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God’s Jealousy and Dangerous Human Influence As this book of Hosea draws to an end in the penultimate chapter, the Lord finishes His message to His people by reminding them of why He is angry with them. The essence of His displeasure is one of jealousy. He has openly done a lot for them, providing for all of their needs

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Israel’s Sin Is in His Nature In today’s chapter, God continues to reminisce over Israel’s youth. As He reflects back on these very familiar themes and events that date back to the very birth of Israel (Jacob), we see that sin and deceit has been part of his nature since before the nation was even born.

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A Father’s Un-Dying Love for His Children In several chapters throughout the middle of this book of Hosea, God has been presenting His case for all of the things that Israel has done to betray and reject Him. He has now had Hosea speak for several chapters about the coming judgment and how they would be mocked and

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Punishment with No Hope of Relief – A Warning Today in chapter 10, the Lord continues to describe through Hosea how the people of Israel will be so invested in her sin that there will be no turning back for her. And the judgment of God will continue because, as He said in the previous chapter, it is now too late because He

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More than Conquerors This is a word that was given to me by the Lord yesterday by two separate and independent sources. Word of God speak!!

The Heritage of the Righteous and the Calamity of the Wicked
A Psalm of David.
1 Do not fret because of evildoers,
Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.

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The Storm – Israel Gets What She Has Demanded After spending the beginning of this book trying to reason with Israel, God finally gives her what she desperately wants. In today’s chapter the door closes as He has Hosea pronounce the judgment that is now coming. That judgment is that He will completely withdraw Himself from

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Be Careful of What You Ask For Up until this point in this story of these two kingdoms, Israel has been flirting with disaster. Yesterday in chapter 7 we saw how she put on a form of Godliness, claiming to be the people of God while she simultaneously colluded with pagan nations and worshiped their gods.

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The Birth of a Nation of Half-Breeds In today’s chapter of Hosea, the Lord tells of how the wickedness of Israel’s leaders eventually filtered down and affected all of the people. What the kings and priests did eventually contaminated the people as they became more and more infected with the sins of the nations

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Repeated Warnings Always Come Before Judgment In today’s chapter, the Lord turns from describing His case against Israel for her infidelity. Now He begins to have Hosea do what He has all of His prophets do… He uses them to send words of warning to His people and asks them to come back to Him. Even though the Lord just

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God’s Continued Case against Israel – A Failure of Leadership This is a continuation of last week’s study through the book of Hosea. Today in chapter 5, God continues to lay out His case through Hosea against the northern kingdom. He directs most of his admonishment towards the leaders because they have led the people to this place of

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Waiting Here For You I have written before about the blessings to be found by us when we wait on the LORD. This morning He continued that theme with a word for TODAY about the tremendous blessing in how He waits for us. The bible says that He has always waited patiently for us and continues to do so

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The Fear of the LORD Is Truly the Beginning My given morning word of nourishment today is a reminder for all of us about where it all begins… with a healthy fear or reverence for the LORD. This is an important theme for all of us to remember everyday as we purposefully enter the presence of the LORD. This fear is really a

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Two Kingdoms within One Nation Struggle with Idolatry Yesterday we saw how God began to lay out His case against Israel for their prostitution in chapter 4 of Hosea. Now as we continue into the second half of that chapter, we see a clear picture that God is talking about two nations who are struggling with this sin.

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God Never Winks at the Prostitution of His People Yesterday in chapter 3, we saw how God demonstrated His amazing love and patience with His people (His bride). He went out of His way to love her and to get her attention so that she would come back to Him and turn from her previous life.

But today in the next chapter, He begins

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That Day When the Lord Redeems His Bride Earlier last week in our discussion of Hosea, we looked at the end of chapter 2 where all of creation was waiting for “that day.” This was when God’s people would come to their senses and return to Him from their ways of prostitution. Today we will look at all of chapter 3, which

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The True Source of Our Power Today It is not by our own ability (our pride), strength or understanding, but by the Spirit of the Lord (humble surrender) that we do all powerful things to the glory of God!

4 Then I asked the angel, “What are these, my lord? What do they mean?” 5 “Don’t you know?” the angel asked.

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It is God Who Sets up Kings and Removes Kings On this last day of early voting before Election Day, I have a special word that the Lord initially placed on my heart this past weekend. It’s a word about how in the end it is the Lord who selects and equips kings and leaders. It is also Him who removes them. This is also a word

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The Real Way to Fix Climate Change This is actually a continuation of our recent study of the book of Hosea. Now you may be asking “What does Hosea’s message have to do with climate change?” This is actually the theme that the Lord placed on my heart as I awoke this morning and read the next section of the second

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The Faithful Husband In yesterday’s devotional message, we went through a high-level overview of the book of Hosea. In the first chapter, the LORD uses the life of Hosea and his family to illustrate a graphic picture of Israel and her unfaithfulness to God. But as I mentioned, it is a picture of the

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The Worst Type of Prostitution and Infidelity This has been a long night as I struggled to sleep while also pondering the events that are developing all around us today in our country. You see, it is becoming more and more evident every day that there are incredible levels of corruption and shear evil that have permeated the

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Understanding Grace and Mercy from Two Perspectives A true and deep understanding of these two well-used terms (grace and mercy) can give great power to the spiritual lives of all Christians.

From the perspective of God, they are both founded on how great His love (agape) is for us. Grace is when He showers on us precious gifts