Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Thursday 8/27/09)

In The Fullness Of Forgiveness II

Hosea 3:1 (New Living Translation)

¹ Then the Lord said to me, “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.”

I have been so blessed to meet so many beautiful men and women from around the world. My thoughts were how different we must be because of where we come from. Although our differences are evident, we have similarity, in love, marriage and how we handle forgiveness within the confines of relationships. I have met people from all different walks of life that have been touched by divorce, separation, broken homes and shattered families. But the dynamic that struck me about most of them is that these relationships that have landed in this predicament were mainly because of two circumstances that allowed the enemy access to their relationship and allowed him enter in and take them down. The first one, being pride mixed with a large heaping dose of intolerance and the other is unforgiveness. As I sat and looked through my minds eye over my own relationships and those of others, it was evident to me that something had to be missing for these things to occur. It was God at the center, His love at the root and His command to forgive as a basis for existence.

Hosea was a chosen man of God, a prophet. His wife however was far from the virtuous woman. She was a woman of ill repute. But even when Gomer went outside their marriage relationship, and had another man’s child, God told Hosea to go and exemplify his love to his wife again, as an example of His love and forgiveness for His chosen people. Why love? Because it is the catalysis for forgiveness, but contrary to what many of us think, it has little to do with our love and our abilities, but everything to do with God’s love, and abilities. You see even when we are at our end; God is just beginning. He has an endless supply of anything that we need, we only need to tap into the greatest resource for forgiveness and life that we have available. You see there is no offense to hard for God, but many are too hard for us. Anger, mistrust, humanity all play a part in why it can be impossible for us, but if we are in the midst of God, in the circle of His love that love and all of its characters should be ours as a witness, to all we encounter, beginning with our family first and reaching out from there.

So Husband’s love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, wives respect your husbands for this is right before the Lord. Children obey your parents that you may live long upon the land that God has given. Neighbors love each other as yourself. As we obey these commands of the Lord through love and understanding we will find that forgiveness and tolerance will become a part of us. We will find the more God is present in our lives the more we have the ability to love, forgive and even forget, because truly, greater is He that is in us then he that is in the world or any circumstance that we may encounter!