Love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life…Deuteronomy 30:20.

As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in Him. 2 Samuel 22:31.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep…I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. John 10:11, 14-15 NKJV.

I loved this in You Are The Beloved by Henri Nouwen: “For a very long time I considered low self-esteem to be some kind of virtue. I had been warned so often against pride and conceit that I came to consider it a good thing to deprecate myself. But now I realize that the real sin is to deny God’s first love for me, to ignore my original goodness. Because without claiming that first love and that original goodness for myself, I lose touch with my true self and embark on the destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.”

Our chapter, Hosea 6, is an interesting and aching conversation because it shows the things we think of God. What about what God thinks? “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but He will heal us; He has injured us but He will bind up our wounds. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will restore us, that we may live in His presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” v. 1-3. Is that how we see Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit? He tears us to pieces…He injures us…He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains? Acknowledge Him? And then God speaks. “What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. Therefore I cut you in pieces with My prophets, I killed you with the words of My mouth – then My judgments go forth like the sun. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. As at Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to Me there. Gilead is a city of evildoers, stained with footprints of blood. As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests; they murder on the road to Shechem, carrying out their wicked schemes. I have seen a horrible thing in Israel: There Ephraim is given to prostitution, Israel is defiled. Also for you, Judah, a harvest is appointed.” v. 4-11.

Loving Creator God becomes deeply personal when we begin to truly understand that we are here because He creates. We tear each other to pieces. We injure ourselves and others. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12. What do our words do? What is our heart toward others? For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings. Acknowledgement of God is not the same as Let us acknowledge the Lord. Acknowledgement of God is to realize who God is. Sometimes I wish He would stop the sun just so we could realize that He holds us while we carry on our lives oblivious to all He does. Because then we wouldn’t be able to be so oblivious. We need Creator God more than we need anything. Nothing compares to Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17. And when we come to understand that, we come to Him. I marvel as I listen to the birds singing outside because He created their ability to sing notes so beautiful and uplifting. He did that as surely as He created the beauty of color, the warmth of sunshine, the very air we need to survive. And as we trust Him for the provision of air to breathe, water to drink, the progression of the rotation of our earth moving always with precision, so that seasons follow one another, let us trust that His judgments go forth just like the sun following its appointed course. Because His judgments are true. We need Him. As we trust God for His love and His truth, we come to the place where we realize we can trust Him for all things, especially the things we cannot understand. Acknowledge God! Your life will never be the same because you realize it was always Him helping you when you needed Him. As you allow yourself to remember, give thanks! And spend time with Him going deep. We need to go deep with Creator God. That is our sacred, spacious place, the house of our Father who loves us and even now is preparing a place for us where we can dwell with Him forever. Forever starts today…our choice always.