263 - "Come, O God, Like The Rains" Hosea 7-14

A picture of life, at times.

Desolate, Drought, Devastating.

Bend Down, O God, and hear our prayer.

"Ephraim has hired lovers.  Even though they hired allies among the nations.  They multiplied altars for sin... They forgot their Maker while multiplying fortified cities."  Hosea 8:8-10.  
They played the harlot and loved the earnings. 
There's a point here. 
God's Words, His Story of Hosea and a harlot represents a welcome, a wooing, a wonderful invitation for more.  More than what this old world offers.

God yearns your way.
From the days of old, your very first days, He was there.
"Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them in My arms;
But they did not know that I healed them...
And I bent down and fed them.  Hosea 11:4
But they were bent on turning from Me.  Hosea 11:7
Am I bent on my own will?
Do I feed on the wind? Hosea 12:1

The Lord is His name.
Therefore, Return to Kindness and Justice.
Wait for your God continually.  Hosea 12:6
Expect Him to do much.  He has.  He is.  He will.

"You will be irresistibly drawn to My Love and able to give it to others when you discover in your own experience that the love I have planted in your heart can never be destroyed by rejection, betrayal, criticism, or any other form of unlove you receive.  True love reveals itself as the strongest of all passions when your impulse to hate those who hurt you is fully felt."  66LL

Come, O God, Like the Rains.

Unannounced.

Unnoticed.

So Needed.

She followed her lovers and forgot God, even when she was married.  Consulting wooden idols.  Asking diviner's wands to inform them.  "Playing the harlot, departing from God."

God says:  He will go away until you acknowledge your guilt and seek His Face.  He does not say when you learn to be grateful or once you are doing well or when you do the right things.  No, it's when we acknowledge our guilt and seek His Face not seek changed lives/changed behavior.  He will come back when we repent not when we just recall good things, count our blessings.  

Hosea 6:1 - “Come, let us return to the Lord.

For He has torn us, but He will heal us...

Let us press on to know the Lord.

And He will come to us like the rain,

Like the spring rain watering the earth."

Hosea 6:3

Hosea 14:1-3 - "You're down but you're not out."  66 LL talks about how these verses are the model for repentance, for crying from your heart as you lay in the ditch of your sin.  "Requiring relief from your pain is wailing on your bed. 

What is the greatest good of my life?  I've so hung on to my reputation, my recognized ministry, my worth as an individual based on what others think...but, no, I must "let go" of demanding any good other than the good of knowing my God.  What is my greatest good this day?

Hosea 14: 7-8  "God is the One Who answers me and satisfies me.  Everything you need is to be found in Him."

Hosea 12:6 - What am I waiting for?  Wait and Expect God to show up.  You are waiting for God not for any man to do anything.  Don't ever give up on Him.  

May we owe no man anything but to love them.  

PHOTO: A picture of life.