hosea on Love

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

In love . What does that even mean?  “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them.  I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See ...

Do you really accept the message that God is head over heels in love with you?

In 1998, Nick Cave*, an Australian rock/pop artist, was asked by the Vienna Poetry Academy to give a series of talks on the nature of song-writing. A year later he gave a slightly revised version of t...

There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.

Prayer of Adoration Father: You know us and love us from eternity. Jesus: You love us enough to die for us and be rise again to give us eternal life. Spirit: You pour out love to us every day, in...

A people can be judged as better or worse according to what they love, and their nation can be assessed as healthy or unhealthy according to the condition of what they love.

Gracious God, we have lost our ability to love for the long haul.  We give up, lack follow through, and withdraw when things get difficult.  Yet you call us to a loyal, never-ending love towards other...

Brennan Manning recounts the story of an Irish priest traveling through a quiet countryside when he comes across an elderly peasant kneeling in prayer by the roadside. Struck by the man’s devotion, th...

Our God, you love us unconditionally and with great sacrifice, yet we reject your love in search of another love other desires. We have make harmful decisions while on this search rather than acceptin...

Leader: God of love, when we wander away it is your grace that calls us back to you. All: You receive us with mercy, and we give thanks. Loving Christ, when we are lost and lonely in a far l...

Our gracious God, you repeatedly move towards us, even when we pull away. You are not deterred by our rejection of you nor our running away from you. Your love is persistent. We confess our distrust o...

One saint used to say that she was the type of woman who advances more rapidly when she is drawn by love than when driven by fear. She was perceptive enough to know that we are all that type of person...

A mother’s service is the most intimate, willing, and dependable of all services, because it is truest of all. None has been able to fulfill it properly but Christ, and he alone can.  We know that ou...

Gracious God, your love is greater than anything we can imagine. Yet, we are quick to run to other loves and forget about you. Forgive us for turning away from you. Help us to remember your relentless...

Here’s a testimony from Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel: Harper grew up as a child of a single mother. After her parents divorced, she and her mother moved from Philadelphia where ...

Gracious God, your love is greater than anything we can imagine. Yet, we are quick to run to other loves and forget about you. Forgive us for turning away from you. Help us to remember your relentless...

For decades I’ve tried to meet people where they hurt. I’ve preached and desired to see “justice for all,” and I still fervently believe in it. God loves justice and wants His people to seek justice (...

Preaching Commentary Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of...

Pastor: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, People: for his compassions never fail. Pastor: They are new every morning; People: great is your faithfulness. ...

As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother... We were created by the motherhood of love, a mother’s love which never leaves us.

God of all peace, We thank You for mothers For their nurture, For their unnoticed sacrifices, And for their care that showed us What Your love looks like before we knew Your name. We praise You for ...

Creator God, By Your Grace we are born and born again, Like a mother, You long to comfort Your children, Your Son longed to gather us as a hen gathers her chicks. The love of earthly mothers echoes Y...

There are at least ten God-created longings of the soul:  1. To see my body as sacred  2. To be wanted, desired  3. To be loved without condition  4. To be intimately connected to God  5. T...

Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past.  Here, ...

Who knows why God allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough because God allows His heart to break too.

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

Gentle God, we have wandered away from you, from your love, and from what gives you deepest delight in our lives, so our lives become hollow and hungry, lost and lonely. We return to you. Rece...

Pastor: O God, You desire not the death of sinners, but rather that we turn from our evil way and live. We come before You, although we have sinned and deserve only Your wrath; yet we flee to Your m...

I saw the blessed Trinity working. I saw that there were three attributes: fatherhood, motherhood, and lordship—all in one God. In the almighty Father we have been sustained and blessed with regard to...