Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Romans 11:33-36.

I loved this in Hearing God by Dallas Willard: “Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by My Father in heaven.” Matthew 16:17. God is always trying to teach us about Himself. In my experience the illuminating word given to me by God is often spoken by me. It comes out with no preliminaries. I’ve come to recognize it, but I do not always understand its true significance at the time. Peter’s great confession is an example of this: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16 NRSV). Jesus authenticated that this word given to Peter was indeed from the Father (v. 17). Then He explained further what was going to happen to Him – persecution, death, resurrection. Immediately Peter showed that he did not understand what he himself had just said. God had enabled Peter to recognize Jesus as the Christ, but Peter still did not know that “the Christ” would not be a strictly human role (vv. 18-23)…(And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then He ordered His disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah. From that time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”) Like Peter, we may need time to understand what God has said to us through us.”

And it helps as we read our chapter, Hosea 7, to remember the concerns of God for us. He sees so clearly the things we do that hurt us and others. “Whenever I would restore the fortunes of My people, whenever I would heal Israel, the sins of Ephraim are exposed and the crimes of Samaria revealed. They practice deceit, thieves break into houses, bandits rob in the streets; but they do not realize that I remember all their evil deeds. Their sins engulf them; they are always before Me. They delight the king with their wickedness, the princes with their lies. They are all adulterers, burning like an oven whose fire the baker need not stir from the kneading of the dough till it rises…Israel’s arrogance testifies against him, but despite all this he does not return to the Lord his God or search for Him…I long to redeem them but they speak about Me falsely. They do not cry out to Me from their hearts but wail on their beds…They do not turn to the Most High; they are like a faulty bow. Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their insolent words. For this they will be ridiculed in the land of Egypt.” v. 4, 10, 13-14, 16.

Remember Hosea’s words in Chapter 4? My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge…Because you have rejected knowledge…v. 6. We get glimmers but we truly can’t see without first turning to Creator God – Father, Son, Spirit. And He longs to teach us! What I am learning as I walk with God is to put all of my trust, my faith and my hope in Him. The more I learn with Him, the more I realize all I don’t know; but as I walk with Him, He helps me keep my eyes forward to where we are going. We are journeying through the wilderness to the place where God is…in hearts and spirits turned to Him for understanding so wonderful and good…where sin is no more because our wounded souls are healed – true healing in Creator God. We think this, the Old Testament writings, are all about God watching their every move so He could smite them, and that we are different from them because we live now. Can we not see that without Him directing us, we are no different from our Old Testament ancestors? How can we read these warnings for Israel (Ephraim, Samaria) and not see all nations today? Why do you think Jesus the Son came as fully God and fully human when He did? He knew we could never be whole without Him. He is teaching me to pray for the leaders and peoples of all the nations instead of sitting in judgment of them. That is not my place! I am no better than they are. Only Creator God can judge the hearts and minds of each individual person because only He knows intimately every struggle and every hardship that came before that had such an impact. We can’t begin to understand. It’s too big for us. But we can trust Creator God because He has been faithful through all the ages of mankind. And we can experience that with Him directing us, and our walking in faith with Him, understanding can follow. It takes time and walking with Him. And admitting we don’t know. That is the starting point of spiritual growth.