Month: November 2022

This is one that parents tend to use on their children during fits of frustration, but it’s language that every mom, dad, and guardian should eliminate from their response library.

People are complicated beings affected by zillions of influences. We all mess up, and sometimes we all need a little babying, regardless of age.

From a socio-psychological standpoint, many things that happened to us as children affect us as adults. So avoid flinging the “grow up” sentiment at people. It’s dismissive, and using it will make you a hypocrite.

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Unfortunately, many folks are raised on the myth of stoicism and taught from a pre-verbal age that showing emotions is wrong or even immoral.

 

Science proves the opposite is true. Bottling up thoughts and feelings erodes our mental health and negatively impacts physical health, rendering statements like “why are you so emotional” invalidating and psychologically damaging.

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Hosea was the one who had been wronged and humiliated. He was the one following God, but he was also the one called to sacrifice. Not only did he sacrifice his pride, but his rights as well.

Gomer had broken the covenant of marriage so, biblically, Hosea had every right to divorce her, but he chose to give up that right just like he chose to give up the right to seek revenge. He could have stripped her of every good thing in her life and no one would have blamed him, but he laid down his revenge, took the initiative and went to her. Amazing!

When our son Jered was a little boy, he loved to work in the garage with his dad. He especially loved Dan’s power tools. Wanting to direct his love of power tools in a safer direction, we bought him the cutest set of plastic tools and a wooden workbench for Christmas.

The look of disappointment on his face when he ripped the paper off his new tools and workbench broke my heart. I thought he would be excited. Wrong!

After playing with them for a few minutes, Jered headed for the garage to use “daddy’s big tools.” My husband said, “Son, those tools were made for daddy’s hands. If the wrong person uses those tools, they can get hurt.”

Dan then held out his hands and placed Jered’s hands in his. “See how much bigger my hands are than yours, son? When your hands are this big, you can use the power tools.” Jered got the point.

I hope we do. Revenge is reserved for the hands of God. Revenge is destructive in our hands but in God’s hands, revenge becomes a tool of restoration.

Nowhere does it say that Gomer was repentant. Hosea had no guarantee that she wouldn’t do the same thing again. I am sure his family and friends told him he was making a big mistake and deserved better.

True love goes beyond reason, refusing to settle for justice alone. True love insists on giving mercy. Love that never gives up is willing to pay a great price–to sacrifice.

The marriage of Hosea and Gomer is a picture of our relationship with God and illustrates God’s love for us, a love that never fails. Like Gomer, we have been unfaithful to God, selling ourselves to unworthy desires and goals.

Gomer did not deserve to be redeemed. Her behavior did not merit such mercy. Israel did not deserve God’s faithful betrothal. Their unfaithfulness did not merit such mercy. You and I do not deserve salvation. Our sin does not merit such mercy.

We have run from God, straight into the arms of our own selfish desires. Our lives and hearts are cluttered with people and things that we worship. They are false idols because anything that stands between us and God is an idol.

We have become comfortable with our sin and at times, happy in our disobedience. Like Gomer, we cherish that sin, refusing to let it go. However, like Hosea loved Gomer, God has loved us unconditionally–right in the middle of our messy lives.

“Hosea” literally means “salvation” and just like Hosea was Gomer’s salvation, God is ours as He looks fast our rebellious hearts and unfaithfulness – and pursues us. God never gives up on us.

Romans 8:39 (NLT) “Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God chose to forgive us, sending His perfect son to pay for our sin and now He calls us to love the way He loves–with a love that never fails.

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Hosea 3:1 “The LORD said to me again, ‘Go, show your love to a woman loved by someone else, who has been unfaithful to you.’”

We often confuse forgiveness as a feeling instead of a choice. Forgiveness is a deliberate action, an independent act between you and God. To forgive means to “cancel the debt and send it away.”

Forgiveness is a choice.

In the Orient, when someone pays a debt, the loan paper is marked “Paid in full.” It is then nailed above the door of their home for everyone to see. Forgiveness makes the choice to cancel the debt–before they ask for forgiveness or even if they never ask for forgiveness.

Gomer did not ask for or even seem to want forgiveness. Scripture tells us that she “loved adultery” and worshipped the false God Baal. In other words, Gomer was happy in her sin, but Hosea forgave her and brought her home–again!

Why? To Hosea the answer was really quite simple. Because God told him to! God told Hosea not only to bring Gomer back but to love and forgive her.

Now that is asking an awful lot. Right? But God can ask a lot because He gave a lot. Forgiveness is the deepest need of our lives and the greatest gift of God.

Colossians 2:13-14 (NLT) “Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.”

Forgiveness must be given in the same proportion that it is received. There should be no limits to our forgiveness because there are no limits to His. In other words, we can stop forgiving when we run out of forgiveness. True love never fails but chooses instead to forgive.

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A college man walked into a photography studio to have a framed picture of his girlfriend duplicated. When the photographer took the picture apart, he noticed an inscription written on the back of the photograph that read, “My dearest Tom, I love you with all of my heart. I will love you forever and am yours for eternity.”

The inscription was signed, “Diane” and contained a P.S. “If we ever break up, I want this picture back!”

In other words, because children learn sinful ways of behaving in a household, they often repeat those sinful behaviors in adulthood. There are a multitude of examples in the Scriptures.

Abraham apparently passed on lying to his son Isaac. (Gen 12:10-20; 26:1-16). Granted, the episode with Abram’s going down to Egypt occurred before Isaac was ever born; however, it could very well be that Abram had a real problem with telling the truth—in Genesis 20, he told Abimelech that Sarah was his sister, not his wife.

Isaac and Rachel’s favoritism caused Jacob much heartache in later life.

“Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob” (Gen 25:28). Jacob was able to steal Esau’s blessing through the conniving of his mother—that act brought much heartache to that family (Gen 27).

Jacob continued that favoritism in his own family: “Now Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him” (Gen 37:3-4). Because of the jealousy of Joseph’s brothers, Joseph was sold to slavery in Egypt. (Did Jacob pass on deception to his children, deception in learned in his family of origin?) Jacob mourned greatly when he thought Joseph had died: “Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No,’ he said, ‘in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.’ So his father wept for him” (Gen 37:34-35).

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• “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:2-3).
• “The word of the LORD came to him [Abraham]: ‘This man [Eliezer of Damascus, Abram’s heir at the time] will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’” (Gen 15:4-5).

Sarai, Abram’s wife, had a hard time trusting God to deliver on that promise: “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.’ Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived” (Gen 16:1-4). It was widely believed in Abram’s day that if a wife was barren, God was punishing you. The giving of a maidservant to a husband for the purpose of procreation was a widespread practice in Sarai’s day. Thus, what Abraham was doing here was not at all considered adultery. Hagar apparently did not have the fertility issues Sarai had, and she conceived.

As soon as Hagar became pregnant, however, Sarai became quite upset with her: “When she [Sarai] knew she [Hagar] was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me’” (Gen 16:4-5). Sarai then began to mistreat Hagar to the point that Hagar fled from her (16:6). As Hagar was running, an angel of the LORD appeared to her and said: “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (16:11-12).

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“So I decided to buy a new vibrator and introduce it while me and this guy I was dating were in bed. I hadn’t tried it before he came over, but my friend had one and she swore by how amazing it was. But what I didn’t realize is that whatever type of rubber or plastic the thing was made out of caused me to break out in serious hives. Once we started using it, I realized I was really itchy and then all of a sudden I got all these lumps on the inside of my thighs, which kind of killed the mood, not to mention it was super-embarrassing.” Kayla, Park City, Utah

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Almost everyone we know has a hilarious, embarrassing or downright awful sex story up their sleeve. Whether it was a one-night stand gone wrong or a first time in the sack that left something to be desired, we’re taking a look at some of the funniest sex stories we’ve heard in a while. If you have one to add, make sure you leave us a comment!

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