When God Asks the Hard Things: Lessons from Hosea

Several months ago, as I was reading my way through the whole Bible I got to Hosea, and I felt like the Lord wanted me to study this book and write about His love. And for some reason I became like a child who has been asked to clean their room and they suddenly have a million other things they “have” to do, or they go into said room and get distracted by every single toy and the cleaning process takes hours instead of minutes.

Except, for me, it took months.

At the time, I had a pretty good morning routine of getting up, getting my cacao, feeding the dogs, and sitting down to read my Bible until the sun came up and I could do farm chores.

I had a rule for myself of no screen time until after I dressed for the day. But once I finished reading my way through the Bible, which only took a couple of weeks since I’d started in the New Testament and only had to finish the minor prophets, I found every excuse not to pick up my Bible again. I started scrolling social media, I started sleeping in more, I started going out in the dark to do farm chores. I completely abandoned my routine and the more time I spent not reading my Bible, the more irritated I got with myself.

About a week ago, I started praying and asking God what my problem was. Nothing. Complete silence. Because in truth, I already knew what the problem was. God had asked me to do something and I was avoiding it. So, I prayed some more, this time focusing on gratitude. Thanking God for things He’d done for me. It made the irritation and frustration feel less intense. And then after a couple of days of focusing on talking to God, I sat down, opened my Bible, and started reading through Hosea.

And as I read, I felt incredibly uncomfortable.

I wanted to stop, but I didn’t. Because I needed to know what was happening. Why was this tiny little book that people hardly ever talk about giving me so much angst?

I started writing a blog about what I was reading. It’s what God had asked me to do after all. I’d write it quick and be done with it.

But writing has always helped me process what is happening in my brain, and it didn’t fail me this time either. I wrote my initial thoughts in my journal and let them sit for a day. That night, as I tried to fall asleep things started to click into place. The next morning, I got up and expanded my thoughts on my computer. And I knew.

I knew what had been troubling me about Hosea.

I wasn't struggling with love story between Hosea and Gomer, or God and the Israelites. God asked Hosea to do something difficult, knowing it would affect the rest of his life – marry a prostitute and be an example to the people of Israel of how they had turned from God to prostitute themselves before idols.

God also asked me to do something difficult fourteen years ago, knowing it would affect the rest of my life – become stepmom to a special needs child.

God did not ask me to make my life public like Hosea’s would have been, but there were plenty of public “incidents” that make it easy for me to believe Hosea might have felt some of the same feelings my husband and I have felt over the years.

I’ve had plenty of people tell me that, “God never gives us more than we can handle” to which I simply roll my eyes. Because there were things that were too hard to handle. Decisions that felt impossible. Rejection from nearly everyone who got close enough to get a taste of our circumstances. Judgement from those we thought would love and accept us.

I can remember times when I would be praying in desperation for God to give us some relief. Asking Him why He had asked me to be in this situation if things kept getting gradually worse instead of better. Feeling like I was failing in what God had asked me to do – which was to love my son.

And the only response I ever got was a reminder that He had called me to love my son, and I was doing just fine. I clung to those words because they were the only hope I had. For years.

We have an image in our bedroom of Romans 8:31 hanging in our bedroom. “If God is for us, who can be against us?.” I remember after another incident, and another rejection, laying on our bed, sobbing. Reading those words over and over and thinking, “It doesn’t feel like God is for us because nothing ever gets better.” And yet, I kept reading those words because I knew God had asked me to live this life and He would not have asked me to do it, if there wasn’t a purpose and a plan for our good. I knew this to be true in my spirit.

But in my physical and metal self, I didn’t understand it. I struggled to believe it. But I clung to it anyway because I didn’t have anything else to cling to.

Nothing in the book of Hosea outright tells us that he struggled with what God asked him to do. It’s easy to read the opening lines of Hosea and gloss over the fact that there is no emotion in them.

“When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.” So, Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son.” Hosea 1:2-3

Just the facts. This is why I struggled to recognize what was bothering me about this book. Because the information is beneath the surface. You have to think about what it was like for a righteous man in those days to marry a prostitute. You have to consider the people involved as real people, not as fictional characters on a page. You have to dig a little bit to see the full picture.

For instance. In Jewish oral history, it’s believed that Gomer’s mother was also a prostitute. So not only would Gomer have been a prostitute, but she would have been born into prostitution. Two strikes against her. And if you consider this, you will realize that Gomer wasn’t raised to be a wife, she was raised to be a prostitute. That life would have been familiar to her, safe even. She would have known her place wasn’t in society, next to a righteous man. She was human, she struggled, people judged, ridiculed, and put her down.

Then we have Hosea. A man who loved and honored God and followed the law of Moses. The law that says prostitution is prohibited and the punishment for it is death. God asks him to do something contrary to the law. Hosea would have understood the impact this would have on his life. His standing in the community, the judgments he would face. But he knew God had a plan and a purpose for it. So, he obeys.

But then children come along. And they aren’t all Hosea's. God told Hosea at the start that Gomer would conceive children in prostitution. He also told Hosea to go and love his wife again after she had run off to live with another man. Hosea was human. He obeyed God, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t struggle with thoughts and feelings about what God asked him to do. He didn't simply obey and have zero thoughts or feelings about the matter. That's not how humans work.

And think about the children. Children with names like “Not loved” and “Not my people.” Children who grew up in a broken home. Children who had a prostitute for a mother. Children who may not have been recognized as legitimate heirs of Hosea and therefore not treated well in society.

This story is very human, very raw. And it touched at the painful parts of my own story. But let’s not forget, this is a LOVE story.

And I’ll admit, after writing that last sentence, I closed my laptop and walked away to do other things because to be perfectly transparent, I still struggle with reconciling the pain I experienced with God’s love. There is still a part of me that asks, “Why? Why did I have to walk through that?”

But I know the answer to that as well. At least in part. And it’s not a simple answer. Like everything about God, it’s multifaceted. I could dig into the “Why” for the rest of my life and still produce new reasons. And I very likely will do that because this is what growth looks like.

It would be easy for me to berate myself over the fact that I let two months slip by without writing this blog like God asked me to. I could scold myself and say, “What if someone really needed to read that blog two months ago, or even two weeks ago?”

But one thing I’ve learned is that if I resist doing something God has asked me to do, it’s because God asked me to do it so He could work on something in me. So, the time I spent avoiding my Bible and avoiding writing this blog was not wasted, not to mention that if I had written it two months ago, it would look totally different than what you're reading right now.

Something in me recognized pain in what I’d read and wanted to avoid reliving that pain. Yet, as I sit here writing this, I understand that it wasn’t really the pain that I needed to revisit, it was the redemption, the grace, the mercy, and love that resulted because of the pain. I needed to go back and see it. This isn't the first time of done this, but it is the first time I've allowed myself to feel the deep ache that's still there while I revisited it.

Our story isn’t over yet. Our son is almost twenty-three now and he is making his own way in the world. It’s not the way we hoped for or wished for him, and it’s been painful to watch. But for the first time in five years, he wants to spend his birthday with us. He’s actively seeking to spend time with us instead of us trying to keep a sliver of connection with him intact. It’s tenuous, and new, we’re all feeling our way through it, but hope is growing.

And that's another thing. Had I written this two months ago, this fragile new connection we have wouldn't have happened yet. I'm not sure I can yet put into words why it was important that the last couple of weeks needed to happen before I sat down to write this, but I know in my spirit that God's timing is in this.

God rescued Gomer from a life of prostitution. Yes, she ran away from the new, better life God gave her, but He didn’t give up on her. He had Hosea go and bring her back again. We aren’t told how many times she ran away, or if she ever settled into her role as wife. But because Hosea’s marriage was supposed to be an example of what God was going to do with His people through exile and bringing them home again, we can assume that things worked out for them. Especially since Hosea chapter 3 starts this way:

So, I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine. Then I said to her, “You must live in my house for many days and stop your prostitution. During this time, you will not have sexual relations with anyone, not even with me.” This shows that Israel will go a long time without a king or prince, and without sacrifices, sacred pillars, priests, or even idols! But afterward the people will return and devote themselves to the Lord their God and to David’s descendant, their king. Hosea 3

If Hosea prophesied that the people of Israel would be cut off from their land, their God, their king, their law, and even the idols they chased after, but would then return and the result of the exile and the separation would be that they would devote themselves to the Lord, then we can hope that Gomer, after being separated from her trade for “many days” would come to realize that Hosea loved her and dedicate herself to her husband.

And because Hosea was a God-fearing man, who obeyed the law and heard God’s voice, we can hope that Gomer eventually came to see that God loved her too. That He had rescued her from prostitution.

We can also look at their children and see that Hosea accepted any children that weren't his own. And we can hope, that because he was a God-fearing man, that he explained their names to them. How their names had nothing to do with them, but for the people of Israel. And we can also hope that he told them about the redemption built into their names. How God loved His people and would call them His beloved people once again.

Even though I KNOW God used the pain I experienced to help me grow in my relationship with Him. To build my faith and my trust in Him. I don’t think the main purpose of it was for me. My son needed people in his life who would stick. He had my husband. He had me. No matter what storms came at us from without or within our home, he had us. He has always had us. He also needed someone who would pray for him. We were the Hosea to his Gomer. The anchor. And now that he’s grown up and on his own, he knows there are lines we won’t cross and sometimes that still makes him mad, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still here, still waiting, still hoping, still praying, still cheering him on.

Hosea didn’t need the drama that came with marrying Gomer. He didn’t need to experience the judgement and rejection of society. But by accepting the drama and the pain, Gomer knew real love and real freedom. God’s love.

God didn’t just ask Hosea to marry Gomer to be an example to the people. He also asked it of Hosea because he wanted to rescue Gomer. To show her His mercy and grace. He wanted to redeem her and her children.

And if that doesn’t show the complexity of God’s love for us, then I don’t know what does.