Hosea 2:5- She said I will go after my lovers, who gave me food and water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.”
In a self-promoting, self-sustaining culture and world that teaches us to need nothing outside of ourselves for anything, the idea that all I have is a gift from the Lord, not a result of my hard work or merit, simply doesn’t compute. To not just consider, but believe and receive that all I have been given, including my suffering (Job 2:10), as a gift from the Lord, is one of the greatest challenges facing a Christ follower in today’s world. But to not consider going on the journey of growing in our willingness to receive that this is the truth, creates a myriad of complications in other areas of our walk with Jesus. Our unwillingness to look at this area is in my estimation on of the greatest crippling factors in our understanding and development of meaningful community with one another.
So where is the line? What is mine? What of mine is the Lords? How can I tell? For me this journey has been made clear through the suffering of loss, and consequently the exposure of my true belief in this area. Scripture is infinitely clear that all I have is the Lords. (Chronicles 29: 11 Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours).
It’s not just that all I have has been given to me from him, and can be taken from me at his decision, but that it actually is His possession of which I am simply entrusted. Job’s response to the absolute decimation of life as he knew it, makes clear the truth that we are all invited to live in. Job 1:20-21:At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
Only a man who understands that all he had is a gift from the Lords hand could even utter words of worship in a time of such distress and loss. It is humbling to even consider my lack of gratitude for the gifts that the Lord has given me, as well as my quick emotional flight in times of suffering, questioning even the presence of God in my life. My lifestyle of self-protection proves that down deep I don’t trust that these are truly gifts, and that I am the only one looking out for me.
Not unlike the Israelites in Hosea, I have such a broken understanding of the provision of the Lord. That it is He who provides me with the money that buys my food, my wine, my clothes, etc. Often times the Lord took Israel through seasons of suffering to teach them to depend on the Lord for even the smallest of daily details such as food (manna in the desert Exodus 16). But not unlike Israel in the desert, my propensity to gather more than I need, rooted in the fear that tomorrow God may not come through, leads often to “maggots” in my life.
Exodus 16:19-20 Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning. "However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
If in any area of my life I am living as though the Lord will not provide, and consequently my heart moves in a direction of self-guided, self-protective living, I am creating a breeding ground for “maggot living”. The smell and effect of such self-protective living in one area of my life, often times is so overpowering it begins to infect all areas, and before long, it has the potential to be the only way I know to live. “Maggot living” is the heart sickness we all feel when we have put so much hope in the outcome of our efforts in any area, that even the best of results, leaves us with a sense of wanting and fear of loosing it.
I said in the beginning that the impact of this type of living is massive on our understanding and ability to live in meaningful community with one another. It attacks the truth that the root of our relationship with God is in his covenant with us, not our action towards, or for Him; the covenant that he was teaching them about in Exodus 16:12 “then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” The relationship with God and Man is a relationship of giver to receiver. If All that I have is given to me from the Lord, and not a product of my efforts, then as a result I am free to give it away in faith, believing that the Lord who provided it in the beginning, can do so again if he chooses. Living in this reality creates the equality the God speaks of in 2nd Corinthians.
2 Corinthians 8:13 “Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality.”
Equality; A “happy”, politically correct notion that has very little real value in our capitalistic, materialistic, hedonistic, narcissistic culture. It all sounds good, until out of my supposed plenty I have to meet your needs. What happens if your needs are so great that I have to suffer in order to meet them? Most giving in Christian circles is not done out of our first-fruits that could lead to our suffering, but out of such excess that often times we never have to suffer in order to give; yet this willingness to personally suffer in order to meet needs, is a mark of a gospel-centered community. For this type of community to take root, and to grow and flourish, the formative persons involved need to be ones whose lives are marked by living experientially in the truth that all I have is the Lord’s.
2 Corinthians 8: 14-15 At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."
The beauty of this relationship with the Lord is that even when I have trusted in so many other things (idols) than the Lord to provide me with my needs, he is so committed, through this covenant relationship, to guide me back into the truth about His constant presence and provision for me in all things. This is his response to the idolatry of self- provision, self-protection of Israel in Hosea.
Hosea 2:14-16 "Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.'
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