COV LIFE BLOG

Hosea 14 – A Call to Return to the LORD

Have you ever confessed your need to God? God cannot heal us if we are telling him how great we are, how big we are are, how beautiful we are, how rich we are, how famous we are, how well-connected we are. We must realize our desperate need for God, and then confess it to God.

God must hear from our own lips that we are orphans, because that is our true condition. We are fatherless, homeless, and abandoned, with no one to help us. But the Bible tells us God defends the cause of the orphans, the widows, the aliens and those who are nobodies. So we must come to God, saying, “O God, we are orphans; please be a Father to us. O God, we are helpless; please save us.” Tell him, “O God, we were Lo-Ruhamahs–not pitied, and Lo-Ammis–not your people. Please have mercy upon us, O God!” When we come to God like that, we will find compassion from him.

Let me ask you: Have you accepted the divine diagnosis, that you are a sinner and helpless to save yourself? Have you received the divine prescription–to return to your God–and taken the medicine of coming in repentance and faith towards God? Or do you say, “I have not found any help in God?” If the latter is true, then I say that your previous prayers and confessions were inauthentic and superficial. Your love was like the morning mist. It didn’t have any root. You didn’t take into account your most serious problem–sin. You did not accept God’s words to you, “Your sins have been your downfall!”

But if you accept God’s diagnosis and return to him in humility, in God’s prescribed manner, you will find a God who will heal you, help you, and cure you of your backsliding, your apostasy, your stubbornness, your autonomy, and your rebellion. God will receive you graciously and forgive all your sins, because in God the fatherless find compassion.

P.G. Mathew

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Heart Preparation
Read Hosea 14. As we wrap up our series on Hosea, what is it that has impacted you most? How, by God’s grace, can you take what has impacted you and apply it meaningfully to the rest of your life?