Wednesday, August 10, 2011

When Did God Get Married?

“In that day,” declares the LORD,
  “you will call me ‘my husband’;
  you will no longer call me ‘my master.’  Hosea 2:16

I will betroth you to me forever;
  I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
  in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness,
  and you will acknowledge the LORD. Hosea 2:19-20


Today’s Reading: Hosea 1-4; Revelation 1


Wait… so God says that we will call him husband and no longer call him master?

What the heck does that mean?


This is one of those passages that I used to just skim over. I think partly because I’m a guy and couldn’t understand the bride metaphor and partly because I just didn’t get it and didn’t want to do the work to figure out what was being said.

“This is more of that prophetic jibber jabber” is how I used to treat it as I skimmed through the book so I could say that I read it.

But now I’m starting to get it.

God’s love for us is greater than anything we can ever imagine. But he really wants us to understand Him and how important we are to Him. How would I get that message across if I were God? I think I’d look for the most passionate relationships that we experience in this world as examples to show us even just a glimpse of the truth of God’s infinite love.

God has positioned himself as Father and Friend, and now as husband.

This notion that God is a jealous God now makes more sense. He so desperately wants to have a relationship with us but we take him for granted. We pursue other things and make them number one in our lives over Him. Sometimes it is money; other times it is a car, or a job, or another person.

God isn’t mad that we have a desire to have these things, but what he doesn’t want is for these things to come between us and Him. As long as God is number one, all of our other desires fall in their proper place.

Rick Warren says that “we become whatever we are committed to.” Isn’t that the truth?

What happens if we commit ourselves to God? Of course we will not become gods but we will become more like God. That means we will become more loving and better able to spread God’s love to those that come into our world.

This world is a place where so many people go through life feeling so unloved. I think that makes God sad. If only folks recognized how much God loves them then the world would be such a different place. As we learn how to be better children of God, closer friends to God and committed brides to God we will get better at loving God and our neighbors as ourselves.

Only now am I barely starting to scratch the surface of that understanding. And let me tell ya… I feel so blessed by the little I have seen and I’m eager to learn more.




Question: Do you feel like you can relate to God? How so?

2 comments:

  1. i believe God or the Universe meets us at our personal level of understanding about all things and reveals to us how to relate better to each other and the environment by showing us how useful our relationship with a Higher Power can be

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  2. @Raezor It's a really interesting process isn't it. God uses our human relationships to better understand Him... and also uses our understanding of His love for us to improve our personal relationships! It's a fascinating, cyclical process that is extremely efficient and centered on how we can understand love. He doesn't ask us to fully understand His love for us. That would be impossible.

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