Off Center

Off center.


God lead me to share this as my devotion and now after praying I'm posting it up here for all the people of the world to see :))


It all started a few weeks ago.
I just felt so disconnect from God so very distant in a way I haven’t felt in a long time.
This feeling was accompanied by two dreams, nightmares I guess.
Both dreams dealt with the same concept and went a little something like this:
I married someone I didn’t love and was appalled by them. I didn’t want to be alone so I started my life with someone who repulsed me. In the second dream I ran away from this person and eventually found someone I truly did love… but because I was already married I couldn’t be with them. My question in both dreams was- Why hadn’t I waited??
During this time God started showing me contrasts quiet heavily.
In between both of my dreams I started reading Song of Solomon, and God started drawing me a picture of His all encompassing love


Song of Solomon 8:6-7
⁶Set me as a seal upon your heart,
   as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
   jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
   the very flame of the LORD.
⁷Many waters cannot quench love,
   neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
   all the wealth of his house,
   he would be utterly despised.




The day after my second dream my friend took me to church with her and her family, there God revealed to me so clearly what the dreams meant.  In the dreams my first husband that I didn’t love was the world. I had married the world. When I heard this I burst into tears.


And much like God, that morning I had spent my time reading the book of Hosea, paralleling Song of Solomon just a few days before.  This is the verse God highlighted to me
Hosea 2:5-13


⁵For their mother has played the whore;
   she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, 'I will go after my lovers,
   who give me my bread and my water,
   my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.'
⁶Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
   and I will build a wall against her,
   so that she cannot find her paths.
⁷She shall pursue her lovers
   but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
   but shall not find them.
 Then she shall say,
   'I will go and return to my first husband,
   for it was better for me then than now.'
⁸And she did not know
   that it was I who gave her
    the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
    which they used for Baal.
⁹Therefore I will take back
   my grain in its time,
   and my wine in its season,
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
   which were to cover her nakedness.
¹⁰Now I will uncover her lewdness
   in the sight of her lovers,
   and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
¹¹ And I will put an end to all her mirth,
   her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
   and all her appointed feasts.
¹²And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
    of which she said,
'These are my wages,
   which my lovers have given me.'
I will make them a forest,
    and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
¹³And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
   when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
   and went after her lovers
   and forgot me, declares the LORD.


God showed me my response to His words to me
Hosea 6:1-6
¹"Come, let us return to the LORD;
   for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
   he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
²After two days he will revive us;
   on the third day he will raise us up,
   that we may live before him.
³ Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;
    his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
   as the spring rains that water the earth."
 ⁴What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
   What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
   like the dew that goes early away.
⁵Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
   I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
   and my judgment goes forth as the light.
⁶For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
    the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.


Revelation 2:2-4
I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring for my name's sake and you have not grow weary. But this is have against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.


What good is any of this if I’ve lost the one I’ve truly loved ? If I’ve abandoned my first love?
For me it wasn’t that I’d had other lovers, it was the fact that I hadn’t waited for the one I belonged to. I’d married the world when I thought there was nothing to wait for.


The cost of the one I had married
Hosea 2:5-13 ( written above)


The beauty of the one who is waiting
Ezekiel 36:26-31


²⁶And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷And I will put my Spirit within you,and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. ²⁸You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.²⁹And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. ³⁰ I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. ³¹Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations.


Have you really given Him your whole heart? Or like me have you married the world  and are only offering Him what’s left? Like Hosea’s wife He will begin to take away bits of ourselves, the good we think our other lovers give us, to draw us back to him. 
He is faithful and He is jealous. He won’t accept our cheating. He is a jealous lover demanding everything.
Ask  God
Am I like Hosea’s wife?
Do you really have all of me?