When God's ‘No’ Leads to God's ‘Yes’
Therefore I will hedge up your way with thorns. (Hos. 2:6)
Hosea 2:1-7; I Chr. 4:10; Ps. 19:13-14; Hosea 11:1-4 and 14:3-9
What Is God Saying?
Few sorrows can compare with the betrayal of a trusting love in the covenant of marriage. Hosea knew by bitter experience the sorrow of love betrayed. Because he was hurt so deeply, he was all the more sensitive to the sorrow God felt as, time and again, Israel left God's chosen way and regarded His bountiful love with indifference. The prophet, speaking to the condition of rapid decline in the Northern Kingdom, is pleading with God's people to come home to Jehovah. The precipice of swift destruction toward which the nation was moving was perilously near. God still loves you, Israel, even when He hedges up your way with thorns.
How Does This Apply To Us?
God's great love and His unerring justice are mountain peaks that rise before us wherever we journey across the landscape of God's Word. Our only hope, our greatest blessing, our supreme joy lies in this, ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).
One of the best books in the Bible to feel the pulse of God's heartbeat is Hosea. When we stumble, God wants us to return. When we are unfaithful, there is the patient love of God who says of His chosen ones, ‘I will heal their faithlessness; I will love them freely’ (Hos. 14:4). Yet God's love must, when necessary, take extreme measures to bring us back and to put us on the right track. Thank God that it is His love that ‘hedges up our way with thorns.’ The brambles are there to guide and protect, not to annoy and cause discomfort.
Pray With Me
Lord, who would ask for a way that is hedged by thorns? I don't want to be fenced in, especially by thorns. However, if in Your wisdom, there must come restrictions, I would be wise and trusting to accept them. Behind Your chastening, I believe there is Love. Closed doors that seem to be barriers to immediate pleasure are guideposts to ultimate joy. Bring me to that place of settled conviction and spiritual rest where I will see in Your bitter no, a better yes.
Thorns that keep me from wandering are better than sweet flowers and soft grass that may woo the soul to a costly dalliance. Thorns that sting the soul to a living watchfulness are kinder than fragrant flowers that encourage a listless spirit. Thorns that prick the conscience are more to be desired than soft grass that brings on a slumbering indifference. Thorns that are sent to direct my steps in the way of life are to be chosen over false liberties that disguise themselves as sweet flowers and soft grass while beckoning to the ways of death.
So let it be-hedge me in that I may stay on the road to life; hedge me in that I may never stray from the path of perfect liberty; hedge me in from the ways of evil and compromise that I may mount up with wings and fly in the freedom of Your eternal love; hedge me in that I may not miss the great, good things You have planned for my life.
For the sake of Him whose head was crowned with thorns that I might never know the sting of death. Amen.
Moving On In The Life of Prayer
To keep us from the great pain and fatal destiny of sin, God will hedge our way with the lesser pain of correction and discipline. He always has a reason. In prayer, we recognize that thorns are there to guide us. Frustration is given to us that we might find the joy of great fulfilment. So we were taught to pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done.’
