Nov 4

My Promised Bride

“I will make you my promised bride forever, I will be good and fair; I will show you my love and mercy.” Hosea 2:19

The story of mankind is a simple one. God made man. Man turned away from God and sinned. God will not give up until He has won mankind back. The story of Hosea and his bride is a case in point. God told Hosea to marry a woman of the night. Hosea did. His wife left him and went back to her old ways. God told Hosea to go and get her and bring her back. He went and bought her back and took her home and loved her just as God commanded him. God wished to make a point to us. We are His: He wants us, He loves us, and He will go to any lengths to keep us with Him. But in the end the choice is ours. He will be good to us: He will be more than fair, and He will show us love and mercy. “God will whisper. He will shout. He will touch and tug. He will take away our burdens; he’ll even take away our blessings. If there are a thousand steps between him and us, he will take all but one. But he will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours. ...His goal is not to make you happy, his goal is to make you HIS.” ("A Gentle Thunder" by Max Lucado) God’s goal has always been to give us what we need. We think we know what we need, but we really don’t. God knows what we need and it's to be in a relationship with Him; an intimate, close, loving relationship, where He knows our innermost thoughts and we know His. That is what we need: to be His promised bride forever.

Holy God, we don’t often think of you as a husband longing for an intimate relationship with us. Thank you for the lessons from the book of Hosea and for what they teach us about You and Your unfailing grace to us. Your love overwhelms us, and it is all too easy to run back to what we find comfortable. Teach us to love as You love. Amen