From The Pastor's Desk
Trusting the Message of God When We Don’t Understand the Method of God
Perhaps at times you feel conflicted about something you have read in scripture. Perhaps at times you feel like, this just doesn’t seem like God should have let this go down like this. Perhaps you have heard others say, “how could a loving God do this or not stop this?” Please don’t feel guilty or ashamed because there have been times that’s exactly the way I felt or was thinking. Then I’m often drawn to Isa. 55:8-9 for comfort, consolation or confirmation.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
As we prepare to do a collective study from the book of Hosea during our Wednesday Bible study, I have been asking God for even more clarity in this unusual method that God chose to deliver a profound message to Israel and to us today. Most of us are familiar with the prophet Hosea as the one that God called to do something that seems unthinkable and even a disgrace. God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute/harlot by the name of Gomer as noted in Hosea 1:2 (NLT).
When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.”
But hold up! Couldn’t God have chosen another method to deliver this profound message to Israel? Certainly, God could have but God did not choose to consult with us about how He should deliver His message then nor does He consult with us on how He should deliver His message to us now. Hosea reminds us in his own way that maybe your issue isn’t promiscuity, prostitution or promoting an immoral sexual lifestyle but there’s something that led you away from God and not towards God at some point in life.
Without attempting to explain all the details of the 14 chapters in the book of Hosea in this single newsletter, please allow me to leave you with this. All sin is spiritual adultery, but God takes spiritually adulterous people and He has paid the penalty for their or should I say our unfaithfulness. God bought us back through the crucifixion, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. We are now new in Him by His redeeming grace so that we may be wed to Him in an eternal, spiritual union. So, even when we don’t understand God’s method, we can trust God’s message. I am looking forward to our study together through the book of Hosea.
Forever In Him,
Roy Newman, Senior Pastor