February is the month that holds Valentine’s Day, a holiday that might be particularly sweet, or especially painful, depending on the current state of your marriage. This year, the general sense of romance in the air tied to the holiday brought my mind back to the love story of Hosea.
If you’re unfamiliar, Hosea’s story is both radically romantic and tragically awful at the same time. God instructs Hosea to marry a prostitute named Gomer and love her dearly as his bride. Over time they have a few kids, but the impression we get from Hosea 2 is that even during those family growth years, Gomer remained perpetually unfaithful. Eventually, Gomer leaves Hosea altogether for the arms of another lover. Despite all this, God instructs Hosea in chapter 3 to go and redeem his wife. He wants Hosea to bring Gomer back and love her. It’s romantic and terrible, all at once.

There’s a bigger point though: Hosea’s marriage to Gomer illustrates for us the marriage of God to His people. Israel had been terribly unfaithful, and not due to anything God had done – He’d shown them nothing but love and kindness. Still, they turned away from Him. But He would not turn from them. He would redeem them; His love would not fail.

I want to highlight just a few things this story teaches us about God, particularly from the following passage, where God addresses His unfaithful people with compassion.

Hosea 2:16 “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’…18b I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. 19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord. 

Despite knowing all the faults and failures of Israel, despite her utter betrayal, God does not turn away from her. Instead, He ties Himself to His people in marriage – the closest social relationship anyone can have. He says, “You will call me my husband…no longer my Baal.”
He didn’t want to be just a God to Israel. He wanted to be her Husband. That’s the association He wanted.
Do you remember how, in the early days of your marriage, you found such joy in introducing your spouse to people? You got to say, “She’s my wife.” “He’s my husband.” The joy we found in that is like the joy of God in referring to us as His Bride. In light of our unfaithfulness, that is an incredible truth!

Despite my introverted tendencies, I love being around people. It can exhaust me after an extended period of time, but I still love it. It does my heart good to spend time with others.

That said, there is one surefire way I can grow cold in my love for other people: by isolating myself from them. I’ve noticed that if I spend too much consecutive time on administrative or creative work, without any face-to-face people interaction, my love for others grows dim. Rather than solitude leading me to yearn for the pleasure of social interaction, it often does just the opposite. I can get so caught up in my own world and the work I’m doing that I subconsciously think of relationships as more of a nuisance than a joy.

The cure for this is easy: I simply have to spend time around people once again. The self-centered walls of my heart come tumbling down when I’m confronted by the presence of others. More specifically, when I’m confronted by the pain of others. My affection for others is stirred when I see the pain their lives are filled with.

In Matthew 9:36 we read of Jesus, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” He saw a group of people who had been fearfully and wonderfully made, yet were afflicted, weak, and helpless to save themselves – and He had compassion.

This account in Jesus’ life relates to an experience I had once. It was the kind of day when my heart had grown hard and self-focused. While driving to Starbucks for a meeting, weighed down by thoughts of work left unfinished, I wasn’t as joyful as I should have been. But before my meeting started, something changed within me.

Standing in the back of the coffee shop, looking out over all the people sitting there, I saw that some were busily typing away on their laptops, others were engaged in conversation, at least one was caught up in a book, and I was struck by the thought that all of them had something in common.

Every single one of them was suffering.

Maybe that’s a strange thing to think, but it was true. All the people there who didn’t know Jesus were afflicted by slavery to sin and separation from their Creator, while the Christians among them suffered from their still-present sinful flesh. Such problems manifest themselves in a variety of unique ways in each of our lives, but in every case the pain is real.

That moment at Starbucks, God used the suffering of others to soften my heart. He poured fuel on the weak flames of my love. He moved me to a place of deep compassion as I pondered the truth that many of these people were “sheep without a shepherd,” and even those who did have the Good Shepherd guiding them would still face the wolves of life.

Believers and unbelievers alike bear the burden of living in a fallen world. Each of us has our own sin, the sin of others, and the brokenness of creation working to feed us a daily portion of suffering. Suffering for which the gospel is the only sufficient answer.

Through the gospel we can bear the burdens of others, because we have a Good Shepherd who bears all our burdens. Through the gospel we can joyfully endure all suffering, because we know that every ounce of it equals future glory. Through the gospel the weak are made strong, sinners are made saints, and love endures.

Suffering is relentless, so our devotion to remembering the gospel must be as well. In considering Jesus’ compassion toward the “harassed and helpless,” we are reminded that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. It’s His love, which never grows cold, that each of us must cling to in the face of suffering. And as we do, we’ll find fire in our hearts that drives us to love like our Savior.

This morning a short phrase opened the devotional I read, and it struck me unexpectedly:

“God delights to reveal Himself to you.”

Recently life has been so busy, filled with difficult issues to wade through, that the sweet times of fellowship I’ve longed for with God have been harder to come by.

In seasons like this, it’s easy to feel like God is distant or displeased, and that I have to work my way back into His favor. But the simple truth is: He delights to reveal Himself to me. He takes great pleasure in sharing Himself with me, helping me taste and see that He is good.

When suffering invades your life, there’s no better place to look for refuge than the compassionate Savior. In every trial, even the ones we bring on ourselves, His desire is to bless us with a greater portion of His character, His glory, Himself.

The next time you have a quiet moment in the Word and prayer, remember these things, and look to Him expectantly.

Psalm 34:6  This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
and saved him out of all his troubles.
7  The angel of the Lord encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them.
8  Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

While God is faithful to change hearts and minds in the lives of His children, we also understand that change is a process, and often times far from simplistic or quick. Habits of life and thinking tend to change over time as the Holy Spirit works in hearts. This process of change is called “progressive sanctification.” It can be helpful and sometimes necessary to seek help from other Christians who can faithfully lead and walk with us, providing biblical encouragement and instruction along the way for the implementation of God-honoring, Christ-centered change. If you are struggling with life’s challenges, we would encourage you to seek help from your pastor, a godly friend, or a biblical counselor who is committed to seeking answers from God’s Word. To find a biblical counselor you can contact us or visit biblicalcounseling.com to find a counselor in your area.

It’s easy to think wrongly about who we are. For many of us, our view of self can stem from a pride of thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Others of us, however, may struggle with thinking more lowly of ourselves than we should. Our self-perception becomes entirely shaped by our failures – real or perceived – rather than being shaped by what God says about us. This can lead us down a path of self-hatred.

The rest of Stryd’s article lays out the biblical realities that determine a Christian’s identity. If you have the chance, take a minute and give it a read.
Who we are is not determined by other people, it’s not determined by what we think of ourselves, nor our performance, achievements, or anything else we can take credit for – in Christ, the Father says to us, as He said to Jesus, “This is my beloved [child], with whom I am well pleased” (John 3:17).

While God is faithful to change hearts and minds in the lives of His children, we also understand that change is a process, and often times far from simplistic or quick. Habits of life and thinking tend to change over time as the Holy Spirit works in hearts. This process of change is called “progressive sanctification.” It can be helpful and sometimes necessary to seek help from other Christians who can faithfully lead and walk with us, providing biblical encouragement and instruction along the way for the implementation of God-honoring, Christ-centered change. If you are struggling with life’s challenges, we would encourage you to seek help from your pastor, a godly friend, or a biblical counselor who is committed to seeking answers from God’s Word. To find a biblical counselor you can contact us or visit biblicalcounseling.com to find a counselor in your area.