In the Word: Hosea

Cheers Y'all and Wifessionals challenged their readers to go through the book of Hosea this month using She Reads Truth.  I loved the idea, and here's what I've learned from the study.

Hosea was a man willing to follow God even when what God said to do didn't make sense.  The Almighty told Hosea to marry Gomer, a woman Hosea knew from the beginning wouldn't be faithful to him.  Hosea was then to name and raise her children "I will punish", "Not loved", and "Not my people", and he didn't even know for sure if these kids were his own!  This man had the willingness to follow God wherever He leads, and I so needed to be reminded that this is faithfulness.  I'm struggling right now to follow God from full time teaching to full time mommyhood with a part time job.  I'm struggling to trust that our needs will be met in this new situation.  That's a lack of faith on my part, and not glorify to God Almighty.

Back to Hosea.  God asked his prophet to lead this life of perpetual heartbreak to be an earthly example to Israel of all that God experiences when we turn our back on Him.  Hosea represents God in this story with his unwavering devotion to Gomer, and we're Gomer.  We turn away, we stray, we follow after worthless idols, and waste our time on nonsense.  So many times reading Hosea, I wanted to reach through the pages and smack Gomer on the backside of her head, but the more I read, the more I realized I was just disappointed in myself for being just like her.

Yet, just as Hosea opened Gomer with open arms, God does the same to me.  He used Hosea's mouth to speak words of redemption to all Israel: One was coming that would give His all for our sakes.  The words in the book of Hosea forced me to stare my own sin straight in the face, and when I take time to examine my own faulty heart, the cross looks more beautiful than ever before.

God watched Israel turn from Him over and over again.  They chose golden calves, the grossness of having kings rule over them instead of the One True God, and the temporal pleasures of living in the moment to be their gods.  I can't say I've ever been tempted to bow down to a statue, but I waste my time on other things: chasing after an image I want my family to fit into, time perusing my Facebook news feed, trying to get my blog to look and be just so.  All of that fits nice and neat into the idol category.  God wants all of me, and I fall short each time I selfishly think I can give myself something better than turning my all over to Christ.

Do any of you ever tire of being the prodigal child like I do?  Why do we do that to ourselves?  Praise God for welcoming me with open arms each time I turn from sin and choose to follow Him more closely.  My prayer and my goal, through the Spirit, is to learn to stay with God and not fall away.