I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. In order to make that possible I read the passages and write my thoughts a day in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

     God gave Hosea a difficult ministry. He started by instructing Hosea to marry a prostitute. Hosea’s wife had three children. One God told him to name for a valley where the power of the Kingdom of Israel would be broken. The second and third he was to name, “Not-loved” and “Not-my-people”. These names were a message to the people of the Northern Kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel. God was telling them that He would no longer love them above other peoples and that they were no longer His people. Yet despite all of this, Hosea prophesied that the people of Israel would multiply until they were like the sand on the seashore. Then, in God’s time, He would call them back and they would be called the children of the living God.
     Hosea prophesied that the day would come when all of God’s people would be united under one ruler. Today we are the children of the living God and tremble in awe of the Lord and His goodness. I am in awe of the good things God has done. He has brought the people of Israel back to the land He gave to Abraham. He has called people of every tribe and nation to be His children. I will praise God every day.

     If we believe that Jesus is God’s anointed One, we have become God’s children. If we truly love God, we will also love all of God’s children. If we truly love God’s children, we will love God and obey His commands. Jesus came by water (baptism) and blood (dying on the cross). In addition, God’s Spirit testifies to the truth of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection. God Himself testifies about the pivotal role of Jesus in the salvation He is offering us. Those who believe in Jesus believe God. Those who claim that Jesus never lived, or was just a man, and/or did not rise from the dead are calling God a liar. If we accept Jesus as the Son of God, we will know in our hearts that this is all true. I cannot prove to you that God exists or that Jesus lived, died, and rose again. That is something you will have to accept on faith. However, if you do accept it on faith, before very long, you will not just believe it to be true, but you will KNOW it to be true.
     John then tells us something about prayer similar to what James had said. He tells us that we can have confidence that if we ask God for something in order to fulfill God’s will, God will hear our prayer. And if God hears our prayer, He will give us what we ask for. The key here is that we cannot be asking in order to bring glory to ourselves or for our own pleasure. Rather we need to be asking in order to carry out God’s will. As we come to love God more and more, carrying out God’s will will bring greater pleasure to us than anything else we can imagine. Carrying out God’s will will bring greater pleasure to us than anything we could have experienced before we came to this understanding. John concludes this letter by reminding us to keep as much distance as possible between ourselves and anything that might take God’s place in our hearts.

     This psalm reminds me to look at my life and the difficulties I have faced and think about how bad they would have been if God had not been on my side. If God had not been on my side, my troubles would long since have overwhelmed me. To some degree my troubles were less than they could have been because of the personality traits which I have as a result of my faith in God, but to a significant degree, I was saved by divine intervention. I will praise God for all He has done for me and will remember how much worse my life would have been without God on my side.

     Flattering someone is setting them up for failure (flattery is not just complimenting someone. It is telling them that they are better than they truly are). The wicked are trapped by sin and do not even know it. The righteous recognize sin for the trap it is and rejoice when they escape from it. Someone who lies, cheats, and in other ways shows that they have no morals is lying when they say that they care about justice for the poor because they care for nothing but themselves. On the other hand, those who value honesty and integrity above all else, will fight for justice for the poor because without justice for the poor, there is no justice for anyone. Mockers can get people angry and looking for change, but the wise calm people down and get them to work together to make things better.