring attentiveness especially to often-overlooked ‘modern’ widows and widowers, Paul Miller gently pastors us through the story of two courageous, hesed-embracing single women, Naomi and Ruth. He invites us to embrace the death at the center of covenant love and to learn it as the downstroke of reality—the upstroke of which is ever the grace of surprising resurrection. In Christ, Christians all, and the world, reap the far-reaching blessing of these unlikely benefactresses. And we do again in this little book.”
—Esther L. Meek, Professor of Philosophy, Geneva College; author, Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology; A Little Manual for Knowing

“The book of Ruth is about hesed, a loyal love, that Ruth shows to Naomi, Boaz shows to Ruth, and, behind the scenes, God demonstrates to his people. Paul Miller not only brilliantly explains the story of Ruth, but also shows how hesed love can transform us and our relationships. I highly recommend this book.”
—Tremper Longman III, Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Westmont College

“Being married to Joni, a longtime quadriplegic, I know my marriage vows are always in need of polishing. And Paul Miller’s new book fits the bill; I’ve yellow-highlighted nearly every page. A Loving Life reinforces that the best—the only—kind of love is one-way and without an exit strategy. If you are looking to shore up the for-better-or-for-worse, in-sickness-and-in-health promises in your marriage, you couldn’t lay your hands on a better read.”
—Ken Tada, Director of Ministry Development, the Joni and Friends International Disability Center

“‘Death is the center of love.’ Miller’s insight comes as he beautifully retells the story of Ruth in terms of the gospel, revealing a path of love more dear and deep than our cultural icons and distractions can create, and more precious than any pursuit of self can dream. Here is love vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, and freeing.”
—Bryan Chapell, Stated Clerk, Presbyterian Church in America

“The word love is often either a vague sentiment or just another four-letter word. But in Paul Miller’s hands, the quiet, compelling reality emerges. You will witness how love is thoughtful, principled, courageous, enduring, and wise—all the things you know deep down it should be. And even more than those fine things, you will be surprised and delighted at how true love is grounded in God.”
—David Powlison, Late Executive Director, Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation

“Paul Miller reminds us with boldness and insight that a relationship with Jesus Christ means journeying with him to the cross, where we most know of the love of God for us. As such, it is the only path to learning to incarnate that love ourselves—and so to dance to the Spirit’s constant rhythm of being loved and loving others.”
—Joseph "Skip" Ryan, Minister, Park Cities Presbyterian Church; Moderator, General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America

“I was sure that Paul Miller’s A Praying Life had to be his greatest, but A Loving Life is better. How can we care for others much more than for ourselves? How can we escape from the slippery pit of our ‘feel good’ culture? Keep going through the book of Ruth and discover good and godly ordinary life, and how you can live it in an extraordinary way—the way of love, God’s way.”
—D. Clair Davis, Emeritus Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary

“A Loving Life is a worthy successor to Paul Miller’s much-appreciated book on prayer. It is a careful, thorough analysis of the book of Ruth, understanding it as a love story and making good applications to our own experiences and needs for love. Paul here shows not only a deep understanding of God’s Word, but also a rich knowledge of human nature, both in the ancient world and today. He offers biblical responses to many of the misunderstandings and problems we have with love of all kinds. May the Lord give this book a broad readership!”
—John M. Frame, Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy Emeritus, Reformed Theological Seminary

“If there is a message the world needs more to hear and to start obeying than the one Paul Miller brings here, I don’t know what it is. Beautifully written and attested by plenty of personal experience, A Loving Life unearths dimensions of the book of Ruth I had never noticed, and will now never forget.”
—Andrée Seu Peterson, Senior Writer, World magazine