*****************************************************************
In the book of Hosea, God used Hosea's life as an example of Israel's relationship with Him. Hosea's wife Gomer was a prostitute, and even though Hosea married her and gave her a new life, she left her loving home, her husband and her children, to live a life of prostitution and adultery again. God said that Gomer entered into adultery just like the nation of Israel entered adultery when Israel forsook their relationship with God to chase after foreign gods. Even though He had loved them and given them a fresh start, the nation turned away from Him and His love to enter into prostitution with foreign gods again.

But God told Hosea to go to his wife and continue to love her and allow her to come home, even though she had committed adultery and Hosea had legal grounds to divorce her or put her away. My love for Israel is the same, God said. I will take her back and love her even though I have no reason to.

I just finished a book by Ted Dekker called, "When Heaven Weeps." It is a modern-day retelling of the story of Hosea. In this book, the hero of the story continues to reach out for his wayward wife and to love her in spite of what she has done, which confounds the wisdom of the world. As the story progresses, we learn that God has blessed the hero of the story with a gift -- God has given him His heart, so that he could truly love his wife with agape unconditional love, the same love that God loves us with.

At times I wonder if we are not sometimes used by God just like Hosea. Perhaps the situation that you are living in is reflective of our nation's relationship with God. For example, our daughter has Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). Because of this disorder, she is unable and unwilling to return or show love to us, even though we adopted her as our own and brought her into our lives and our home. She continues to reject us and our love and lives in open defiance of our will. Isn't this similar to our rejection of God's love? We live in the richest, most blessed nation on earth, but still we turn away from God's love and live in defiance of His commands. What other nation on earth is as corrupt as ours, filled with legalized abortion, pornography, crime, moral decline? But yet God's love and grace continues to reach out to us just like He did to Israel in the days of Hosea.

What are we going to do about it? Are we going to return to God with all our heart, or are we going to continue to turn away from Him and enter into adultery with the world and the gods of secularism?