Ruth: Drawing on a deeper love

By Mark Greene

As intricate as a Fabergé egg, as multi-layered as an onion, Ruth is the story of ordinary people working out how to live in God’s loving ways through agonising personal circumstances. It’s also an account of how the God of love works through faithful people to fulfil his purposes for them, for their nation, and indeed for all humankind.
In this six-session guide, Mark Greene’s astute questions, mini-features, and contemporary stories will help you to appreciate the book’s drama, wonder afresh at the Lord’s grace, and find inspiration and encouragement for all of life, Monday to Sunday.
The fourth in this seven-study series from LICC, developed to enable Christians to read, reflect on, and see the implications of the Bible for themselves and their daily contexts – their frontlines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP
• Release date: Mar 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789742251

Mark Greene

Mark Greene is the Executive Director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Before that he was Vice-Principal and Lecturer of communications at the London School of Theology. And before that he spent ten years working in advertising in London and New York, a fact he is still prepared to admit.

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About the author

Mark Greene Ex-NYC adman, ex-vice Principal of the London School of Theology, and graduate in Hebrew, Mark has been LICC’s Executive Director since 1999. A pioneer champion of workplace ministry and whole-life discipleship, his books include Thank God it’s Monday, Fruitfulness on the Frontline, Probably the Best Idea in the World and, with Catherine Butcher, the million-copy selling The Servant Queen and the King She Serves. He’s married to Katriina and they have three joyously different young adult children. Mark loves fiction and films and does a reasonable imitation of Rowan Atkinson and an unrecognisable one of Sean Connery. His wife wishes it were the other way around. His children wish he wouldn’t do either.

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‘May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.’

Boaz to Ruth, Ruth 2:12

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INTER-VARSITY PRESS

36 Causton Street, London SW1P 4ST, England

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.ivpbooks.com

© LICC Ltd., 2020

Mark Greene has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicised edition). Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.

First published 2020

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978–1–78974–162–9

eBook ISBN: 978–1–78974–225–1

Typeset in Great Britain by Sublime

Printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd., Gosport, Hampshire

eBook by CRB Associates, Potterhanworth, Lincolnshire

Inter-Varsity Press publishes Christian books that are true to the Bible and that communicate the gospel, develop discipleship and strengthen the church for its mission in the world.

IVP originated within the Inter-Varsity Fellowship, now the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, a student movement connecting Christian Unions in universities and colleges throughout Great Britain, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Website: www.uccf.org.uk. That historic association is maintained, and all senior IVP staff and committee members subscribe to the UCCF Basis of Faith.

Contents

Introduction | The Gateway Seven Bible Study Series

Prologue | Drawing on a Deeper Love

Making the Most of Ruth

Session 1 | Loving in Terrible Times (Ruth 1)

Session 2 | Loving at Work (Ruth 2)

Andrew’s story

Session 3 | Loving through Risk (Ruth 3)

Kim’s story

Session 4 | Loving beyond Imagination (Ruth 4)

Session 5 | The Loving God at Work (Ruth 1–4)

Blake’s story

Session 6 | The Loving God through History (Ruth 1–4)

Further reading on Ruth

Other resources from LICC

About LICC

How shall we live? How shall we love? For Christians, it’s the same question

Features

Reading Old Testament narrative – part one

What’s in a name?

Ruth, Judges, and the (mis)treatment of women

Reading Old Testament narrative – part two

Grace across the generations

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Introduction

The Gateway Seven Bible Study Series

We don’t approach a novel in the same way we tackle a legal document. We don’t read poetry in the same way we might read a letter from a friend. So, we don’t read the 66 books of the Bible as if they were all the same kind of writing. Story, song, law, letter, and more, all make up the rich repository of writing that together is God’s word to us.

For The Gateway Seven series we’ve selected seven books of the Bible that each represent a different kind of writing. The mini-features sprinkled through the studies, together with the questions suggested for discussion, invite you to explore each book afresh in a way that’s sensitive to its genre as well as to the concerns of the book itself.

Each study engages with a different kind of writing. However, each one in the series has been crafted with the same central desire: to offer a gateway to a deeper love of God’s word and richer insights into its extraordinary implications for all of life, Monday through Sunday.

‘May your kingdom come – on earth as in heaven’, Jesus taught us to pray. May your kingdom come in our homes and places of work and service. May your kingdom come at the school gate as well as in the sanctuary. May your kingdom come in the hydrotherapy pool,