Soften the Soil of your Heart

Hosea

Recently I have been talking about spiritual detox. The process of letting God remove things from our lives that keep us apart from Him. Once we have removed the things that hold us back from God, we can’t just let our lives sit empty. We must then begin to work with the Holy Spirit to cultivate the good fruit in our lives. If we don’t fill our lives with God when He prunes us, our lives will just fill back up with things that keep us from God. We will be no better than we were before we spiritually detoxed.

In the book of Hosea, we see God telling the Israelites of just this. They wandered the desert, learning to trust God. When they finally make it to the promised land, they quickly abandon God in favor of the bounty of the land and other gods. Today we are going to look at Hosea and what it can teach us for our lives today about the things we choose to fill our lives and time with.

Context

The book is mostly made up of poetry describing Israel’s rebellion and God’s punishment, but it is also a book that shows that despite Israel’s rebellion God is faithful. Because of God’s goodness, not Israel’s, He would not leave them but instead would restore them and eventually bring the Messianic king from the, to rule.

The Israelites now live in the promised land, surrounded by plenty. Prosperity becomes a hindrance in their covenant. They filled their lives with earthly abundance instead of with God and they soon fell into old patterns and fell away with their covenant with God. If we fill our lives with things of this earth instead of the things of God, we too find that we are living a life contrary to our relationship with God as well.

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

(Hos 4:6)

Looking up the historical context for Hosea, I noticed that several times God says that Israel has no knowledge or understanding of Him. In Hosea 4, God says “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. (Hos 4:6)

It is a word that differentiates between knowing with intellectual knowledge and intimate and personal knowledge.

Emily B.

I learned that the word used here for knowledge and understanding, yada, is interesting. It is a word that differentiates between knowing with intellectual knowledge and intimate and personal knowledge. God was saying that people do not personally know me anymore. They lacked a personal relationship with God. They knew who He was, and they knew the stories, they just didn’t cultivate a relationship with Him. They did not know His will for them.

Cultivate your heart.

Sound familiar? It does to me. Until a little over a year ago this was me. I knew God, but I had no personal knowledge of Him. This lack of personal knowledge led to major issues for the Israelites, and it can still cause us major issues in our walk with Christ today.

When I read this passage what stands out is, that when God removes something, we need to be open to Him filling the space with something new and better. God removes the weeds, through our wilderness experiences and plants good seeds; so that we may grow in His image. He sows righteousness into our lives, as we live it out we reap love.

“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you. You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors”(Hos 10:12-13) 

Rain makes plants grow they can’t survive without it. We too cannot survive without God’s righteous rain.

Emily B.

God is saying if you do right you will reap love and if you seek God He will “rain” righteousness on your life. Rain makes plants grow they can’t survive without it. We too cannot survive without God’s righteous rain. God’s goodness is what allows us to grow in Him, to become more like the image of our creator and less like images of ourselves. That’s good because in the next part of the verse God tells us what we get when we sow seeds in our own likeness.

God tells the Israelites that they have “plowed” sin and so what they reaped in their life is injustice. Because they trusted their own wisdom, and not God’s, they have reaped lies. We want to see God’s justice, goodness, and other qualities in our lives, not injustice and lies. So how do we fill our lives up with God?

Reaping Good crops.

Repent of our sins. In the Story of Hosea, we see a man, Hosea, who forgives his wayward wife, Gomer. This story was a metaphor for God forgiving the Israelite. He searched for her, paid her debts, and brought her back to himself. God wanted that for the Israelites and He wants that for us as well when we stray.

Turn back to God. God wished for the Israelites to know Him personally, not just know about Him. If they knew God’s goodness faithfulness would come easier. When we know God, truly, it’s hard to turn away from His love. It’s when we neglect our relationship with Him and forget who He is we begin to stray.

Grateful hearts. Chapter 11 is a poem about God’s love for Israel. He talks about them as if they were a child unaware of how much their parent, God, did for them. They abandon Him without realizing all the prosperity they had was given to them by God. God wants us to look to Him and be grateful for all the things in our lives He has given us.

I often get a narrow focus on what is going on in my life and what my next move is that I forget to stop and be grateful to the one who gave it all to me in the first place. I have found that gratefulness has been key in keeping my focus where it should be, walking close to God, and seeing His fruits thrive in my life.

When God removes something from our lives it is because He wants to give us something better. To receive the better fruits God wants to sow in our lives we must stay focused on God and not just what He has given to us. It is easy to get distracted when God brings blessings into our lives. If we forget to thank the one who brought us prosperity, we will easily get off track and will stop walking side by side with our Lord.