Bible

Love Is

/ Gina Haney / 2 Comments

I noticed this morning that I will be finishing the book of Daniel on Friday and starting Hosea on Saturday. Song of Solomon is known as the love book, but if you ask me Hosea deserves just as much credit. To say I am excited to start Hosea on Valentine’s Day would be an understatement.

Like most girls I’ve always enjoyed Valentine’s Day, but I’ve noticed in the last few years it has grown considerably less exciting and important to me. I still buy cards and candies to show those I love that I do love them, but honestly it all seems superficial to me. I thought it was because growing older has taught me that loving well the other 364 days is more important than buying into the hype of one day. That is true, but this year I have changed my mind about Valentine’s  Day.

For the last 5 years or so we have busied ourselves each year with our youth group and hosting a Valentine’s  banquet for the adults at our church. I often think and plan ideas for my own loved ones early then it flees my mind and I’m grabbing last-minute gifts, and few to none of my plans materialize. Since becoming parents, we have a traditional seafood dinner at home where we exchange gifts with each other and the children. It’s quaint but lovely.

Not this year though. Maybe it’s because we aren’t busy hosting a banquet at church, but I have been thinking a lot more and a lot deeper about Valentine’s Day.

The story of Hosea is the true definition of love. Humans define love as an intense feeling of deep affection. 1John 4:8 defines love as God Himself. If God is love, and He is; then we should look to Him for how to love. Hosea is the example of how God loves.

God told the prophet Hosea to marry and love a Harlot. He married Gomer and it wasn’t too long after what we will call the honeymoon phase; that Gomer was being adulterous. Hosea pleaded with her (2:2). Hosea threatened to leave her with nothing (2:3). But Gomer continued to seek other partners and sin (2:5). Hosea lovingly took her back, but her faithfulness was short-lived and she would be in adulterous relationships again. Gomer finally officially leaves Hosea.

This is horrible! Why would you want use this story for Valentine’s Day? Why would God ask Hosea to do this you ask. Hosea was our relatable symbolic example of the depth of love and loyalty God has for us.

Hosea ends up having to buy back his wife for 15 pieces of silver and some barley (if the sin itself wasn’t humiliating that would be). This all has me thinking; if Christmas is the when and Easter is the how then Valentine’s is the why. Love is not an intense feeling of affection. Love is sacrifice. Love is keeping your promises when they break theirs. Love is when nothing makes sense. Love is when it isn’t wanted or deserved. Love is God.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 1John 4:8

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Loving Without Compramise

/ Gina Haney / Leave a comment

We’ve all got a choice to make, and in not choosing you’re still choosing.

We’ve all got a purpose, a calling to heed. If we think God needs us we’re wrong, but He wants us. Oh does He want us!

There is always this thing we’re trying to do that I’m convinced drives God batty. Compromise.

No matter how you spin it; God detests it. Just look at Jehoshaphat.

Jehoshaphat had to choose what his relationship with evil King Ahab would be. And we’ve all got to choose what our relationship with the world will be.

Like a lot of Christians, Jehoshaphat chose compromise. We can say what we want, but it boils down to being easier. Living a life all in, can leave you feeling left out.

Maybe his motive was political or maybe social. Maybe he justified it as a righteous thing to restore Israel. Maybe he even hoped to reunite Israel and Judah.

We commonly sacrifice truth and righteousness for the sake of being “socially appropriate”.

Whatever his or our justification for the choice of compromise, it doesn’t fly with God.

It doesn’t appear that this relationship between righteous Jehoshaphat and evil Ahab developed overnight. No, it was one compromise after another. Let’s be friends. How about my daughter marry your son? Come to dinner. Next thing you know this social call has him in front of 400 false prophets who are telling him to go to war with the evil King.

Sure. Jehoshaphat asks to see a real prophet of the Lord, but he doesn’t listen to him, and goes on to war battling for the evil kings cause.

This left Jehoshaphat in a very dangerous situation. I can think of times in my life like that. Maybe not literally surrounded by false prophets, but I’ve found myself way out of the will of God, far from the calling on my life, and wondered how I ever got this far.

If the idea of marrying his child into King Ahab and evil Queen Jezebel’s family didn’t give him pause I’d say being encircled by an army with bows drawn who had mistaken him for the evil King would.

31 As soon as the captains of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, they said, “It is the king of Israel.” So they turned to fight against him. And Jehoshaphat cried out, and the Lord helped him; God drew them away from him. 32 For as soon as the captains of the chariots saw that it was not the king of Israel, they turned back from pursuing him. 2 Chronicles 18:31-32

We can serve God narrowly. We can mostly obey, usually listen, generally do Gods will. The narrow sliver that you reserved may be the narrow escape with your life. It was for Jehosaphat. Who wants a narrow kinda life?

Before we get to thinking being a Christian is opressive. Let’s recall the beginning of the story:

Therefore the LORD established the kingdom in his hand. And all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat, and he had great riches and honor. His heart was courageous in the ways of the LORD. And furthermore, he took the high places and the Asherim out of Judah. 2 Chronicles 17:5-6

This isn’t just an Old Testament story that is now made void by Jesus and his teachings of love and acceptance. Lets jump forward. WAYYY forward; to the last book of the Bible. The end of the story. The final say:

20 But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. Revelation 2:20

I don’t know about you, but I feel like I am so busy trying to contradict the belief that Christians are hateful and intolerant, trying to be “socially appropriate”, that I have compromised. We can not be hateful, but we must not compromise truth and righteousness. It’s a slow fade.

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Wise Woman Wednesday Don’t Complicate It

/ Gina Haney / 3 Comments

I’m humbled, honored and right down giddy that scasefamily.com from Into the Foolishness of God agreed to guest post on A Relentless Surrender for the first Wise Woman Wednesday. While I haven’t been following her long; it’s clear she oozes gospel. It’s a great honor that she agreed to share her gift with us. I hope she ministers to your heart as she has mine.

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Don’t Complicate It

“There’s nothing hard about the Word of God. It’s so simple, you have to have somebody help you misunderstand it.” Andrew Wommack

I love this quote so much. We really do make it hard sometimes don’t we? The Bible tells us that the Word is near to us (Romans 10:8) and that it gives understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130). God’s truth was never meant to be obscure, confusing or difficult. Of course we grow into it in different ways over time and don’t always understand everything. But His words to us are meant to be pressed into, tested, tried and proven. To those who don’t believe and who haven’t surrendered their life to Christ, they are foolishness. For believers, the Word is our weapon, our compass and our comfort.

But a true experience of the Word comes from a true study of the Word. So many Christians say they believe the Bible to be true, but never spend any real time in it. We are open and love to hear what others have to say about it. Walk into the Christian bookstore or visit one of the popular blogs of our day and prepare to be overwhelmed. Why is it easier to read someone else’s thoughts about God than go to God’s Word? We like to be entertained. We like bullet point lists. We like new and fresh ideas. All of those have their place, but they cannot take the place of the one true Word. If it isn’t pointing you back to Biblical truth and what God says, you’re just going in circles.

There was a time in history when people were told they couldn’t understand the Bible and they needed it interpreted for them. Martin Luther came along and we all know how that turned out, thankfully. But today we struggle with some of the same problems. We have the Word available to us in every form and language. We just live in a world that tells us it’s not enough. Surely there must be some new revelation or new ideas we can read about. Everything that was once non-negociable has become muddy and unclear. New versions of the truth are thought up and promoted to keep things ‘relevant’.

But God’s word doesn’t need revamping. The last thing we should be doing is dumbing-down God’s word to suit anyone. It never became irrelevant in the first place. Our enemy loves to make us question what God said and twist it around to suit his purposes. He loves to deceive us into creating our own version of truth. And he has succeeded in some ways, pulling us away from the Bible and convincing us it isn’t all that powerful. We have completely over-complicated the art of simply being alone with God.

The popular, edgy authors and bloggers tell us it’s cool to doubt and question. Uncertainty is the new humility. Whatever works best for you is best. Embrace your doubts. God doesn’t mind our questions and doubts, but He certainly doesn’t want us to bask in them and remain there! That’s why we have His Word! The greatest way to promote victorious living is to promote the Truth. The truth sets us free. When we look less and less to God’s word and more to man’s wisdom, that Biblical truth is obscured into a kind of universal mush. And that’s exactly why we don’t see the power that we should in our lives.

We already have the truth and we already know it:

“But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.” I John 2:20

So I would just say this – for every fancy book, blog or sermon – may we also give ourselves time to soak in the Word. Not what our favorite person says about it, but the actual, living Word of God. It isn’t boring, and it really isn’t complicated. It isn’t obsolete either. No one can say it better than God Himself.

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