I am Julia Roberts

The story of Hosea reminds me of the movie "Pretty Woman." We are Julia Roberts and God is Richard Gere. We are the prostitute and God is the man who can get any woman he wants and have everything he wants, but still for some reason picks and chooses us.

The whore.

We have so many other lovers, and God knows that. But He'll still do everything and anything he can to save us and love us, even though we in NO way deserve it.

Gomer, Hosea's wife, is the epitome of a whore. She has a loyal, amazing husband but still chooses to have affairs with other lovers. She even eventually sells herself into slavery. And through all this Hosea deeply and truly loves his wife.

In that day and age buying your wife out of slavery and still accepting her as your wife and the mother of your children was a HUGE deal.

Even today it would be.

It tarnished his reputation and was the subject of much gossip in Israel.

It RUINED him.

But he didn't care.

Why?

Because he LOVED his wife.

How many times have we cheated on God? How many times have we chosen our "other lovers" over him? Whether it's sex, pornography, alcohol, drugs, eating disorders, cutting, we put those things before God, our wonderful, loving, loyal husband.

We think it doesn't matter. That God will understand that we are set in our ways. That we can never change. But that's the furthest thing from the truth.

Yes, God loves us unconditionally. Through whatever lover we choose over Him, He still loves us. But just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to accept the things they do that you know are hurting them. It's for that very reason that you shouldn't accept that self-inflicted pain. That self-destructive behavior.

In the book of Hosea, God spends chapters 4-11 yelling at Israel for all the atrocities they've committed. He reminds them of the covenant He made with them when He brought them to the Promised Land that they would always serve and worship Him as their LORD and Savior. But look at what they did instead. They prostituted themselves to different lovers and idols and had completely forgotten the God who had saved them from their hardest moments. And as He is yelling at them all of a sudden in chapter 11, His tone changes. The damned harlots He was just punishing become his sons and daughters.

His children.

The ones He always loved.

The story of the rebellious, prodigal son is a familiar one in the bible. A story cherished for ages. But what we fail to remember is the Old Testament laws about rebellious sons.

In Deutoronomy 21:18 and 21 the law very clearly states that "if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father...then all the men in his town shall stone him to death."

Stoning for being disobedient and rebelling against your parents?!?!?! That's a little extreme!! But the Jewish people followed that law because it was a law that Moses wrote and that God approved of. And yet in Hosea God does the very opposite. In chapter 11 He tells the tribe of Ephraim and Israel that He cannot and will not give up on them or hand them over.

Why?

Because they are His sons and daughters. His bridegroom. He loves them too much to give them the punishment they deserve.

God loves us just as He loved Israel and Ephraim.

God loves us just as Hosea loved Gomer.

God loves us just as Richard Gere loved Julia Roberts.

Even though we are prostitutes that have done nothing but cheat on Him and serve other lovers before serving Him, He is lovingly asking us to return to Him. He wants to "heal [our] waywardness" and "love [us] freely" (Hosea 14:4) because He is no longer angry at us for the things that we've done.

We are all Julia Roberts, but luckily God is Richard Gere.

He is thrilled to be our knight in shining armor.

Stretch limo and all.

The Wall

In our lives we experience a lot of heartache.

A lot of pain and suffering.

A lot of bad decisions.

And every time we experience one of those things we put a brick down. Eventually, those bricks start adding up and eventually those bricks become a wall. And as time goes on that wall gets bigger and bigger until we can't see the other side anymore.

We become trapped.

We can no longer see the beauty and goodness on the other side. That feeling of the sun beating down on your skin, that sensation that tingles down your spine when you feel a breeze. Those are all gone. It becomes a life dictated by the boundary that that wall creates.

Our initial instinct is to get passed that wall. It's to get to the other side. And we will do whatever it takes to get there. We will walk for days, months, years even, to find an opening in the wall. To find a way in.

Or

We will try to climb that wall and no matter how many times we fall we continue the climb.

But never do we really consider breaking that wall down.

I mean, c'mon, the wall is freaking HUGE. We could NEVER tear down that wall.

We want to get passed that wall but we don't really want to deal with it. The wall isn't really your problem, it's the whole getting to the goodness thing that's your main goal. The wall is just an obstacle.

This reminds me of the Wall of Jericho. For those of you who don't know the story and for those of you that do but need a little reminder, here's what happened.

There's this guy named Joshua. Joshua is a faithful servant of the LORD and will do whatever the LORD asks of him. One day God tells Joshua that the city of Jericho, in which Joshua and his people are currently camping near, is "in [his] hands" (Joshua 6:2). Now, that's a pretty huge gift. Joshua was probably more than thrilled to be receiving such a grand reward. But there was a catch. God wasn't just going to hand this city over to Joshua, as much as Joshua might have wanted it to be that way. Rather, Joshua had to follow some instructions. The only way he would receive this gift was if he gathered his men, seven priests, and the ark of the covenant and walked around the outer wall of this city for six days.

What the heck?!?!

That's a really random request as well as a lot of walking. But the LORD assured Joshua that if he did this, on the seventh day the wall would come crumbling down and Joshua would be able to claim his land (after a little bit of a war, of course). So as crazy as it sounded, Joshua trusted his LORD and did exactly as He said.

Joshua could have just as easily done his own thing. He could have gone in through the entrance of the city with his men and killed all its inhabitants. He could have used his men as a human ladder and climbed over it. He could have done so many things. But he chose to do the one thing that not many others would have done in that situation. He trusted God.

Why?

Because he had faith that his LORD would do exactly as he had promised.

And what happened on the seventh day, you might be asking? Exactly what God said would happen. The wall came crumbling down and Joshua claimed the city of Jericho.

We want so bad just to get to the other side of our walls. We are willing to climb over and risk hurting ourselves. We're willing to walk for days and days even though eventually we'll always wind up at that wall again. We will do whatever it takes to get to that goodness and beauty without having to deal with our walls.

But the only way to that goodness.

The only true way to that beauty.

Is by tearing down that wall.

Is by trusting God enough to tear down that wall.

We all have a lot of bricks.

We've all experienced a lot of heartache.

A lot of pain and suffering.

A lot of bad decisions.

We all have a wall preventing us from experiencing the joy that God wants us to experience.

And the only way that we can experience that. The only way that we can once again feel the sun beating down on our skin and once again feel the sensation that tingles down our spine when we feel a breeze, is by tearing down that wall. It's by confronting our heartache and our pain and suffering and our bad decisions and allowing God to tear them down.

Yes, the bricks and debris will always remain. But they'll be scattered and destroyed. They will only remain there as a memory. So that on that day that we stumble upon them again, we can look at them and say:

Man! That was a HUGE wall.

And now a word from our sponsor.....

The other day I was in the car listening to my iPod, watching the scenery ouside the window change from trees, to water, to fast food places, to high way, to trees, to water and I had a thought. You see, this is nothing unusual for me. Not the thought thing, but the whole listening to my iPod in the car thing. I find that my best thinking is done in cars, even though I myself am absolutely terrified to drive one. The thought I had followed another thought, which will be blogged about shortly, and this thought was, I should start a blog.

I've been considering this whole blog thing for a while but something always seemed to come up. Either life problems or life solutions or finals. There was always something keeping me from sharing the thoughts that I had on a daily basis and about the experiences I've encountered in my life. But after this thought I had the other day I realized that I should just start this darned blog that keeps haunting me everywhere I go.

So here it is. My blog. I will be sharing with you guys a vast array of knowledge including my thoughts on faith, love, life, music and most importantly, my thoughts on God and how he's worked both in my life and in the lives of others. There also might be some ramblings here and there, just to warn you.

So without further adieu,

Hello blogging world. My name is Sam and I am honored to make your acquiantance.