“I hated them there… I will no longer love them”

What do you do when you come across something in the Bible that throws everything you thought you knew about God into question?

Last night, in our small group, we shared some of the things we found hard from Hosea 9, and got talking about this verse quoted (v15).  We talked a bit about the issue, how hatred could fit with a God of love (see Ed’s blog post from a couple of months ago), and we talked about why we find it hard (we live in a church culture where we often say ‘God loves you’).  But the bigger question we asked was ‘What do you do when you come across hard things?’  Here are some of our reflections as a small group:

1. Don’t be surprised.  This is the Almighty God we are talking about – we shouldn't expect to fully understand him easily!  He would not be God if we did.  We should expect to be humbled in our life-long learning of God, whilst also having our minds expanded beyond what we thought possible and being consoled beyond what we have ever known.*

2. So PRAY.  Tell our Father how you feel – he really cares.  And he has given us the Holy Spirit, who is God himself living in us, a spirit of wisdom and understanding – so ask him for help.

3. Hold on to what you know.  We will always have questions about the things of God, and doubts are a normal experience in the Christian life, but in our doubts and our questions, we can still hold on to what we know.  Hold on to specific things, as last night we were holding on to the fact that God is good, and praise him for these things.

4. Ask a friend.  Don’t struggle on by yourself – ask a friend, or your small group leader, or an older Christian.  Let’s get our questions, doubts and struggles out on the table.  Ask what we find hard and why we find it an issue.  They may not know the answer, but they can help you do 2. and 3., and you can wrestle together.

5. Remember the context, and the whole Bible story line.  Hosea 9 makes no sense without Deuteronomy 28.  And without everything in the Bible up to Hosea 8.  And in fact without everything after it too!  Block out May 10^th in your diary for the Bible Overview that Mike is giving, or go to the Bible Overview track at Word Alive, or have a read of God’s Big Picture (Vaughan Roberts).

6. Come back to Jesus.  If you've been lost somewhere in Scripture for a while, particularly in the Old Testament, take a break and have a read of a gospel where you can clearly see Jesus.  He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:3), so fix your eyes on him. 

7. Look forward to the day it will all make sense. 

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

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*Check out the first chapter of JI Packer’s ‘Knowing God’.  And remember Romans 11:33-36.