Repentance Road (16)
Hosea 14
Robert Dawson
Part of the plot in many of our fictional stories involves the main character's desire and efforts to return home or to family and loved ones. For instance, in the "Wizard of Oz," despite her grand adventure, Dorothy wanted to return home to Kansas and with a click of her heels and uttering the phrase, "There is no place like home," she was able to do just that.
In life, it seems, all of us possess the unfortunate bad habit of wandering away from home and losing our way, whether it is forgetting who we are, where we come from, or simply losing touch with the most important and basic things of life.
If you think about it, this is the story of humanity and her God. It is the story of an entire race of people who abandoned their Creator, and in their rebellion, they have lost their way. Like Adam and Eve, driven from the garden, we are all exiles-separated from the presence of God.
We need to return, but we don't know how.
Our once-innocent nature, now corrupted by sin, blinds us to the way back.
Worse still, our sinful rebellion has so hardened our hearts so that we don't even desire to return.
We are spiritual vagabonds lost in the wilderness of our own sin. Home is nothing more than a distant memory buried deep within us. In our wanderings we are looking for something, but we are no longer aware of what it is we are searching for. But in our lostness a voice calls out. It is a familiar voice, one that awakens within us both the memory of and longing for home.
It is the voice of our Creator, our God calling us to return.
And not only does He call us home-He has cleared the path, making a way for us to return through His mercy and grace.
We see this throughout the Bible, even in the OT. When you read the OT, the stories of the patriarchs and the people of Israel, you are reading our story. Their stories, as Paul says, are examples to us but more than examples, their stories are mirrors. They ...
Hosea 14
Robert Dawson
Part of the plot in many of our fictional stories involves the main character's desire and efforts to return home or to family and loved ones. For instance, in the "Wizard of Oz," despite her grand adventure, Dorothy wanted to return home to Kansas and with a click of her heels and uttering the phrase, "There is no place like home," she was able to do just that.
In life, it seems, all of us possess the unfortunate bad habit of wandering away from home and losing our way, whether it is forgetting who we are, where we come from, or simply losing touch with the most important and basic things of life.
If you think about it, this is the story of humanity and her God. It is the story of an entire race of people who abandoned their Creator, and in their rebellion, they have lost their way. Like Adam and Eve, driven from the garden, we are all exiles-separated from the presence of God.
We need to return, but we don't know how.
Our once-innocent nature, now corrupted by sin, blinds us to the way back.
Worse still, our sinful rebellion has so hardened our hearts so that we don't even desire to return.
We are spiritual vagabonds lost in the wilderness of our own sin. Home is nothing more than a distant memory buried deep within us. In our wanderings we are looking for something, but we are no longer aware of what it is we are searching for. But in our lostness a voice calls out. It is a familiar voice, one that awakens within us both the memory of and longing for home.
It is the voice of our Creator, our God calling us to return.
And not only does He call us home-He has cleared the path, making a way for us to return through His mercy and grace.
We see this throughout the Bible, even in the OT. When you read the OT, the stories of the patriarchs and the people of Israel, you are reading our story. Their stories, as Paul says, are examples to us but more than examples, their stories are mirrors. They ...
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