“But then I will win her back once again. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. I will return her vineyards to her and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope. 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.” Hosea 2:14-15 NLT
It is so interesting that I providentially landed on these verses this morning. I just finished off a sermon series yesterday called, “A Better Us – Relentlessly Pursuit.” (https://bit.ly/chasinghumans).
From Adam & Eve, to Moses, to David, to Hosea and more, God has come after us. He comes after us in our disobedience, our disagreements, our depression, even our denials! An 1890 poem by Francis Thompson captures it. God is the Hound of Heaven.
God pursues us because he loves us, He wants us to walk with Him, find beauty, strength and freedom in Him. The Hosea story is the wildest twist of an awkward, even controversial love. God tells Hosea to marry Gomer, a known prostitute. This whole story is a physical, marital, family object lesson about how unfaithful Israel has been with their love covenant with God. In the end, Hosea has to pay to buy his own wife back, out of the sex slave industry – ”So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine,” Hosea 3:2.
It was not so easy to buy back Israel though. God promised that one day it would happen and it did 800 years later! The price to buy Israel back from their sex (idolatry) and death slavery was the death of His own son, Jesus. God chased humans then, He still chases humans today – all over the globe, in every minute of every day. God still chases after YOU and me. In the sermon I talked about how wonderful it is for someone to pursue us (not it a stalker kind of way).
For someone to know whether I live or die, when I love or lose love, when I’m healthy or sick? To be known and loved by God is the greatest feeling and experience we will ever know. Even when we run, hide, rebel or become an enemy of God – He yet pursues. Read these verses David wrote in Psalms.
Psalm 23:6 – “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will
pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house
of the LORD forever.”
Psalm 139:7-12 “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night— but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.”
Let God catch you ALWAYS.
Prayer
Dad,
I am so thankful you pursued me and you still come after me! I am in awe to see your patience and mercy in the very long story of your people – Israel. Yet, you do not withhold judgment nor justice. And, You are the only one qualified to make those justified decisions.