Author: Christine Wyrtzen

They make for themselves molten images, idols skillfully made from their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. They say of them, “Let the men who sacrifice (their children) kiss the calves.” Hosea 13:2 

Hosea saw some pretty gruesome practices. In ancient Israel, human sacrifice usually meant child sacrifice. Hosea watched as men sacrificed their children at pagan altars. Consider their twisted values. A craftsman would make a metal god, men would sacrifice their offspring and beg for the god’s help, and then the ‘live’ animals who matched the representation of the graven image were worshipped. Children were thrown away, animals were exalted. 

In some ways, our values today are similar. We can be bent to save whales but discard the unborn. We can prize a pet and ignore our own child. We can worship a god made with our hands but forget that in the end, it will burn in the fire. When we cease to actively worship God, our values distort in front of our eyes. What should be treasured no longer appeals. What should be abhorred becomes appealing. If, at that point, we don’t recognize the perversion of our affection, we will feed the wrong appetite. 

I know what it is to love something that was not good for me, to prize the thing that would eventually consume me. Because my heart was engaged though, I was not willing to consider that God was calling me to wash my hands of that which was unclean. My attachment skewed my perspective. The longer I ignored the call to make corrective changes, the harder it became to do so. Keeping short accounts of my values, preferably daily, will prevent me from taking a long pleasurable journey down a road that promises nothing but heartache. Worshipping God and Him only can only promise peace and a life with no regrets. 

Jesus, I will love what You love today and turn away from everything the repels You. I am Your disciple, first and foremost. Amen 

In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his maturity he contended with God. He wept and sought His favor and found Him at Bethel. Hosea 12:3-4 

These verses speak to our personal life-stories.  I’ll personalize. I have walked in places similar to Jacob’s footsteps. I know what it’s like to seize control of the events of my life, the ones I find so extremely distasteful, and try to change the outcomes. I  know what it’s like to take them ‘by the heel’ and attempt to exact what I think is fair and, also, what I perceive I need. The consequences are far reaching. 

I know what it’s like to demand the attention of others in hopes of some kind of validation. While some attention was given, the desired approval remained elusive. I also know what it’s like to try to force fairness. I may have changed a few outcomes but the treasures I sought failed to gratify me once they were given under coercion. 

For any of you today who are ‘taking life by the heel’, let me encourage you to freeze in your tracks. In Jacob’s maturity, he contended with God by wrestling with the angel. He took the angst in his soul to the One who allowed it in the first place. Only One who is Sovereign can deal with such things and speak to these issues with authority. 

Jacob wept, surrendered in exhaustion, and sought God’s favor above all else. When the voice of God broke through at Bethel, it was a permanent WORD that would forever shape His future. He built a monument there, evidence of the lasting power of God’s voice. Throughout his life, he would visit that place often because of the poignancy of that one encounter. 

I have many Bethels to re-visit. And I do. They are always clarifying and strengthening. Some of you today need a Bethel. Seek it, don’t leave it until the contention with God is resolved. 

You did not make us to live conflicted. You are the Prince of Peace on the other side of the tantrums of contentious children. Lead me always to the stillness of surrender. Amen 

They will come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will settle them in their houses, declares the Lord. Hosea 11:11 

Earlier in Hosea, God called His children silly doves. They failed to know where there true home was. “There will come a day when they will come trembling again to their houses,” God prophesies.   He offers them a pilgrimage back to their roots. 

A woman ceases to make God her home when she no longer believes He can offer her what she needs. The promise of the abundant life doesn’t seem abundant. There can be many reasons. 1.) She has experienced too much pain in this world and she runs from the One she believes is responsible. 2.) There has been no instruction on how to make God her home so she settles in distant lands, looking for anyone who will offer her temporary shelter. 3.) Satan has taken advantage of her vulnerability and offered her some counterfeit ways out of distress. 

Whatever the reason, leaving home is rarely a short adventure. It might span the first half of someone’s lifetime. 

There comes a day when God says ‘enough’. The fog of misunderstanding about who He is begins to clear and a woman shakes her head and realizes her folly. God’s true character materializes in full blown pictures within her spirit. Hunger for His presence is awakened. She prepares for her trip back to her roots. “Before the foundation of the world, I knew you.” Ah yes, she remembers the verse now. She realizes that the only place she belongs is at home with God. She comes trembling, with awe and excitement, to the land that has always been hers. She travels back to claim it with joy. 

Home is sweetest to the one who has been homeless. Seeing the lights in the distance makes hasten her steps. Walking over the threshold brings waves of contentment. It’s home. Everything is as she dreamt it would be.

It took me over forty years to finally find my home in You. I lived many places, emotionally, even though I called You, “Father.” I will never get over the deep soul rest You provide. Amen 

Let Israel know this! The prophet is a fool, the inspired man is demented because of the grossness of your iniquity and because your hostility is so great. Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a prophet; yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways. Hosea 9:7-8 

Listen to this passage from THE MESSAGE. Did Israel bluster, “The prophet is crazy! The ‘man of the Spirit’ is nuts!”? Think again. Because of your great guilt, you’re in big trouble. The prophet is looking out for Ephraim, working under God’s orders. But everyone is trying to trip him up. He’s hated right in God’s house, of all places. 

Today, I’m writing to the prophets, those of you who speak the word of the Lord faithfully. Perhaps you’re paying a price.  Those you preach to are in prosperity and they are repelled by a message that calls for repentance.  They are unwilling to take up their respective crosses for the sake of Christ. Unless there is tribulation, the ears of most listeners are closed. Only a few hearken to the voice of God who calls out to a peculiar people, willing to abandon themselves to whatever it means to follow Christ. 

Take courage. Remember the many faces of Jesus. He loved. He healed. He touched. But He also spoke to the resistant faces of religious leaders.  They were so stirred up that they plotted to take His life. His words bore the nature of the Sword, tearing asunder the religious edifices that His people hid behind.  Exposed, vulnerability was expressed through rage. 

May God overshadow you with grace to stand in the fire. Do not tweak the message to make it more palatable. The Gospel has not changed.  Do not let anyone rob you of your zeal.  You are the watchman on the wall, standing guard over the bride of Christ lest they go further astray. Your post calls for vigilance and fire.  Behind the words, endearing love must be in tact. 

Enable each of Your prophets to walk in the footsteps of John the Baptist and make a straight path for Your coming. Amen 

You have made love for hire on every threshing floor. The threshing floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her. Hosea 9:2 

Have you ever been so desperate for a breakthrough that you did everything you could to bring it about yourself through whatever means you had to finagle? 

Israel was so hungry for blessing and prosperity that they practiced idolatry on the threshing floor, the place where they processed grain. They really believed it would help the harvest. Not only was it sinful, it was superstitious. God cursed it because He will not share His glory with anyone. 

What is it that eludes you today? More money? No amount of problem solving outside of prayer will bring the provision. Manipulating a distant relative will cause the money to burn in your hands. Extorting a raise from your boss will do the same. 

Need recognition? No heroic act originating from self-centeredness will bring the adulation that will fill your soul to overflowing. The praise you receive by setting others up to adore you will be short lived. Tomorrow, you’ll need to do it again to get the same thrill. 

The only One who satisfies us is Jesus. The only pathway to contentment is resting and trusting the Trustworthy One.  Simple trust abandons all forms of striving. 

New wine is available to us and it is of the overflowing variety.  No longer is love a reward for hard work. We can give up our daily propensity to earn it, believing we can make God happier with us.  We are already perfect in His eyes.  

We don’t even have to strive for a breakthrough.  We are kept by Love.  We rest in Perfect Love.  We are peaceful in the waiting.  And when the accuser comes to insinuate that our circumstances are due to our failures, we remind him of who we are in Christ.  We are hidden in His perfection. 

With every accusation from our enemy, You defend.  I wait for Your answers in the perfect peace of Your love. Amen

They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. Hosea 8:7 

The relationship between sowing and reaping is a most interesting dynamic. And the relationship between what we sow and what we reap in proportion is also interesting.   We sow one amount but reap another. The seeds of our actions are compounded so that what we reap is an exaggeration of what we sowed. I know this to be true.

I have been careless to sow some unrighteous seeds in my lifetime. Ideas were birthed in private, in my thought life. No one even knew but me that such thoughts existed. Eventually, these thoughts germinated, took on a life of their own, and I began to act on them. When I finally reaped the consequences, it seemed that I was living in a firestorm. “How could this little thing cause so much trouble,” I wondered? 

The dynamics are the same when I sow godly seeds. When God has graciously worked through my hands to extend an act of love on His behalf, it has often come back to bless me tenfold. Showing compassion to a young kid in seminary can yield a strategic opportunity two decades later.  What I’ve prayed for was realized but compounded in implications.  I’ve seen this principle work time after time. 

The question we face today is this ~ “What kind of whirlwind do we want to experience?” Having experience two kinds of whirlwinds, I can tell you which kind appeals to me.

I have finally come to cherish the things God births. In the womb of His Spirit, these seeds are watered through prayer before they materialize. But oh, the ripple effects. God gets so much mileage out of a single act of obedience. Each one is as a river that breaks off to form many tributaries. Living Water flows out in multiple directions and brings eternal life to whatever it touches.

Little is much when Your hand touches it. I commit this day to You. Multiply righteous seeds, Father. In Jesus’ name, Amen 

WHY BOTHER CRYING!

They did not cry out to Me with their heart when they wailed upon their beds. Hosea 7:14 

Is God compassionate?  And is He moved enough by my pain to alleviate it? Yes, but perhaps not right away.  My hope is deferred more often than not.  But, oftentimes, God waits to see what kind of tears I’ll cry.  Before you conclude that I am maligning God’s character, consider today’s scripture with me. 

I live in a world that is governed by the laws of sowing and reaping. Whatever I sow will generate consequences. If I live righteously, there will be blessing. If I sin, there will be painful repercussions. Given enough pain, tears will begin to fall and they’ll reflect many emotions.  They may be angry.  

Many times, I was mad at God for letting me down, or so I thought at the time.  Tears were rooted in self-pity. I wanted God’s sympathy for my plight though my choices dictated it. The fact that I cried about it was not what was most important to God.  Believers and unbelievers alike, weep when their discomfort is great. 

God’s issue with Israel was that their tears did not cause them to seek Him. The reason for their weeping was to get relief, not restoration with the One they had sinned against. 

Obviously, all pain is not self-inflicted. But sometimes it is. It’s the kind generated by rebellion.  God is most concerned about our heart’s response.  He longs to bless us, longs to restore, but He can’t do that without a child who humbly cries out for His help. Hot, angry tears against our prison bars, or even against ourselves, are not the kind that unlocks doors to a new beginning. 

“Why are you crying?”  That’s what You ask Your child.  And if it’s because of disobedience, may I answer like this ~ “Because I hurt You by what I did.” Amen 

I would redeem them but they speak lies against me. They do not cry to Me from their heart when they wail on their beds. Hosea 7:13-14 

I want every place of pain in my life redeemed, don’t you? I don’t want the tragedies to remain tragedies. With God’s supernatural touch, they can be transformed and turned for good in front of my very eyes. But, there is a qualification for redemption. It’s this. It is cooperative. I must believe and expect. God is then released to work on my behalf. My internal language of prayer must be of a faith vernacular. 

How do I cooperate then? God says something critical that should catch my attention. “I would redeem them but they speak lies against me.” As soon as I recall the litany of hopeless chatter that used to exit my mouth, I recognize the lies. I had not set a watch over my tongue, taking every thought captive before it turned into words. 

This is just hopeless. It will never turn around. 

God can’t forgive this, not this. 

How dare God let this happen to me! He’s doesn’t love me. 

I know God is supposed to be powerful, but even this is too much for Him to do. 

As long as these words defined my lack of faith, I did not know redemption. It’s often interesting to paraphrase a converse of Scripture. While it isn’t always successful, today I believe it is. So, consider this. “I will redeem them if they speak the truth about me.” Ah, this has the ring of other scriptures, does it not? Before I lay on my bed and wail because I feel I deserve better, or wail because I believe God is anemic, let me consider the acceptable alternative. I can remember that I am not God.

My perceptions and beliefs do not define reality. God’s words do and I will speak words of faith that declare the riches of His character and the power that rests in His right hand. Then and only then, can I await my promised redemption. 

If I’m going to cry, let me cry for the joy of You. Let the tears fall for being privileged enough to live amidst the wonder of Your many redemptions. Amen 

So Ephraim has become like a silly dove, without sense; they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria. When they go, I will spread My net over them; I will bring them down like the birds of the sky. I will chastise them in accordance with the proclamation to their assembly. Hosea 7:11-12 

When Hosea writes, he is generous with word pictures. He suggests that God’s people have become frantic, like birds without direction. They fly here and there for the a counterfeit nest that will give them a sense of wellbeing. They actually believe that their wanderings can escape God’s notice. They reason that if they turn a blind eye to God, God must turn a blind eye to them. God is clear about this falsehood. He is going to spread His net over them. He reminds them, through the mouth of Hosea, that they will be disciplined. 

Why is it that we are tempted to fly to Egypt? When we are without direction, you’d think that we would seek God first. Yet, we go back to what we once knew. The ways of Egypt of are so ingrained in our fallen nature that we go there by default. It feels comfortable, even though our spirit warns us that we’re going the wrong way. 

It would be wrong to keep this devotional broad so as not to make the point clear. So allow me to personalize it. When pressures come, I can feel frantic for relief. And since temptation always starts with a need, the enemy comes with suggestions for quick ways out of pain. He tempts me to think the way I used to think, indulge in activities that used to be narcotics in my old way of life. He would want to lead me away from God, toward swift fixes. The problem is, I know too much. It’s not the past.  I have a lot of Scripture in me. I’ve been well fed, and I know better. 

Today, Egypt will glitter in the distance. When I feel the battle in my thought life, I will be tempted to visit a landscape I have no business entering. Disbelief, anger, revenge, hopelessness – all these beckon me. Let me be as a bird with clear direction and fly North. True North. 

I fly to You, Lord, for You wait to receive me. Egypt does not compare with the pleasures at Your right hand. You are worth all sacrifices I have to make. Amen 

Aliens have devoured his strength, but he does not know it; yes, gray hairs are here and there on him, yet he does not know it. And the pride of Israel testifies to his face, but they do not return to the LORD their God, nor seek Him for all this. Hosea 7:8-10 

Self-awareness is one of the keys to success. We must know how others experience us. We must ask God to consistently reveal our blind spots. Otherwise, we will be like these Israelites. They were void of strength but saw themselves as powerful. They were weak but feigned virility. They spurned their need for God yet believed themselves to be in His favor. 

Blind spots are frightening. Have you ever had dinner with a small group and thought, “Boy, he talks a lot, but he doesn’t seem to know it.” Everyone at the table is polite and gives him their attention. Happy in the spotlight, he talks all the more and is unaware of how he is being experienced. Or perhaps you are part of an intimate Bible Study and one member of your circle is negative. Everyone there is braced for her arrival, knowing the atmosphere will change as soon as she enters the room. She, also, is unaware of herself. She does not see that she is toxic to the environment of vibrant fellowship. 

Anytime we think we are one thing but actually another, we walk in the shoes of these Israelites. Hosea prayed for them and perhaps others are praying for us, that we would come to know a certain truth about ourselves that is hidden when we look in the mirror. There can be terror at the thought of knowing ourselves as we really are. Is there really no good thing in us without Jesus? That is the essence of the Gospel. We come to Christ eaten away with spiritual cancer. No part of us is exempt from the ravages of sin. Intuitively, we do know the truth but run from it.   In spite of this, I was still created in the image of God.  His beauty if also in my DNA.

Oh, that we would embrace the art of self-awareness and see our depravity. It is only then that we plunge into the depths of Christ and covet the robes of righteousness that he offers to put around our shoulders. We must not wallow in the fact that we are undeserving. Let us seize the gift of His love and celebrate the fact that Christ’s transforming power has come to live within us. Perfect love casts out all fears of marred images in the looking glass. 

Show me myself and just why You had to give Your life for me. Amen