Grace Upon Grace

I’m studying through the book of Hosea with a devotional via my cell phone.  I have found it useful in making me more consistent because, let’s face it, I always have my phone.  It sends me daily reminders to read and is an achievable daily length even on my busiest days.  There is a comment forum where women post what they are learning or struggling with during the study.  I find that very thought provoking as well and it often encourages me to check out another passage or dig deeper. 

The current study in Hosea is particularly challenging me. I never had any grasp on the meaning behind that book until I read Francine Rivers, “Redeeming Love” years back.  That helped me put the book into better context and stopped me from being scared of it.  But it’s been quite a while since I’ve studied it, and I have been really enjoying it. 

This past week’s verse to memorize has really stuck in my head and I’ve been rolling it around and around this week chewing on the meaning and finding myself so rebuked and encouraged by what is there.  I’ve saved it as the background on my phone so that it is a constant gentle reminder to me to keep meditating on it all throughout the week. 


“Let us strive to KNOW the Lord”………….that’s hard for me.   I’m good at doing, and good at serving, but not so good at KNOWING.  I’m 100% Martha at heart.  I have so much drive to do things, but to just be still and get to know God, that’s where I struggle.  It’s hard for me to be still.  There is always so much to be done.  I see it and I am driven to complete it. If I could stand before God with my long list of the things I’ve done in service to Him, I would gladly do it.  If the Christian life were all about serving, doing, obeying, and following the rules, I would be set.  But it’s not.  God gives us rules to keep us safe.  But His heart is in our relationship with Him.  What He wants from us is to KNOW Him, to love Him, to desire Him.  That’s where Hosea is so powerful.  God shows how deeply and to what lengths He will go for us.  And He leaves no doubt that our goodness doesn’t play anywhere into that equation.  His love for us, the grace He extends to us, the mercy He showers upon us, they are to claim our hearts.  And they are in spite of, not because of our virtue.  He uses discipline but not for the sake of tearing down, He uses it as a means of rescue.  His whole heart, His whole mission, His whole disposition towards us is one of a lover on a rescue mission. 

I think I missed a lot of that somehow.  I grew up in a culture that spent a lot of time focused on the rules.  That spent a lot of time explaining why and how you could serve.  For a focused, driven, organized person like me; that was ok.  I could manage it.  I could work with it.  I still can.  I’m comfortable there.  Where I start to get shaky is the whole part about “Be Still and Know”.  The emphasis on mercy and grace and rescue in the Bible still astonishes me.  It’s still hard for me.  I am a strong lover of justice.  You reap what you sew appeals to me.  Extending mercy and grace in spite of offense is a struggle for me. 


And when you read Hosea and really allow God to speak, the irony of that position comes out loud and clear.  Because real justice, me getting what I really deserve, is so far from appealing.  What I deserve, based on my virtue is not a pretty thing.  But Hosea is all about us getting what we don’t deserve: mercy, grace, pardon upon pardon, and forgiveness in spite of continual, blatant offense.  And God uses Hosea to beg us to see ourselves as we are: the rebel, the wanderer, the lost soul, the harlot, the broken one.  But He also uses Hosea to cry out to us that despite all of that, in the face of our brokenness, He passionately loves us.  And He will go to any length to redeem us, to claim our heart. 



That’s such a different idea from the one that I want to cling to;  the one where I’m ok in my doing and serving and fixing,  the one where I don’t have to stop and see myself as I am.  But it’s the perspective that God is begging me to see.  Because seeing myself as I am, and seeing the grace and mercy and love He is lavishing on me despite who I am, allowing Him to call me His bride and His beloved would change everything.  It would change the justice that I mentally meet out to anyone who crosses me.  It would change the grace that I sparingly give my children when they fail.  It would change the way I approach my marriage.  It would change my disposition when I drive my car.  It would change my unwillingness to suffer long in relationships that seem pointless to me.  But most of all, it would change me.  It would help me to stop running around serving God and help me to run to Him instead.  Because that’s what I really need; to know Him.  If I knew Him and was driven by love for Him then the other things would fall into their place.  The things that needed to get done, could still get done, but what a difference in the way that I would do them. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 19, 2016 at 10:17 PM

    THANK YOU! I definitely needed to read that and take it to heart!

    ReplyDelete

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