The Godly Yet (from Chains Falling)

I was very honored to teach part of my Hosea study at the Oklahoma Ladies' Retreat this weekend.  This comes straight out of Chains Falling. Really, I just cut and pasted it straight from the manuscript - did I mention Ladies' Retreat which is code for "I haven't been this tired since I had a newborn baby?"

Kidding aside, this retreat is so wonderful - I was humbled to have a very small part.

Week 2:  God’s People Passion

Day 1: The Godly Yet

The book of Hosea is kind of a downer. It’s heavy and depressing and full of a bunch of difficult images that we don’t appreciate….at all! Remember this is a book written to offer correction to a very wayward bunch. But there are a few places, and I will be VERY quick to point them out, where God’s hope is the main attraction. This day highlights one of those spots. It is the central teaching of this book of God’s Word. I call it The Godly Yet. 

Read Hosea 1:9-2:1 to get the surroundings of the Godly Yet. What is the first word of Hosea 1:10? 

Right in the middle of Hosea 1:10 is a phrase that most of our English translations don’t even have.  According to my favorite Word Study Dictionary this verse reads more literally, “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.”[1] That phrase in the middle “And it shall come to pass” is “hayah”. It means “to breathe; it means to exist, to be, to come to pass; to be done, to happen, to be finished.”[2]

In most of our modern Bibles, it’s just a very plain word that connects the thoughts. But in reality it is God’s creative breath. Did you see all the ugliness of Hosea and Gomer’s story? Do you see the damage that her destructive choices have caused? God does! He recognizes it and calls it what it is.  In fact throughout the book of Hosea God uses very descriptive and disgusting word pictures that take several verses at a time. The beauty of the Godly Yet is not that God overlooks the death in our sinful choices. The beauty of the Godly Yet is that right in the middle of it He breathes and calls something new into existence and finishes the story.

Where does God do this? Return to our passage for today and write down the WHERE of the renaming process.

One of my favorite things in the Godly YET is that God does this right where the whole thing unraveled in the first place, “in the place where it was said to them.” 

One of my daughters has beautiful curly auburn hair. When she was younger, I would pull the front part of her hair (the fall into the eyes part) into a little top-right side ponytail. One day she became curious about cutting her hair and decided to cut off her little top ponytail. When she did, her hair fell into a little fuzzy crooked row of red bangs over her forehead. Many of you know from experience that bangs are not typically great ideas for curly hair. She took care of her mess and went on with her day assuming everything was fine. I took one look at her and asked her what she had done to her hair. I will never forget the look of genuine confusion on her face. She had carefully handled this herself. When she saw the offending hair in her hand she dealt with it herself. She threw the hair with the ponytail holder still attached behind her dresser where I found it later. She was offended that I could tell by looking at her that she had done something wrong. Don’t we do this with God? We know that the idolatry we cherish isn’t right, but we handle it ourselves throwing any evidence behind our dressers. Then we march out before God with our crooked fuzzy bangs and puff up in arrogance at Him when He reminds us that they are crooked and ugly and not at all what He intended for us. Just like Israel you are standing at the crossroads of verse 9 and verse 10.  What word connects verse 9 and 10?

Take the step of faith and trust toward God’s kind and alive and transforming YET.

The “Godly Yet” describes God’s patient way of telling us the truth, while never letting go. A few years ago when I was first studying and teaching Hosea, I was a part of the closing ceremony for an event at Oklahoma Baptist University, where students and faculty read aloud through the New Testament in 24 hours. I got there just in time to hear the last few chapters of Revelation. Now, keep in mind that I had Hosea on the brain and then I got tossed into Revelation. And guess what? Jesus was there fulfilling every need and promise that was uttered back in Hosea! It was an amazingly humbling and eye-opening experience. God is terribly hurt by our rebellion and He never glosses it over. He calls sin exactly what it is and doesn’t try to make us feel better about ourselves when we’re compromising. YET, (this is the Godly Yet part), Jesus never ever leaves us there.  Did I leave my sweet daughter alone with her massacred bangs? No, we went to see Mrs. Lori and she did her best to fix and blend and remind us that they would grow out. This is the Godly YET.  Wherever your life is the messiest, where the nastiest secret hides, and most closely guarded wound festers, God sees and He calls it the ugly it is. YET, He never leaves you there alone with no way to heal, with no hope that it will grow out. He might give you a long leash while you’re fighting Him, but He is never content to reject you. He just can’t stand it. So He waits and whispers His truth over you and tells you the truth about the evil in your choices (often with graphic and unappreciated candor and detail) and reassures you of His love and your true identity and tells you the truth some more. Right in the midst of the carnage, He breathes life. The formula goes something like this:  God says, “Here’s the sin I see……..(fill in the blank)…….and this is what consequences it will bring……..(another blank)…….YET, I love you and I will redeem even this in you to bring you closer to me and make you so certain in your redeemed identity that you are astonishingly effective as you represent Me in the darkness around you.” 

Draw a diagram illustrating the Godly YET. OK, I usually hate to do this in Bible Studies and skip all drawing questions – but just try it. If you are super artistic you can do pictures, if not you can just add words. 

YET

I want you to have this visual picture of the Godly YET. This concept has transformed my spiritual insight. I see it everywhere in Scripture now. I’ll be studying for a Sunday School lesson or reading a story to my 3 year old or listening to a new song on the radio or listening to a precious one in my Bible Study share what she’s learning and there it is – the beautiful merciful Godly YET. Even now my heart swells with gratitude for this understanding of His love for me. When I begin to bristle toward the things God did or does or allows that make NO sense to me I remember that I may be looking at the first part of the Godly YET…..and the best is still YET.

Journal Prompt:  The Godly Yet means…….  

---

[1] (Zodhiates), 2141.

[2] (Zodhiates), 2311.

Introducing....Chains Falling

What on earth?  That's just about the only thought in my brain right now when it comes to the blessing it's been to learn what I wrote into this book. If you are hearing this for the first time, I just self-published my first Bible Study.  What on earth?

Here's what happened.  A few years ago I heard someone use a verse in Hosea to teach something else and quickly flipped to it (ok, not really quickly - it's hard to find Hosea quickly...we'll go with eventually).  Eventually I flipped to this verse and read the context finding myself both curious and terrified.  There is some wondrous and scary stuff in this book of the Bible.  I decided I had to know what it meant and one thing led to another and before long I was spending hours digging in.  I wrote my lessons into these little teachable bullet points that I shared with this fantastic group of women who study with me on Wednesday mornings.  They encouraged me, we just really learned so much together.  And that was enough for me, it still is. 

My Amanda - friend and partner in ministry asked me to write it into a version that we could teach moms and daughters over the summer and we loved doing that together.  And that was still enough for me.

Then this year with the encouragement of my friends and husband I rewrote this study into a six week Bible Study.  Without these people I probably never would have taken this leap.

Me and Candace on one of the days they were "encouraging" me. 
She makes me ugly laugh, it's totally her fault I look like that.

When I teach I am very aware of those I am teaching.  I interact with them and draw from their attentiveness and understanding, their joy and pain. With writing I felt a little lost without that interaction.  This is new for me......and makes me feel very vulnerable.  Ultimately it came down to a willingness to follow God and share these lessons beyond the security I know.  I feel inadequate in my own ability to persuade with words, but I am so confident in the message of this book that it's worth the risk of being unliked or even misunderstood to tell the truth He is in Hosea. What Hosea teaches about God's love for us, His unwillingness to flatter us, His longing to see us whole and healed, His grief when we are unwilling to love Him back and is just beyond words. 

And there is my problem, because books are words and they just don't do Him justice.
So here it is, and I am so humbled.

Thanks Julie and Sarah for the amazing cover! 
Julie did the photography and Sarah was the model. 
We shot the cover for this in a field by a local park....no kidding. 
Julie's amazing that way.

You can buy the book through Crossbooks (the company we hired to publish Chains Falling) or if you are nearby you can buy it directly from us (which helps us cover the cost of the book most completely and saves you a few dollars on shipping). Part of the self-publishing process is that we get to buy and sell the books to cover the publishing cost....almost scarier than actually writing the book.

We will have the big debut of the book at a large women's event at our church on September 13th.  So if you are close.....come and buy a book!

So much thanks to you ALL!