Don't I know you? : Hosea 8-14

This morning I looked at the reading list and instantly resolved to plow through Hosea chapters 8 to 14. Before I got to the word however, I spent some time in prayer, as I usually try to do each day and I uttered a familiar, yet long unspoken line: " Lord speak to me in your word today. Let me see not what I am trying to see, but what YOU want me to see." By the time I started, I felt like my eyes had been washed. Like the words of a familiar song,

Word of God speak
would you pour down like rain
washing my eyes to see
your majesty...

The first thing I noticed was a prevailing trend for the past weeks in almost all of the scriptures we have read: a turning away from the things once known and loved.

After reading a few verses in, I jotted this down:
It is not a new thing to experience God, and believe, yet walk away to idolatry ( in whatever form it may take for you); what it is, however, is a sad thing. I am sorrowful, for the ones who knew the Lord, and at the end they will hear, Depart from me, I never knew you.

In Hosea 8:12, God mentions that great things of God that have now become strange. They have been rationalized and reasoned away. In chapter 11:7, God states that his people are bent on backsliding from him.

See, I have noticed that it is one thing to slide, forward even, but to slide backward is such a more dangerous thing. Not only do you now know where you are going, but you are going there quickly, unable to brace yourself for impact.

It seems that more and more as we see the GREAT DAY OF THE LORD, that God is really aiming to warn his people about falling away. The enemy is busy killing, stealing, and ultimately destroying.

There is an old hymn that comes to mind at this point of writing and I think I will end on this note:

Hold to his hand
God's unchanging hand
Hold to his hand
God's unchanging hand
build your hopes on things eternal
Hold to God's unchanging hand