Love To Live Well
1 John 4: 8 & 16 declares "God is Love". The book of Hosea is an Old Testament demonstration of the unconditional love of God. When God says in Hosea 4:6 "My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me", He was proclaiming the "self-destructiveness" of failing to know Him, (God is Love) and embracing that in our lives.
Failing to embrace His love for us leads to issues of fear, rejection, doubt, confusion, distrust, broken relationships, wars financial disaster, poor health, and the list can go on and on. There are so many ways we can manifest self-destructive behavior when we do not really "know Him" and embrace the fullness of His love for us.
1 John 4:19 says "we love because He first loved us". Hosea demonstrates that so well. In order for us to Love properly we have to "know Him" that He is Love and accept that unconditional love the Father give to us. Listen to Eugene Peterson's take on Hosea.
"Hosea is the prophet of love, but not love as we imagine or fantasize it. He was a parable of God’s love for his people lived out as God revealed and enacted it—a lived parable. It is an astonishing story: a prophet commanded to marry a common whore and have children with her. It is an even more astonishing message: God loves us in just this way—goes after us at our worst, keeps after us until he gets us, and makes lovers of men and women who know nothing of real love. Once we absorb this story and the words that flow from it, we will know God far more accurately. And we will be well on our way to being cured of all the sentimentalized and neurotic distortions of love that incapacitate us from dealing with the God who loves us and loving the neighbors who don’t love us".
Embrace the Love of the Father for you today, not because you deserve it, but because it is who He is and what He has chosen to do.
Created over 1 year ago
