Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, Take away all iniquity; accept what is good ... I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. -- Hosea 14:1-4
I don’t have much time again today, but the poignancy of this passage caught my attention, and I thought I would share it. Too many of us have lived under a cloud of inadequacy. In a way, that is to be expected. We are not God. We will never and can never be perfect or perfectly pure, our best efforts fall short.
We have stumbled. We will stumble. All that we can do is take our words and return, but that is all that is asked of us. My prayer today -- truly every day, is that the Lord will sift through the contents of my life and separate the wheat from the chaff, casting away the false, the useless, and the wicked and marking down and keeping what is good.
The most amazing thing is that we can expect Him to hear and answer that prayer, not because we have done so much that is good but simply because He loves us freely. Is that not a wonderful thought?
2 comments:
Wonderful, indeed. This resonates nicely with my study this morning, discussing the story of Gideon in Judges 6. The Lord greets him initially with what must have seemed a joke: "Hail, you man of valor!" when really he was the least of the least, and apparently a great coward to boot. But that was why he was so perfect for the task at hand; had he been a "greater" man, people would have looked at his leadership as a sign that he was good enough for the job, and not that God was stepping in once more on their behalf.
I love the humor in that chapter; how much God must have loved poor Gideon, to grant him signs and wonders in the face of what must have seemed shockingly unbelievable.
Yep, I love Gideon.
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