The God of Hope and restoration in Hosea

Can a lost relationship be restored? Can old wounds heal? Can our lives ravaged from the war that is life come into a blessing, is a blessing what God has in mind for us in the first place? Sometimes in the wounds and war of life, we become blind to hope.

I know very well what hope I have in eternity, but if the mountains and challenges of life seem to large and the disappointment too difficult to bear today, in the now, we may very well lose all gumption, all courage to go on living another day. What can cause us to not only bear with current disappointment, heartbreak and discouragement and keep walking the good walk?

I was reading Hosea today and I realise that the book is about Hope, amongst many others things the book is about.

Aside from the prophet-prostitute narrative, the text contains mighty hopeful promises of restoration. How God is single minded about His counsel and plan - to restore His people to a relationship with Himself and have them live in His presence. (Hosea 6:1-3)

Our circumstances and our failings might be different from Gomer the prostitute, or the nation of Israel of Hosea's day. While the motivations for our sin and the types of sin we commit may be vastly different, Hosea presents a clear message of Hope. Hope which is found in the God who is relentless in His plan to bless, to restore, to heal, to bring back His people to a land.

God promises - that people who have sinned grievous sins would be one day "planted by God" in their own land and blessed. He promises to woo her heart through whatever means necessary to restore her to Himself. He promises that a people who have been disowned because of sin and rebellion, who are 'not his' will one day be His beloved, His own again, His family, His intimates once more.

Restoration begins with God's presence - to live before Him is where restoration flows from. All life and repair and healing and redemption flow from His throne. To be restored means to live before that presence. To continually take in that presence and use it in an obedient, grace empowered response. That is Gods unchanging relentless plan for you, me and whoever has hurt you or disappointed you.

And if God undertakes to pursue so mightily a people so lost and so fallen, for homer's prostitution is symbolic of the whole nation's god-forsaking ways. Judgement is planned for Israel, yet with Judgement, the God of Hope is unyielding in His plan to restore her to her former glory before His presence.

What more for us as His covenant bound ones, ones whom He promised nothing can take can steal out of His hand, ones whom He calls His children, declaring that His plans for us never change. We who are the ones whom He desires, and has a good plan to work all things for our good. His ultimate plan is for our welfare, whom He predestined to be changed into the likeness of Christ. How much more shall we not live in his presence and see His restoration start thus with the renewal of our hope in Christ within?

Hosea chapter 6

2 "He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him.

3 Oh, that we might know the LORD! Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring."

When We want to know God, His response is certain - So the word of God wants us to know of the certainty to which God will respond, as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in the spring. Do we fear that the sun will not rise tomorrow? God will surely rise on us, do we fear dryness and drought of the lack of supply in december of rain? Surely God will come to us with His mighty spirit and with certainty!