Monday, September 5, 2011

Huh? Hoe. HOW?


“Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. A spirit of prostitution is in their heart; they do not acknowledge the Lord.” Hosea 5:4

Sin is like mildew stuck on the tiles of your bathroom, the more you ignore it, the more it piles up and the more it gets tougher to clean.

In verse 4, the heart is described as having a “spirit of prostitution” which thwarts the need to bend down before the Lord. Sin causes us to feel a lot of negative things and it clouds our perspective towards God. It is not an uncommon incident in a believer’s life when we have gone cold towards the Lord. Many times we have chosen a path that we knew would lead us somewhere far from God even if we knew exactly how it would make us feel. When we’ve felt completely dirty and exhausted emotionally, we realize we had no other option but to turn back to God.

The book of Hosea teaches us to evaluate ourselves and ask if we have acted like an adulterer or a prostitute before the Lord. More than the way we behave in school or work, it’s the heart condition that the Lord sees and knows. He knows how far we’ve turned away from God and He knows when we deliberately choose Baal over Him. Constant sinning hardens a person’s heart and spirit, making it difficult to go before the Lord. When our conscience tugs us to go back to God, don’t wait, heed immediately before you find yourself giving into sin habitually. True repentance not only entails the spiritual, but also the emotional and the mental submission before the Lord. Though we find it unbelievable that a Holy and Mighty God would accept us back, we have nothing else to turn to other than His loving arms.

Application:
·         What would it take for you to feel that God loves you and wants you back?
·         Why do you think you go back to constant sinning?
·         What are some of the Baals in your life that you think would satisfy you more than God? Can God be the source of that instead?

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