Whenever I post something new, it isn’t because I just come up with words that I think sound good. It’s because God has laid something on my heart. I will be reading His Word and a verse or phrase or sometimes even a specific word will jump off the page. It literally comes alive because it is the living, breathing Word of God. When that happens, I know to focus in and pay attention because God is wanting to reveal something to me. I, then, in turn, share what God speaks to me. It is Him speaking through me. My prayer is that the words on this page will encourage and strengthen believers and will point lost souls to the Saving Grace of my LORD and Savior Jesus Christ. This blog is not for me, it is to glorify my God.

Recently, He has been impressing upon my heart to talk about His love. But there is so much in Bible about the love of God, I just didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what exactly He wanted me to say. Then, this morning, as I listened to sermon by David Platt, I was reminded of something I shared at our Church. In February of this year, I was asked to speak at our church’s Valentine Banquet. Today I want to post what I shared that night.

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. Hosea 2: 14-19 (ESV)

First of all, I want to thank Corrie for the opportunity to speak to y’all tonight. When she mentioned this to me, first and foremost, I was nervous. But I also got excited because y’all know that I love to talk about the Lord. I love to talk about what He’s done for me and how He has changed my life. I love to talk about who He is and how He reveals Himself to me, how He shows up in my life. It’s encouraging to me when someone says, “Let me tell you what God did,” and I want to be that encouragement for someone else. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to encourage, uplift and spur each other on. Life is hard and sometimes this world can be an ugly place to live and we need each other. But I also got excited because I knew if this was something God wanted me to do then He would put something special on my heart. He would say, “Ok, this is what we are gonna talk about.” And He did. He was laying the groundwork for this several weeks before Corrie ever mentioned it to me. One afternoon I was up here at the church cleaning and Brother Sammy came in and we started talking. I know that’s hard to believe because it’s like pulling teeth to get him to carry on a conversation. But in the course of our conversation the story of Hosea and Gomer came up, just in passing really, and when I started praying about what God wanted to do here tonight, He kept taking me back to the book of Hosea.

When we use the word love, we apply it to a variety of things. I love chocolate cake, I love that song, I love my family, my church, my God. All those things make us feel good, they leave us with this warm, fuzzy feeling inside. That doesn’t mean I love chocolate cake in the same way I love the Lord, although I admit I can get pretty excited about a good piece of chocolate cake. But our use of the word love spans from one end of the spectrum to the other. But the love of God is in a league all its own. There is nothing that compares to the love God has for us. When we think of His love, the first thing that probably comes to mind is the sacrificial love He lavished on us when He sent his only Son to die for our sins. We are all familiar with John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish but that all would have everlasting life”. The Bible says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” But there is even more about God’s love that He wants to share with us.

In our earthly relationships, we like to think that we know those that we love. We know what kind of person they are, what their hobbies are, what they like and dislike. In reality, we don’t really know anyone, not in the way that God knows each of us. And I think that’s probably a good thing because if we really knew each other, I think we would find it hard to love and forgive. But that’s not how it is with God. The Bible says He knows us down to the very number of hairs on our head. There is nothing about us that escapes His knowledge. He knows every sin we have ever committed, every sin that we will commit in the future. He knows every thought, even those that we would never verbally express, but they’re here in our head and in our heart, and God knows them. The Bible says we are fully known by God and what is so beautifully amazing about that is God knows us completely, yet He loves us. There is absolutely nothing we can do that will ever cause God to love us any more or any less than He does in this very moment. His love is not like our love. It is not fickle. It doesn’t shift like the wind or the sands of the seashore. The love of God is steadfast, immovable, unchanging, never-ending, and always forgiving.

When we love someone, we want to show that person we love them. We do little things to express our love. Maybe you pick up flowers for your wife on the way home, maybe you cook your husband’s favorite meal, just because. Maybe it’s a small gift, a box of candy, a card or even a word of encouragement for a friend or family member. Whatever it may be, we like to remind those that we care about that they are important to us because love isn’t just a word, it’s an action. Sometimes the ones we love hurt and disappoint us, sometimes they do things that we just don’t like. And sometimes it is in those moments when it is hard to love that person, that they need reminded of our love the most. Five years ago, I was living in sin. I was living a completely immoral life. I was drinking and doing drugs every day. I had been arrested twice. I had disappointed and hurt my family more times than I can count. I was in a mess. I needed help. I needed a place to go. It would have been completely understandable if my parents had said, “Good luck, you’re on your own. You’ve made your bed, now you have to lie in it.” But that’s not what they did. Instead, my parents opened their door, they opened their arms and they said, “Come home. Come home, Jennifer, we still love you. You’re still important to us, you still matter.” In return for the pain and heartache I had caused them, they gave me a place to start over. They gave me forgiveness when I certainly didn’t deserve it. They helped me heal. Because that is what love does. And that is what God is saying in these verses.

God is speaking to the children of Israel, but these verses are for us as well. Israel had turned away from God. They had turned to false gods and had broken their covenant with the Lord. They were committing spiritual adultery. And we do the same thing. We may not bow down to a golden calf, but we have those times when we try to put money or prestige or material things or even another person in the place that only God deserves to be. Our hearts are prone to wander, and we stray away from the Lord. And what God promises in return for our faithlessness, is beautiful.

VERSE 14: The word allure means to powerfully attract or charm. So, in this verse God says He is going to allure us, charm us, woo us and then He says He will take us into the wilderness. The wilderness here represents a place to start over, a place to get alone with God. So what God says is that He is going to draw us back to Himself, we are going to get alone with Him and He is going to speak tenderly to us. He is going to remind us of how great a relationship is with Him. He is going to remind us how awesome His love is. He says, “Yes, you have broken your promise, you’ve messed up but I want you to know I still love you and I’m still here.”

VERSE 15: The Valley of Achor is also translated as the Valley of Trouble. So what God says here is it doesn’t matter how dark the valley, how deep the sorrow, how hurtful the pain or how big the mess, when we have God we always have hope. Our God brings beauty from the ashes, He breathes life into dry bones, He says to the dead man, “Get up” and the dead man gets up and walks. I am living proof that God can take the biggest mess and turn it around. Only our God can take the cross, the symbol of torture, pain and death and through that cross give us salvation, redemption and eternal life. God took a tomb, He rolled away the stone and out came our living, breathing Savior. What God says here is that it doesn’t matter what Valley of Trouble we find ourselves in, Jesus Christ is our Living Hope.

VERSE 16: I read a couple of different things about this verse. One commentary said that when God says “You will no longer call me My Baal”, He is saying, “You will no longer consider me as one of your many gods and you will no longer think of me as one of your many lovers, but on that day you will call me My Husband and you will know me as the one and the only Living God and you will know me as your one and only true love. But something else I read about this said that 15 times in the Old Testament, Baal is used meaning husband in the sense of owner or master. When the Israelites took on the false gods as their “significant other” they took on a cruel and merciless master. They would do hurtful things to themselves to try to earn favor or benefits from them. For example, they would cut themselves because they thought that was the only way to get what they needed from these so-called gods. So what God says is “I don’t want you to think of me as a cruel, harsh master… I want you to know me as the tender, loving Husband that I am.

VERSE 19: A couple of weeks ago in Sunday School, we were talking about how when God says something three times it’s important and you need to pay attention. My sister said it’s like God is saying, “This is gonna be on the test.” Three times in these next verses God says “I will betroth you to me”, forever, in righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness. The word betroth means to be engaged or to be promised to someone. When we accept the free gift of salvation and enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God promises that this relationship is forever. It will never end, He will never leave, from salvation through eternity we belong to Him. He promises to give us righteousness when all we have to offer is unrighteousness. He promises justice when we are unjust. He promises us His steadfast love when our love is constantly wavering. He promises us mercy when we absolutely do not deserve it. He promises to always be faithful even when we are unfaithful.

He ends this verse by saying “And you will know the Lord.” The Hebrew word used for “know” here is also used in Genesis when it says, Adam “knew” his wife. The greek word meaning the same thing is used in Matthew when it says Joseph did not “know” Mary until she had their son and they named Him Jesus. The word know here doesn’t mean to have a friendly knowledge of, it’s not like the way I know Bro. Sammy. What God says here is on that day, you will know me intimately, the way a husband and wife know each other. The relationship between husband and wife is special. It is unlike any other relationship we have here on Earth. You know your spouse better than anyone else. You spend the most time with them. You tell them things you wouldn’t tell anyone else. Marriage is a sacred union between a man and woman before God. There is an intimacy there that shouldn’t be in any other relationship and God says “You’re gonna know me like that.”

Back in those days when a man and woman were engaged, the groom went back home to get things ready, to prepare a place for the bride. There was a period of separation between the engagement and the wedding feast. In John 14, Jesus says “I am going to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place then I’m gonna come back and get you.” In the New Testament we are told that Jesus is the Groom and we are the Bride of Christ. Right now, we are in that period of separation because He is getting everything ready, He is preparing a place. But a day is coming when the Groom is coming back for His Bride and we will go to Wedding Supper of the Lamb and the Bible says on that day we will see Him and know Him as He is. What a day, glorious day that will be!

“God does not want you to return to Him and say “Yes sir” and set about your duties. He wants you to come to into the wilderness, listen to Him speak tenderly and respond to Him, “My Husband”. God wants your heart, not just your hands, because if He has your heart, He has everything.” (John Piper)

God is not satisfied with bits and pieces of our lives. He is not content to have a portion of our heart. He wants all of us. He already knows us completely, we have nothing to hide. But He also wants us to desire and seek to know all of Him. The Lord God of Heaven is our Groom and one day He will come back to claim His Bride. There is no greater relationship that will ever compare to the relationship He offers us through His Son Jesus Christ. He is absolutely, perfectly faithful in every way. And He says, “Come on, get to know me. Know me as your Husband, I will never leave you. I will never fail you and my love will never disappoint.

I know this post is a little longer than what I usually put on here but I felt led to put exactly what I had in my notes from that banquet. We will never be loved by anyone else the way we are loved by our God. And, oh, what a love that is…

“Our only hope is in a love that we do not deserve.” (David Platt)