SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/4/2015
10:13 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Ingratitude
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Hosea 2:5b-9
Message of the
verses: “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.’ 6 "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with
thorns, And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. 7
“She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek
them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ’I will go back to my first
husband, For it was better for me then than now!’ 8 "For she does not know that it
was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, And lavished on her
silver and gold, Which
they used for Baal. 9 “Therefore, I will take back My grain at harvest time And My new
wine in its season. I will also take away My wool and My flax Given to cover
her nakedness.”
Ingratitude is a sin that to me ranks up there with pride
as being the most difficult to overcome. Ingratitude means that we don’t have the time
or the inclination to say a simple thanks to the God who has given us all
things, and pride tells us that we have done this for ourselves and that is one
of the reasons that I rank them together as being hard to overcome. We may pray for something for a long time and
then God answers our prayer, and yet we may be so happy for the answer that we
forget to even give thanks to the Lord for His provision of that answered
prayer. Israel surely had this problem
and with them I believe that pride went along with it too. It was God who chose them and brought them
out of slavery from the land of Egypt with a great and powerful hand, and yet
because of their hardheartedness they began to worship idols, even while Moses
was on the mountain of God getting the commandments from Him. This was surely a sign of things to come for
what we read in the book of Hosea happened many hundreds of years later, and
yet the problem was still the same, ingratitude for the things that God had
given them and thus they desired to worship idols breaking the first
commandment that God gave Moses on the mountain of God.
Dr. Wiersbe writes about this ingratitude “What
ingratitude! God provided rain for the
land (Deut. 11:8-17), but the Israelites gave the credit to Baal, the rain
god. Because it is God who gives us
power to earn wealth (*:17-18), and enjoy the blessings of life (1 Tim. 6:17),
we must thank Him and acknowledge His goodness.
What wickedness it is to take the gifts of God and use them to worship
false gods!”
It was only through the grace of God that He did not
abandon His chosen people, and He even blocked their paths and confuse their
plans in order for them not to stumble on their way. God was going to take back the gifts He gave
to them and even this was in love so that they would have a change of heart and
go back to the Lord who loved them.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes this section by giving his readers
some good advice. “It’s remarkable how
many times God’s people are admonished in Scripture to be thankful. I’ve noted at least fifteen places where we’re
commanded to ‘give thanks to the Lord,’ and Psalm 100:4 and Colossians 3:15
both admonish us to be thankful. Both
Jesus and Paul set the example by giving thanks often to the Lord for His
blessings. One of the first steps toward
rebellion against God is a refusal to give God thanks for His mercies (Rom.
1:21). God will not allow us to enjoy His gifts and at the same
time ignore the Giver, for this is the essence of idolatry.”
6/4/2015 10:35 AM
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