ANCIENT WORDS, MODERN WORLD WEEK 1: CHASING WHAT CAN’T LOVE YOU BACK (HOSEA)

If you’ve never experienced eating at a New York City diner, it is an experience you will never forget. First, it is New York, so everything is just a little bit different than eating at a diner here. Secondly, they hand you a menu that has page after page of options from breakfast to dinner, multiple kinds of ethnic foods, and sometimes even things you aren’t familiar with at all. The first time I had this experience, I found myself becoming overwhelmed just trying to navigate the menu and deciding what I wanted to order.

We live in a culture that reads like a New York City diner. The options seem almost endless, and if we don’t like one thing, there is always another thing right out in front of us that is pulling us to make the shift. If we don’t like the culture, we can pick a different one. If this relationship isn’t working, just move to another relationship. If you don’t like what one teaches as truth, just go find another truth that better suits what you want to believe. And the list goes on and on.

But what if our biggest problem isn’t the vast menu of options our culture offers, but rather where we are placing our affections? We are chasing after something that cannot love us back or give us the satisfaction and peace we so long for.

Hosea was called by God to go and marry a prostitute. That sounds like a pretty bad idea right from the start…but God was using him to prove a point. The point is that we, as humans, too often are running after satisfaction from things that will only use and abuse us, things that can never satisfy that longing we have for love and acceptance, for peace and security.

We, just like Hosea’s prostitute wife, run after anything and everything that looks like it will fill that void in our lives. When we become dissatisfied, we move on to the next thing, only to find that it still doesn’t satisfy. But God doesn’t throw us to the side because of our unfaithfulness. Instead, he waits patiently for us, calling us back to himself, drawing us to the only relationship that truly satisfies.

So, where are you? Are you chasing after the “menu” of life, trying to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the next best thing that comes along? Are you trying to fill your life with what our culture tells us is best and right, or are you chasing after the one true relationship that will always love you back?

God loves you more than you will ever know and more than you can love him back; he relentlessly pursues you, drawing you back to himself. Will you quit running and come to the one that loves you most?