Making Good From Bad
All things work together for the good of them that love God and are called according to His promise. – Romans 8:28
One of the most amazing, mind-blowing attributes of God is that He can use both the good and bad in our lives to accomplish His will. The woman who the prophet Hosea is to marry has a bad reputation in society as a prostitute. She stands for that which is considered unseemly; she stands for that which is unbecoming, and yet God takes a good, righteous man like Hosea and weds him to a woman with troubles to show how he can take the good and the bad and make something positive out of it.
The point of the passage is not about marrying someone who does not subscribe to your beliefs and values. It’s deeper than that. It’s about God’s capacity to take the good and the bad and make the best out of it. He constructs the plan for our lives using the bits and pieces, the scraps and the fragments that we offer him, the good and the bad, and gives us something better than we could have ever imagined.
The indication of God’s will is not to be found in just the positive. God’s will can be found in the negative and the unexpected as well. Historically, scholars have interpreted the book of Hosea as being an indictment on Israel for not being faithful and committed to God. But I want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, this text is trying to teach us something different.
Perhaps it is trying to suggest that God doesn’t require perfection from us or from our lives in order to be in His will. Think about who he chose to be Jesus’ disciples: tax collectors and men of ill-repute; and yet, they were the ones Jesus needed. I like that Jesus did that because oftentimes, we preach a gospel of conformity and purity making people think perfection is a prerequisite to God’s plan, but it’s not.
God can take the messiness of our lives and provide redemption. He can take our missteps and bring about a miracle. Take the woman caught in the very act of adultery. It was that encounter that was the occasion by her sin that set her free and brought her closer to God. That’s good news for us. God incorporates our mistakes, our faults, our failings, and brings some good out of it. Simply put, even your mistakes are a part of His plan.
One of the most amazing, mind-blowing attributes of God is that He can use both the good and bad in our lives to accomplish His will. The woman who the prophet Hosea is to marry has a bad reputation in society as a prostitute. She stands for that which is considered unseemly; she stands for that which is unbecoming, and yet God takes a good, righteous man like Hosea and weds him to a woman with troubles to show how he can take the good and the bad and make something positive out of it.
The point of the passage is not about marrying someone who does not subscribe to your beliefs and values. It’s deeper than that. It’s about God’s capacity to take the good and the bad and make the best out of it. He constructs the plan for our lives using the bits and pieces, the scraps and the fragments that we offer him, the good and the bad, and gives us something better than we could have ever imagined.
The indication of God’s will is not to be found in just the positive. God’s will can be found in the negative and the unexpected as well. Historically, scholars have interpreted the book of Hosea as being an indictment on Israel for not being faithful and committed to God. But I want to suggest that maybe, just maybe, this text is trying to teach us something different.
Perhaps it is trying to suggest that God doesn’t require perfection from us or from our lives in order to be in His will. Think about who he chose to be Jesus’ disciples: tax collectors and men of ill-repute; and yet, they were the ones Jesus needed. I like that Jesus did that because oftentimes, we preach a gospel of conformity and purity making people think perfection is a prerequisite to God’s plan, but it’s not.
God can take the messiness of our lives and provide redemption. He can take our missteps and bring about a miracle. Take the woman caught in the very act of adultery. It was that encounter that was the occasion by her sin that set her free and brought her closer to God. That’s good news for us. God incorporates our mistakes, our faults, our failings, and brings some good out of it. Simply put, even your mistakes are a part of His plan.
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