Hosea 4- Following Him

 ”They sacrifice on the mountaintops, and they burn offerings on the hills, and under oaks, poplars, and terebinths, because their shade is pleasant...“

‭‭Hosea‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬ ‭CSB‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/1713/hos.4.CSB

I love the beauty of nature, the peace and sense of smallness.  This entire passage is about doing what feels good, what feeds our desires and is short term delightful.  Those are the things I naturally want to do because it’s easy, and gives me a quick sense of happiness.  God what you know is the end result of this short term pleasure seeking is destruction.

Thank you for the warnings, I know you want joy, peace and delight to be my experience. I also know that only comes long term from knowing You!  God, give me the wisdom to follow you and reject the fleeting pleasures of sin.  Make my delight be in knowing You more.  May this be obvious to the people closest to me so that they can follow you and experience your peace, joy and comfort even in the middle of challenging circumstances!

Hosea 3- Awe Inspiring

 ”Afterward, the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come with awe to the Lord and to his goodness in the last days.“

‭‭Hosea‬ ‭3‬:‭5‬ ‭CSB‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/1713/hos.3.5.CSB

We are so blessed to be loved by God.  I don’t deserve His love, in fact I deserve His wrath!  Yet the picture painted here in Hosea is undeniable…even as we chase after the very things that God HATES, He is still ready to pay more to get us back. To show us love and compassion.  Full of mercy, He draws near to us and tenderly cares for our needs…

God I am so grateful that is who you are, but please help me to stay in awe of you without having to go through times of fleeing.  Give me clarity to see who you are today, remove my blinders of selfishness.  I want to live every day in awe of You and your goodness!

Hosea 2- God Restores

”Therefore, I am going to persuade her, lead her to the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her vineyards back to her and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt. In that day — this is the Lord’s declaration — you will call me “my husband” and no longer call me “my Baal.” For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth; they will no longer be remembered by their names.“

‭‭Hosea‬ ‭2‬:‭14‬-‭17‬ ‭CSB‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/1713/hos.2.14-17.CSB

This passage is incredible because God has just described Israel as having rejected His blessings and chased after all the filthy lust and foolish living they craved.  He shows them the reality of their situation, and then brings them back into a place of peace and tenderly reminds them of who He is.  There is no manipulation, just clear eyed truth laid out plainly.  How gentle! How caring! How compassionate! How not like me…

The last verse of this section is the most hopeful, God does the work of removing the stain of their past.  He takes away the desire for sin, He removes the memory of desire and restores us to Himself!  Who does that!?!  Only God can find us wallowing in the filth of sin and tenderly brings us back to clean us up and bless us.

What a God we serve!  Lord may I have clarity to see where I am wallowing in sin, and quickly follow you into the peacefulness of nature to hear your voice and be cleansed and restored!  Lord may you transform my life so that those around me wallowing in filth, recognize you in me and desire to know you more and live in peace!

Hosea 1- Not by Cunning

”But I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and I will deliver them by the Lord their God. I will not deliver them by bow, sword, or war, or by horses and cavalry.“

‭‭Hosea‬ ‭1‬:‭7‬ ‭CSB‬‬

https://bible.com/bible/1713/hos.1.7.CSB

What really stood out to me was how God acts to save his people: by His strength, by His power, by his own way.  It is not through “normal” means or methods.  It is not by Judah’s strengths or abilities or even intelligent strategies…but by His own hand.

God has blessed me with a strong intellect, creativity and persistence…but they have been a curse for me!  It is so easy to depend on those gifts rather than God…

Lord, help me to rely on You ALONE!  Help me to see when I am trusting in my own strength.  Make it be a flashing neon sign so that I can recognize it, repent and run to you.  God, what a blessing to rest in your care!  Allow your peace to flow through my life and  impact all of those around me for Your kingdom.

Romans 1 - Evidence for God

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” 

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

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God has placed the evidence of Himself not only all around us in His creation, but inside of us as well.  Everyone of us has known the longing for that "thing" that is missing in life, but only the Gospel has the answer.  The missing piece is a relationship with God, the Creator of the universe.

Sin, which we have from the beginning of our lives, separates us from God.  He cannot have anything, other than perfection, in his presence, including us... But God desired us to have relationship with Him so much, that He made a plan to remove the problem of sin from us.  He send Jesus to live a perfect life, be unjustly murdered on the cross, in our place...He took on the punishment of our sin...and gave us in exchange His record of a perfect life.  All that was accomplished as a gift, something free to take, with nothing in exchange but our sin.  All we need to do is stop trusting in ourselves to fix the sin problem and rely solely on Jesus as our ticket into relationship with God.

That is the Gospel, the Good News!  Jesus paid it all...and God created us and the world around us to remind us that we need HIM!

Proverbs 12:8 - Twisted View

8 A man is commended according to his good sense,
    but one of twisted mind is despised.  (ESV)

8 A man will be praised according to his insight,
But one of perverse mind will be despised. (NASB)


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This verse is what my family looked at today as we ate breakfast.  It is simple comparative statement of the results of different mindsets. When I read this in the ESV version this morning the idea of a twisted mind really struck me.

We can so easily have our view of the world skewed in such a way as to respond in our flesh.  We get easily angered, view accidents as personal assaults or a myriad of other ways our pride takes over... and our actions/words display our heart condition.

The antidote is of course to "walk by the Spirit" (Gal 5:16).  What an incredible blessing that THE Holy Spirit dwells within us.  I think we hear this so often we forget His power to transform us.  Consider for a moment that the God of the Universe made His dwelling in me...so that by His power, He can change me to be more and more Christ-like.

Lord, help me to be "led by the Spirit", soften my heart to Your will, and change me to be your man...

Acts 17- Made to Seek God

²⁴ The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands;  
²⁵ nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 
²⁶ and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 
²⁷ that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

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Let me remove some of the description to help you see what jumped out at me:

²⁴ The God who made the world and all things in it, ...²⁶  He made ... every nation of mankind...²⁷ that they would seek God,...

We all are chasing after something to fill that emptiness we feel.  Even when we know the truth of what Christ has done to restore relationship with the God of the Universe, we get distracted.  The Enemy of our soul and our fleshly desires come to us with an imitation of what only God can fully provide.  In our weakness we allow that temptation to capture out attention, which only draws us away from relationship with God.

We can see this most clearly as we look at our lost world.  Their seeking God often looks like lust, greed, power or sometimes being a savior to someone, or something else, anything that will give us purpose...

God, I pray that my life, my words and actions would be a lighthouse for You!  Use me to draw the lost and the distracted back to you...