Hosea – The Prophet Who Married A Prostitute.

Hey! 

It’s been a while.

I was watching a sermon by Judah Smith, one of my favorite pastors, and I was prompted to write a post on here about what he spoke about. 

 

He was speaking about the story of Hosea. 

 

Hosea was a prophet of God, he was to deliver the word of the Lord to the people. One day, God spoke to Hosea and told him to do something unbelievable. God told him to marry a prostitute. Yes, to go find a prostitute named Gomer and marry her and love her and have children with her. That is what he was called to do in his life. I want to stop right there and point out something. This right here and a picture of God’s love for us. God, who is our Hosea, chose to love us, a prostitute of sorts. He has chosen us, a people who sell themselves to every sort of other god imaginable. We sell ourselves to our jobs, school, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, technology, the internet, friends, money, and countless other things. We sell our souls to these things, putting them far above God on our list of things that are important. And in doing that, we turn our backs on God, but God, being far greater than any of those things, still chose to love us. 

 

The story continues… Hosea marries Gomer and they have a life together, they have three kids and things seem to be going reasonably well. Then one day Hosea wakes up to find Gomer gone. She has returned to her old ways and left Hosea with the three kids. And you know what God tells Hosea to do? In Hosea 3:1, “And the Lord said to me, ‘Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love of cakes of raisins.” God tell Hosea to go get his wife…and he does it. He goes and finds his wife. AND HE BUYS HER BACK. In Hosea 3:2 it says, “So I bought her for fifteen sheckels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley.” Hosea goes and buys his wife back. She is being sold for sex and he pays the ransom for her. Not only does he do that, but he redeems her, he renews their vows right there. Hosea 3:3 says, “And I said to her, ‘ You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” Hosea redeems Gomer. 

This is such a beautiful picture of God’s love for Israel and by extension, us. He made man in the Garden of Eden, he loved man and for love to be true there must be choice, so God gave man the free will to decide to love him back, but man chose not to. Humankind chose to go after the things of the world, the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Man ran after the things of the world, choosing them over God. God, in His infinite grace and love, redeemed us. He sent His Son to pay the ransom. Jesus was our fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. And He continues His promise to love us. He redeemed us when we were naked and broken and ugly and gross. 

And then, because of His great love for us, we are to go out and be  Hoseas. God took us, when we were Gomers, and made us into Hoseas so that we could go out and pull others out of their prostitution. We are Hosea for other people, we show them God and God redeems them. This is so beautiful! 

I hope this spurs you to want to be Hosea for someone as much as it does for me. 

LC

And when before the throne I stand in Him complete, “Jesus died my soul to save” my lips shall still repeat. O Praise the one who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead.

Hi hey hello,

Sorry it’s been so quiet around here for the past few weeks, but I really do want to get back into blogging.

Alright guys, I know I have said it about 4.3 million times, but I love being an intern at WUMC so much it just blows my mind. Yesterday I got to hang out with one of my youth girlies. First off, love spending time with them. Each and every one of them are a joy to spend time with and I love getting to pour into them, and many times I learn so much about my life from them, it is amazing! I love hearing what is going on in their lives and it really helps me see where I can pray for them and where I can invest more of my time and energy. Gosh I love these kids.

After we hung out, we went to youth and it was beyond amazing. I know this is also something I saw frequently, but it is still true. Josh Hawkins is a fantastic leader for these kids, I learn so much about mentoring these kids simply by watching his interactions with them. Anyway, he is also a pretty great teacher. Last night was so beautiful I cannot even put it into words. All I can say is that God showed up, in a powerful way. The main idea was that we need to not just make Jesus our Savior, but that He needs to be our KING. A king can do whatever he wants and that what Jesus needs to be in our lives. The night ended with the kids kneeling before the cross and lifting up the name of Jesus in a way that literally brought tears to my eyes. Seeing these kids, these crazy, silly, ridiculous middle and high school students worshipping God and kneeling at the foot of the cross making Jesus the King of their lives was  one of those moments that makes literally everything you do as a youth leader worth it. All those long drives, late nights, silly conversations and worries, all the crazy talks. It is ALL worth it when you get to see those same kids on their faces before God.

Title Lyrics: Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill

-LC

 

Cause we’re stirring up deep deep wells, we’re stirring up deep deep waters. We’re going to jump in the river, jump in and everybody singing now. Deep cries out to deep cries out to, deep cries out to deep cries out to. So we cry out to, we cry out to, you Jesus.

Hi hey hello,

So, over the past few months, I have really been trying to grow closer to God, and God has been drawing me in, little by little, but one thing I feel is lacking, is the show for that on my blog. I feel like if this blog is supposed to be about my life and what I think and feel, then God should most definitely be apart of that. I do not know how to describe why I haven’t included Him into this before, well I have just not as much as I should. God is supposed to be wrapped up in EVERYTHING I do, not just on Sundays and Wednesdays. He is supposed to be my everything, and when someone is your everything, you  cannot ever stop talking about that person.

Why is it that when we are in love with a human being, a person who sins, messes up, hurts us, lets us down, and cannot ever be what we need, we still are completely enraptured with them, when a PERFECT God loves us and will never let us down is there, and we ignore Him. We tell anyone who will listen about the person we love, but are scared to tell others about our faith. I want to be so in love with God that anyone who will listen is going to hear about Him, how loving, good, just, merciful, beautiful, and awe-inspiring He is.

So, all that to say, I want God to be in every part of my life, and that is something I want to work on, so here is one step, including Him in my blog, which happens to be a rather large part of my life. I am not saying that I will go crazy with it, and preach at everyone in every post, but I want God to be present. I know that some people reading may be turned off by this, they may not want to read this blog anymore, and that is okay with me, because I am doing what I feel I am supposed to do right now. I am not doing this for the attention, fame, or an audience, I am doing this because I love my God and I want everyone to know about it.

Title Lyrics: Deep Cries Out – Bethel Music 

-LC

Dude… I Got Nominated!

Hi hey hello,

This is such an honor to receive this award. I was nominated by Ashley over at Lifevesting for the Versatile blogger. First off, I want to thank Ashley so much for this nomination. This blog started as a little side thing I did when I was bored over a Christmas holiday and now it has turned into so much more. I truly enjoy doing all of this and it has become a piece of my life. It is so cool to see what this blog is doing, my family and friends have told me they keep up with it and I am meeting lots of new bloggers. I just love the atmosphere of the blogworld, there is just so much support and encouragement.

Here are the rules for the Versatile Blog Awards:

• Nominate 15 fellow bloggers.
• Inform the bloggers of their nomination.
• Share 7 random things about yourself.
• Thank the blogger who nominated you.
• Add the Versatile Blog Award logo on your blog post.

Alright my fifteen are in no particular order:

1. Kat over at Broken Parasols.

2. Yor Ryeter over at Ittakes10

3. My friend over at AwkwardandDandy

4. My darling Taylor over at Stillmysamegirl

5. My sweet friend at The Zero Vector

After some consideration, I decided that instead of randomly searching for blogs that I thought were versatile, I would skimp on that rule and only do 5 that I truly thought deserved this.

Seven Random Things:

1. I have been to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.

2. My favorite colors are purple, red, and yellow, at least they are today.

3. I love the show White Collar. Like seriously. Neal is simply amazing, like indescribably amazing.

4. I have recently picked up doing a little do -it yourself here and there and will hopefully be adding something with that involved to my blog at some point.

5. My favorite hobbies include, playing soccer with the guys (and Kate!), reading books ranging from Crazy Love to Uglies and everything in between, dying my hair, reading blogs, and of course, sleeping.

6. I have this almost obsession with buying cool journals. I always have to have an interesting journal. I have bought new ones even when I was not anywhere near done with my old one. I currently have two new ones awaiting me to finish the one I am using now.

7. My music taste varies extensively, as displayed by most of my post titles. I like everything from Sara Bareilles to A Day to Remember to Mumford and Sons to Phil Wickham. Like seriously, if you saw my Spotify, you would probably laugh.

 

Thanks so much for everything guys! I hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

-LC