Unrequited love………..

We will never understand the Bible’s expectations for our emotions until we hear God’s passions.

Here’s how He describes His passion in Hosea 11:2-7…….. “The more [the prophets] called to them, the more they went from them; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning incense to the graven images.

 Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms or taking them up in My arms, but they did not know that I healed them.

 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was to them as one who lifts up and eases the yoke over their cheeks, and I bent down to them and gently laid food before them.

 They shall not [literally] return into [another bondage in] the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be their king because they refused to return to Me.

 And the sword shall rage against and fall upon their cities and shall consume the bars of their gates and shall make an end [of their defenses], because of their own counsels and devices.

 My people are bent on backsliding from Me; though [the prophets] call them to Him Who is on high, none at all will exalt Him or lift himself up [to come to Him].”   (AMP)

Do you hear the grief in the LORD’s voice here?   

It is the grief of unrequited love.  Hosea is all about unrequited love.  Do you remember the story of Hosea?

The book begins with God telling the prophet Hosea that he is going to be a visual representation of the Lord so that everyone can look at Hosea’s life and see what the God is like. Sounds like a good job, until the God says; “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” (Hosea 1:2)

So Hosea is instructed to marry a woman named Gomer.  She is a prostitute and sleeps with anyone except her husband.

And God says –--- that’s just like My people. They give themselves to a thousand other loves but not to Me.  Incredibly, in chapter 3, God calls Hosea to go and bring back his runaway wife.  This time she’s not just in the arms of her some other lover she’s working in a brothel.  Hosea has to go and pay the prostitute’s price to get his own wife back.

God says –---- that’s the story of Me and My people.  They are adulterous, unfaithful prostitutes, pursuing a thousand other loves.  When all the while their true Love has paid everything to win them back and He’s calling them home.

God is like that---- – He will pursue His unfaithful people, do whatever it takes, pay whatever it cost to bring them back to Him.

 In the wilderness when the people said they would prefer the slavery of Egypt than a future with Him in the Promised Land, He is angrily grieved.

Jesus is our Husband.   He is so grieved –--- not so much by a particular sin----– but by our hearts that seem to pursue satisfaction in anything but Him. He is the spurned Lover, the rightfully Jealous Husband to whom we belong but against whom we sin every day.