{"id":7594,"date":"2021-07-05T14:45:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T19:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/?p=7594"},"modified":"2021-07-05T14:45:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T19:45:19","slug":"devotional-on-hosea-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-hosea-32\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Hosea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 2048px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-yLTXN1Ev_s8\/YOIjbRW8zQI\/AAAAAAABKrc\/eQcUJegar8MOW2GKqOdSPNGMDl6dFjOWACPcBGAsYHg\/s2048\/2013-06-13%2B15.00.09.jpg\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1155\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2013 &#8211; Covered Bridge in west central Indiana<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nGod, making himself vulnerable<br \/>\nHosea 14: O Israel, come back! Return to your God!<br \/>\nIn his amazing love God calls out to his wayward people.  To return to him is to their benefit.  Otherwise, it\u2019ll take tough love to turn them around and even as these words are spoken a \u201ctornado\u201d of judgment is coming their way.  That\u2019s a message I\u2019m used to seeing in the prophets.  There\u2019s another message here and even though it\u2019s seen in other places, it\u2019s especially clear in the book of Hosea.  If these sinning people return to God it will be to their benefit, but it will also be to his.  As Hosea\u2019s love reached out to his unfaithful wife so does God\u2019s love reach out to a sinning humanity.  It seems impossible, but I, as insignificant as I am, have the ability to both hurt and please the Maker of the universe.  The reason for that is that he loves me with a love I cannot fully understand.  God has allowed himself to be vulnerable in opening his heart to me and to all humanity.  Today, the person who&#8217;s rejected God; who&#8217;s lived as an enemy of his; who, in my opinion, is practically beyond redemption, remains within the reach of God\u2019s love.  The Lord won\u2019t force you to return but he reaches out to you in love even through the words of this little-read devotional.<br \/>\nTake Away: God is the God of Second Chances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God, making himself vulnerable Hosea 14: O Israel, come back! Return to your God! In his amazing love God calls out to his wayward people. To return to him is to their benefit. Otherwise, it\u2019ll take tough love to turn them around and even as these words are spoken a \u201ctornado\u201d of judgment is coming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1501,6,7],"tags":[130,473,643,713,958],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7594"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15377,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions\/15377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}