Post from July 29, 2023

”👟 RSD 1186 ✅ Today’s Verse: “Take the words [confessing your guilt] with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, “‘Take away all our wickedness; Accept what is good and receive us graciously, So that we may present the fruit of our lips (gratitude).’” — Hosea 14:2 (6+8=14:1+1=2) (Amplified Bible translation)

Message translation: “O Israel, come back! Return to your God! You’re down but you’re not out. Prepare your confession and come back to God. Pray to Him, “‘Take away our sin, accept our confession. Receive as restitution our repentant prayers. Assyria won’t save us; horses won’t get us where we want to go. We’ll never again say ‘our god’ to something we’ve made or made up. You’re our last hope. Is it not true that in you the orphan finds mercy?’” — Hosea 14:1-3

Do you ever turn on a random street while driving? I mean random—like you don’t know what street it is or where it leads, but you’re not totally lost because you know that you were going in the wrong direction and need to course-correct. This random street might not be the street that completes this task, but it’ll get you in a better situation. So, you turn on this random street, and it’s narrow, has ditches on either side, and you drive down it hoping to find a street to turn off so that you can course-correct (which was your original goal). There are no side streets, and you reach the end of the road—only to find that it’s a dead-end. Not a cul-de-sac, a dead end. So, now you really do have to turn around. You can’t even go the wrong way on a dead end. But, the street is incredibly narrow, and the houses where you are all have cars parked in their driveways, and the driveways aren’t long. You’re at a dead end, and there’s no room to turn around. What do you do? You can’t just sit there forever (I mean—you can, but it’s ill-advised). If you try to pull into a driveway, you have a real risk of hitting a car or driving into a ditch trying to avoid the car. How do you move forward when everything in front of you is an obstacle? Then, you think of the only direction you can move: backward. Back the way you came. You shift the car into reverse; your backup camera illuminates, and you, slowly and carefully, press on the gas to move the car backwards, periodically also quickly turning your head and glancing at the mirrors to double check surroundings. You move slowly down the street in the direction you just came. And, here it is: the stop sign you took the right turn by. So, you pull all the way out, passed the stop sign into the intersection, and you go forward with another right turn—only this time you’re facing the other direction, so it turns the car back on the original road you were driving on when you realized you needed to course-correct and turned on that random street—but in the opposite direction this time. Yeah, you’re back-tracking just a bit, but you fire up the GPS this time and take its advice on a different random road that affords you progress on your journey. The point? Sometimes the only way we can move forward is by going backward.

Today’s verse is from the Book of Hosea, about a prophet (a guy who would get a “heads up” from God and use it to advise others). Hosea lived in Israel in a difficult time (about the same time as the prophets Amos, Isaiah, and Micah), and, as you might’ve guessed, the people of Israel were not making the best decisions. Y’all, they were doing stuff like worshipping God on the Sabbath of each week then go home and worship one of the pagan gods socially…like actually worship. Their religious and political leaders were corrupt; justice system was also corrupt. God had a covenant with Israel that He would protect them from enemies if they did their best to keep their covenant with Him. God wanted the people of Israel to experience the best of what their journeys had to offer and to develop into the people they were meant to be. Israel decided that they would make political alliances with a couple of countries (Egypt and Assyria), and make that the top priority. God knew these countries weren’t the best friends Israel could make, but politics won. And, cool social situations took importance over keeping their covenant with God. They felt safe, though, because they had military powers. In fact, a lot of powerful people in Israel wanted to rely on political alliances and military powers and not so much on the protection from God. After all, God had set a standard for how people should live and treat each other, and using their “own” powers means that they can do whatever they want and still be Gucci—after all, they have their military powers and political alliances. The problem? Compared to others, Israel’s military—not that good. Their alliances? Weeeelllll, you know how in those reality shows (think “Survivor,” “Big Brother,” MTV’s “Real World/Road Rules Challenge”(s)) they’ll make alliances, but, as the show nears the finale, someone in the alliance takes a hard left and votes someone in the alliance out to gain ground? Guess what Assyria did years later…let’s just say they had a better military, and Hosea saw it coming. He calls out the leadership (and the ordinary people going off-script) and warns everyone that destruction is in their future if they don’t turn back to God. When it became clear that things were definitely going to get sticky for Israel, God gave Hosea some more information. Yeah, things were going to get worse before they get better, but they would get better.

In Hosea 11, he tells a story personifying God as father who gave everything to his son (Israel), only to have he son turn against him, but the father, rather than stay angry, decides not to give up on his son. “‘And so I’m not going to act on my anger. I’m not going to destroy [Israel]. And why? Because I am God and not a human. I’m The Holy One and I’m here—in your very midst’” — Hosea 11:8-9. But, then what was that whole thing about Assyria? Well, Assyria still went ham on Israel, and things got hard. But, if you think about it: weren’t things already hard in Israel? Now, if you were one of those people partying it up with the pagan gods and paying off people in the judicial system to cover up your crimes and exploiting those you had leadership over, with no conscience for self-reflection or sense of humanity, then yeah, life was going swimmingly for you. But, for the ordinary people, working hard to put food on the table despite never knowing what you’ll be charged for rent or taxes, thinking it’s wrong to worship anyone but God (so no pagan partying), and going to worship on the Sabbath (hoping the crooked religious leaders won’t find a way to say you’re unworthy to do so), then life was hard. For people trying to keep their covenant with God in this environment, life was just…hard. Things weren’t “good” in Israel before the Assyrians came; they were fake good. Did the Assyrians improve things? Of course not. Now Israel had a new problem. God did allow Israel to receive the consequences of their poor political, military, and, well, religious choices. The hope Hosea speaks of is that God wasn’t going to leave Israel, even during the bad times. Because of God’s grace, there’s always a way back. “Return to your God! You’re down but you’re not out.” Hosea encouraged everyone to return to God, and he spoke of a bright future for Israel (things would get better eventually, with God’s help).

What does this have to do with us? It’s not like we’re partying with pagan gods. You sure? Because when we’re continually putting things ahead of God, that’s (to an extent) what we’re doing. Even when we’re doing our best, sometimes things get sticky, and we’re like, “Hey God, where are You?” Sometimes God allows things to happen. As far as the Assyria thing: you know how you clean a room (and purge items that are not of use), and the whole room gets super messy, but then you finish and it’s better than what it was before? It’s like that. In times where things seem really messy, God is near to us, helping us purge things (in our lives and in our character) that aren’t of use, and helping us grow in our faith…making it even better than it was before. Today’s verse is Hosea telling everyone to return to God, to go to God with everything from gratitude to requests, to seek His forgiveness and His guidance because that’s how the people in Hosea’s day could get back on track and live their best lives.

Back on track. It can be frustrating when you’ve traveled so far only to realize you’ve been going in the wrong direction. Adding insult to injury, sometimes there are so many obstacles in front of us that the only way to move forward is to go back. It’s frustrating and a little scary having to rely on that backup camera to get out of that dead end, but, in the grand scheme of the journey, we realize that part only lasted seconds, but we got back to where we needed to be. Back on the road that wasn’t moving us forward (that we could see) but wasn’t the wrong one. Back to a place that’s familiar, that we’ve already passed up, but where we could get our bearings and fire up the GPS. Yeah, maybe we should’ve asked the GPS earlier, but at least we are now. And, we’re thankful for the GPS. Back to where we are able to move forward. So, what’s Hosea telling us? When you can’t move forward, move back. Let God guide you. When things get hard or scary, go back to God. When you make a mistake, go back to God. When things just aren’t going well, go back to that simple trust in God. Trusting God doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. Go back to that simple trust you had when you were, like, four and asked God not to let you get sucked down the drain at bath time. Hey, it worked, didn’t it? As a little kid, you couldn’t even imagine the physics you couldn’t understand, but, since we’re all little kids to God, just think what you can’t even imagine you can’t understand now. “Forward and backward are always opposites.” You sure???”