God, You ask Hosea to take to himself (Hosea 1:2 NKJV), Gomer. You ask him to unite with her, take her to himself in closeness, in vulnerability, and in genuine care for her – to join, to marry, to make her his own precious wife – for life. You are not just asking Hosea to […]
I’m into James Arthur at the moment. Just loving his lyrics and sound. He has written a song, “Let me love the lonely” – it is perhaps unknowingly to him, a deeply spiritual song, whose lyrics speak of the desire to have someone who will love us intimately. I have listened to it often, lately. If the […]
God, the reason You ask Hosea to marry Gomer is revealed. It was for privileged and devastating personal insight, but it was also for Hosea to relay the heartache and grief You feel. Through his didactic life-experience and instructive word to Your beloved Israel, he portrays Your heart. “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife […]
God, You are angry. Anger, the emotion of betrayal. Anger from injustice. Anger from deep hurt. Anger aroused from what has become of the very best of Your creation. It feels like the rest of Hosea 1, is Your expression of anger through the deep hurt and injustice You feel. I have often wondered after reading […]
Go, love your wife again though she is…“intimate with chocolate cake”. What?! “The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin […]
“God, Your love is not good enough!” Man. Buried deep within this story of Hosea, is where Your heart is able to finally and honestly find expression of it’s deepest pain. It comes out amongst all the offense felt. You have said things hard to hear, but true, yet here is revealed the root of Your […]
My friends made me feel good. They made me feel accepted and wanted, that I fitted there, that I belonged. Drinking this, smoking that, wearing this, and being at that were the outward evidences that I was right – I belonged there, with them. But why inwardly, was it so exhausting? Why was there the […]
On a beautiful autumn day in May, I arrived in the bridal car, driven and escorted by my Dad, to the church where I was to be married. I waited in the foyer, the tiny Baby’s Breath flowers in my bouquet trembling – the result of a mix of nervousness and anticipation and excitement. The […]
From childhood, we take in things around us, what we see, hear, know, sense and feel about something, and through the continual experimental exploration of our surroundings, we formulate a picture which becomes stored in our memory bank which then allows us to knowingly interact with our world. With God, we do the same – we […]