Sophie
April 6th, 2007, 05:00 PM
I’m making my way back through the Bible. No order, just wherever I happen to open to. I just finished rereading Hosea. You know it’s funny how you can read scripture at one point in your life, and it really doesn’t have an impact. And then you read it again years later, as you’ve grown closer to the Lord and BAM, I’m in tears.
I know this was all about Israel and her turning away from God, but while I was reading I couldn’t help but think that God must be just as wounded watching America turn away from Him as well. Granted, we gentiles aren’t “the apple of His eye”, nonetheless, we are His children. He made us, just like the Israelites, to “relationship” with Him. And American is so quickly getting further and further away from Him.
Reading His fury turning to sorrow then anguish, then fury, and then hope……my God how we must be wounding him as much as He was wounded in Hosea!!!! I trembled out of abject fear seeing the ramifications on His heart and His pride when Israel did this….. it can’t be much different for us.
This also got me to thinking that God could be male/female. His feelings when rejected, as a woman reading this (this time with clarity), saw how most of us females would feel if betrayed by someone we loved. Except, God is much more forgiving and rational than we would be.
I’m in the middle of Joel Rosenberg’s book Epicenter where he tells of how many people in Saudi Arabia are turning to Christianity is droves!!! A Christian video was brought to one of the markets in mass quantities, as well as Bibles, and though money is very precious and scarce for the poor over there, and they can be imprisoned or killed by Muslims if found out, they’re spending what little they have on God’s Word!!!!! They’re hungering and thirsting for His Word over there! And here with our freedom and Bibles every where……God’s Word is right in our grasp if we want it. It’s a treasure trove, it’s a map to our Almighty Father, it’s a love story, it’s our inheritance IF we want to claim it. Yet sadly, more and more not only refuse to investigate it (some preferring to take what their churches tell them only), but others are decimating it, calling it evil, comparing it to terrorism. How sad and pained and furious God must be as more and more of America turns from Him. But reading what I read in Epicenter about those people is what made me go beyond Bible studies,…..to just pick up His Word on my own, while we still can, and see the wonder in His Word like these people are seeing it.
I know this was all about Israel and her turning away from God, but while I was reading I couldn’t help but think that God must be just as wounded watching America turn away from Him as well. Granted, we gentiles aren’t “the apple of His eye”, nonetheless, we are His children. He made us, just like the Israelites, to “relationship” with Him. And American is so quickly getting further and further away from Him.
Reading His fury turning to sorrow then anguish, then fury, and then hope……my God how we must be wounding him as much as He was wounded in Hosea!!!! I trembled out of abject fear seeing the ramifications on His heart and His pride when Israel did this….. it can’t be much different for us.
This also got me to thinking that God could be male/female. His feelings when rejected, as a woman reading this (this time with clarity), saw how most of us females would feel if betrayed by someone we loved. Except, God is much more forgiving and rational than we would be.
I’m in the middle of Joel Rosenberg’s book Epicenter where he tells of how many people in Saudi Arabia are turning to Christianity is droves!!! A Christian video was brought to one of the markets in mass quantities, as well as Bibles, and though money is very precious and scarce for the poor over there, and they can be imprisoned or killed by Muslims if found out, they’re spending what little they have on God’s Word!!!!! They’re hungering and thirsting for His Word over there! And here with our freedom and Bibles every where……God’s Word is right in our grasp if we want it. It’s a treasure trove, it’s a map to our Almighty Father, it’s a love story, it’s our inheritance IF we want to claim it. Yet sadly, more and more not only refuse to investigate it (some preferring to take what their churches tell them only), but others are decimating it, calling it evil, comparing it to terrorism. How sad and pained and furious God must be as more and more of America turns from Him. But reading what I read in Epicenter about those people is what made me go beyond Bible studies,…..to just pick up His Word on my own, while we still can, and see the wonder in His Word like these people are seeing it.