”I have been the Lord your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and no Savior exists besides me.
I fed you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. When they had pasture, they became satisfied; they were satisfied, and their hearts became proud. Therefore they forgot me.
So I will be like a lion to them; I will lurk like a leopard on the path.“
Hosea 13:4-7 CSB
God reminds Israel of His past Faithfulness… and immediately follows up with a description of how it resulted in them becoming proud, fat and happy…then forgetting all about God.
What is interesting in this passage is that God desires to bless them, but in the end it leads to the one thing He HATES- pride and lost relationship. God also knows that disaster and suffering force all of us to see things most clearly: we don’t have control, we don’t possess the ability to fix/remove trouble, we actually NEED God, He is the only one who can save us from trouble.
Remarkably, the choice is ours: stay close to Him in good times and bad, or run from Him, depend on ourselves in pride, and enter hard times apart from God (maybe even caused by Him). What is crazy, is that we naturally tend toward the latter…the most painful path. I have often believed that my plan was good, without even consulting God. These times always lead to pain and suffering.i
God, I need You…every hour I need You! Every second, every moment I need YOU! Anything good, kind, gentle, loving or thoughtful that comes from me, has been produced in you. Help me to see when I am depending on me, and run to you for forgiveness!
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