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A Devotional by Margot Cioccio
Hosea 14:3-4 (NIV)
3 Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses. We will never again say
‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
4 “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them.
I am working my way through Hosea 14 - It seems rich to me presently. Hosea was a prophet in Israel for 25 years. During that time Israel had 7 kings. Not particularly a stable time. Assyria was a powerful nation that swept through the land and counted their victory by the number of heads they had in their pile at the end of the battle. Oh yeah they raped the women and did unspeakable things to the children. If you did manage to survive their attack you were moved to a new home hundreds of miles away and some other folks they had captured were moved in to your land.
It seems in Hosea’s day, Israel thought they could depend on the big guys like Assyria and Egypt to help them. I think anytime we start to believe that we are protected by our alliances and who we know in power, or in our wealth or our insurance we are heading for disappointment.
In this verse Hosea talks of a day when Israel will finally realize she cannot trust in the big guys, like Assyria or her own army of war-horses, or the idols that she made and tried to replace God with. Nothing is going to save her from Gods judgement.
We can make a big mess of things and trust in the wrong things to save us in our time of trouble.
I am blessed by the line that says “In you the fatherless find compassion” With out God we are all fatherless, its not like you have to be an orphan for this verse to apply to you. In verse 4. It does not talk about Israel getting her act together but rather it says that God will heal her waywardness.
There are things we just seem powerless to change about ourselves we may want to and we may even try hard to do it in our own strength. God is always waiting for us to realize that our best efforts are just not going to be enough. He waits for us to realize we need him, we need him to heal our waywardness. We need him to love us freely. Yes we deserve his anger but he has turned it away from us and when he looks at us he sees Jesus. Lest you think ahhh, but that just old testament. I think Jesus spells out his purpose quite well in Luke 4:18 as He quotes Isaiah 61 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.
Things to Ponder:
What are my areas of waywardness ?___________
What am I looking to fix that waywardness other than God?_______
Prayer:
Dear Lord, Help me to see the things I am trusting in other than you. Come and heal my waywardness - I need your love and compassion today and every day.
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