Keeping the Faith; Never losing Hope; Always Loving

Do you remember your wedding day?  Do you think about and anticipate what your wedding day will be like?

I’ll never forget my wedding day; it was amazing.  Started off with a round of golf and then just hanging out before the ceremony.  I remember standing in the room upstairs at the church with this feeling that I am getting ready to enter into one of the most serious covenants that I will ever make in my life.  I’ll never forget standing in front of the Amazing Amanda and holding her hands and making my covenant to be her husband (for better or worse).  I’ll never forget holding her hands and basically saying.  I’m not going to whore myself around; I give myself completely to you.  I’m not going to carry the title of your husband and then whore myself around in spite of that title.  I can’t imagine how anyone can make that kind of commitment to another person and then willingly whore himself around with another lover.

But I am reminded this morning that far too often it is I (and you) that whore ourselves around when it comes to our covenant with God.  We stand and make a commitment to God (btw–that commitment it is wedding language) that is as serious as our commitment in marriage and then we live with others lovers (money, possessions, country, culture, status, etc); we whore ourselves around.  We want to keep our “title commitment” (Christian) with God but yet we live lives whoring ourselves around with the world.  In thinking about this I can’t help but feel dirty, unclean, guilty, and afraid; for I have been a whore.

Hosea is the first of the minor prophets in God’s story (scripture) and Hosea talks of Israel (northern kingdom) as this whore who has cheated on the very one that delivered them from slavery to Egypt.  As life has become prosperous for Israel that have remained loyal to God only by their language but have spent their lives whoring themselves out to the culture they live in.  Hosea reminds us that God is simultaneously going to reject Israel while planning their restoration.  Hosea reminds us that God is going to do whatever it takes to restore His bride.

Be sure to know that God sees your whoredom (mine too).  But like Israel, Hosea reminds us that God will not give up on us or this marriage.  God will do whatever it takes to cleanse us of our whoredom and seek to restore our relationship with Him.  God will even become one of us in Jesus Christ and die on a cross that we might see first hand His commitment to “for better or worse” that this commitment might cleanse and restore us that we might respond through grace and begin to love God the same way He loves us; that we might stop being a bunch of whores and become the bride we are called to be.

Don’t live like a whore this week; live like one who is in an eternal covenant with a living God that loves you “for better or worse.”

Pastor P

chadpullins@connect2crossroads.com; www.wedesiremore.comd