{"id":1382,"date":"2019-01-07T20:00:43","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T03:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2019-01-07T23:05:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T06:05:11","slug":"hosea_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/hosea_2\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Clues That You Might Be Worshiping An Idol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hosea 2:1-13 \u00a0Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Today’s passage is Hosea 2:1-13.\u00a0 Let’s go!<\/p>\n

Hosea 2:1 (NIV)\u00a0<\/strong>
\n1\u00a0<\/span><\/sup>“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Verse 1: \u00a0This verse fits in more with the contents of chapter 1 than with chapter 2.\u00a0 At the end of chapter 1 Hosea describes how God will show His people amazing grace and mercy and restore them after they have cheated on Him.\u00a0 Verse 1 here is part of that restoration.\u00a0 Just like the names of Hosea’s daughter and second son, God should have called the Israelites “not my people” (“Lo-Ruhamah”) and “not my loved one” (Lo-Ammi) because of their unfaithfulness.\u00a0 But because of God’s grace and mercy, the Israelites once again became “My people” and “My loved one” in God’s eyes.<\/p>\n

Similarly,\u00a0as sinners we had no right to be called God’s people or God’s beloved.\u00a0 Yet that is what we are now, all because of the mercy and grace God showed us through Jesus Christ.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hosea 2:2 (NIV)\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

2\u00a0<\/span><\/sup>“Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Verses 2-4: \u00a0Here Hosea describes how angry God gets when His people are unfaithful to Him.\u00a0 Like a husband who has been cheated on, God feels a sense of betrayal, a desire to disown His loved one, a desire to shame that person and to reject anything that has to do with that person.\u00a0 What can we learn from this?<\/p>\n

God’s wrath against our sin is not just philosophical, but very personal.\u00a0 It hurts God greatly when we are unfaithful to Him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hosea 2:5 (NIV)\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

5\u00a0<\/span><\/sup>Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

On verses 5-13: \u00a0Here Hosea describes how the Lord wants to punish the Israelites for their unfaithfulness.\u00a0 At the same time, these verses I believe describe what our lives look like when we chase something other than God as our number one priority.<\/p>\n

How do you know if you’re chasing something other than God and worshiping an idol?<\/p>\n

Here are 10 clues from verses 5-13 that you might be worshiping an idol:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0You chase after people or things as if they are the source of your life and happiness.<\/strong>\u00a0You give credit to idols when the credit should belong to God.<\/strong>\u00a0(v5 – “I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.” vs. v8 – “She has now acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold”)<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0You often feel lost, directionless and frustrated with life.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0It’s as if your path is constantly blocked with thornbushes. (v6 – “I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.”)<\/p>\n

3. \u00a0The people or things you chase — these idols in your life — don’t satisfy you no matter how hard you chase them.<\/strong>\u00a0(v7 – “She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.'”)<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0You often fail to acknowledge that it is God who provides you with the blessings you have in life.<\/strong>\u00a0(v8 – “She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold– which they used for Baal.”)<\/p>\n

5. \u00a0You miss a lot of the blessings God intended for you because you’re so focused on something other than God.<\/strong>\u00a0(v9 – “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness.”)<\/p>\n

6. \u00a0You often carry shame when you’re around people.<\/strong>\u00a0(v10 – “shame before the eyes of her lovers”)<\/p>\n

7. \u00a0True joy and celebration have stopped in your life.<\/strong>\u00a0(v11 –\u00a0I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days–all her appointed feasts.”)<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0You often feel like you never have enough in terms of time, money and resources.\u00a0<\/strong>(v12 – “wild animals will devour your vines and fig trees”).<\/p>\n

9.\u00a0Instead of genuine, loving relationships, you find yourself settling for relationships where people only want to use you and get things from you<\/strong>(v12 – “I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers”)<\/p>\n

10.\u00a0God is an afterthought in your life.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0You go out of your way to chase after things other than God, but you can hardly get out of bed to be with God. (v13 – “she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot”)<\/p>\n

If one or more of the above 10 clues are operating in your life, it’s a signal that you may have left God behind and are worshiping an idol.\u00a0 It’s time to let God reclaim the centre of your life.<\/p>\n

Heavenly Father, life sucks when You’re not at the centre of it.\u00a0 But life is full when You are the centre.\u00a0 So come and be the One my life revolves around.\u00a0 Be the One I chase harder than anything else in my life.\u00a0 Come Holy Spirit and fill me today.\u00a0 In Jesus’ name, AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s passage is Hosea 2:1-13.\u00a0 Let’s go!<\/p>\n

Hosea 2:1 (NIV)\u00a0\u00a0“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verse 1: \u00a0This verse fits in more with the contents of chapter 1 than with chapter 2.\u00a0 At the end of chapter 1 Hosea describes how God will show His people amazing grace and mercy and restore them after they have cheated on Him.\u00a0 Verse 1 here is part of that restoration.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1476,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1382\/revisions\/1476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}