Repentant Heart

Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord. Say to him, “Forgive all our sins and graciously receive us, so that we may offer our praises”…The Lord says, “Then I will heal you of your faithlessness; my love will know no bounds, for my anger will be gone forever.” – Hosea 14:2, 4

Much of the book of Hosea is God telling Israel how upset he is with them. After all he has done for them – bringing them out of Egypt, feeding them in the wilderness, giving them a new land to live in – they still ignore his commands and turn to worshipping idols instead. After giving them blessing after blessing and being ignored in return, God is a little angry. All he wants is for his children to love and listen to him, and they act as if he didn’t exist. He threatens terrible things against them, and uses Hosea and Gomer to show them how loving he will be to them, but they refuse to comply. In the last chapter of the book, God once again explains how to repair the relationship between him and his people.

He asks them to come and confess, asking for forgiveness, willing to praise. And once they humble themselves and put their own desires aside, God will heal them and flood them with a boundless love.

It seems like an easy choice – of course they want God’s healing and love, so following his orders should be a no-brainer. But as we each know all to well, it is much easier to ask God for blessings than forgiveness. The thing is, God wants to bless us – but even more than that, he wants us to love him. And loving him has to come before the blessings.

God longs for us to come to him with a repentant heart, so he may heal us and shower us with boundless love.

The Bride, Part II

I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you will finally know me as the Lord. – Hosea 2:19-20

In last week’s study, we saw how God used the prophet Hosea and his prostitute wife Gomer to illustrate the type of relationship the Lord wants to have with us – a love story where we can refer to Him as our husband. This week’s passage explores that relationship a little further. In the above verses, God promises how he will treat us during our “marriage” to him.

First, God says he will make us his wife forever. He doesn’t say he will love us until someone better comes along. He doesn’t say he will love us until we mess up.  He says forever. For-ev-er.  No matter what we do, or how bad our mistakes, He will always love us. Gomer left her marriage and went back into prostitution – but Hosea proved his love by seeking her out, buying her back, and returning her to his home. That is how God loves us.

Then the Lord goes on to say that he will show us righteousness, justice, unfailing love, and compassion. Talk about a wonderful set of vows! I would venture to say that every person wishes they had a relationship founded on truly unfailing love and compassion – and God willingly offers us that relationship.

Finally God says, “I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you fill finally know me as the Lord.” This is the kind of promise that will set a person’s heart a-flutter. Think of the implications behind the promise to be faithful: no matter what we do, how we act, or what problems we face, God will ALWAYS have our back. That is amazing. And on top of that, God promises to make us His, so that we will finally know him.

Using the relationship of Hosea and Gomer, God is saying this: “Come to me as your true love, the way you did when you were first set free from sin, and I will love you forever so you can know me completely.” What a wonderful proposal.

 God wants to pour blessing, love, and intimacy on us the same as a husband wants to love his bride – and all we have to do in order to receive it is to give ourselves to him.

The Bride

…She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt. “When that day comes,” says the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’ instead of ‘my master.’” – Hosea 2:15-16

Hosea is a complicated story in the Old Testament. In it, God tells the prophet to marry a prostitute, surely a taboo situation during his time. God uses this marriage between a man of God and a sinful woman to symbolize the Lord and Israel. Even though this message was primarily for a group of people at a certain point in history, it can still apply to us today. God is still God, the loving and forgiving one in the relationship. And we, like Israel and Gomer (Hosea’s wife), are the ones who keep messing up and turning away from God.

In this passage, God turns the tables on how the creator/created relationship works. We see it as master/slave: God is in complete control, and we have limited access to Him. But that’s not how God wants it to be. If we give ourselves to him, He will free us, and he will instead become our husband - loving, forgiving, protective.

God doesn’t want us to view our relationship as a business arrangement. He wants our relationship to be a love story.