Respectable, indeed; who would have ever suspected that this woman who was now a wife and mother had once been a mistress of the night! Only the Lord knew how far she had come.
The bible doesn't tell us what led to her indiscretion, for she was already in the sewers of sexual promiscuity when she stepped onto the pages of the text. Even God called her a harlot. This was no wild rumor bandied about by bored housewives who had nothing better to do. The Almighty Himself had labeled her. Amazing isn't it, that God can know you’re a loose woman and still offer a candle to light your way from the darkness of the night into the brightness of the light.
And so this woman had begun her long, tempestuous journey - her movement from midnight to daylight. She moved with the slow ad hesitant pace of a bride approaching her groom. Destiny was waiting for her. Since none of us are where we are without leaving where we were, she started the steps that were necessary for real transformation. And what a long flight of steps she had to climb. She left her ankle bracelets, her tingling bells, and her artifacts of prostitution along the way. She was snatched out of the arms of men who brought her like a piece of meat, and into the arms of a Redeemer who procured her like a diamond in the rough.
How difficult it must have been for a woman who had been passed around to believe that someone could find her valuable and attractive. People have a way of defining who we are by what we do. While God called her a harlot, He was speaking of her profession. But when He addresses her personally, He calls her Gomer, "Beloved." What a contradiction! Still, it lets us know that God calls those things that are not as though they are because He has the power to bring them into being.
Just about the time Gomer got to the top step and Hosea made her his wife, she reverted to her previous lifestyle. She slips out of the marital bed and slides into the night. She finds herself right back in the old rut, wondering if she’ll ever be free of the mess she’s in. Now the Scriptures are quite candid about Gomer’s sins. She made mistakes, ruined opportunities, embarrassed herself, disgraced her children, and disappointed her husband. But he still wanted her. He even searched the streets, looking for the wife who kept running away. She was his wife even when she didn't act like it. She was the mother of his children and perhaps someone else’s children too, but he wanted her.
She had been molested and mauled by other men, but he still wanted her. So Hosea, whose name means "Salvation," kept calling her: "Gomer…My Beloved." Other men might have seen her on the slave table, abused and battered, tattered and torn, her belly stretched from bearing children. She was no longer the glamour queen she had once been. They may have laughed and turned away. But to Hosea, she was as lovely as a breeze singing from a mountain stream. And, standing afar off with tears in his eyes, he looked past the disheveled hair, the bruised skin, the lacerated flesh, the portly body, and he still loved her. He could have said, “That woman has hurt me, humiliated me, failed me, even backslidden.” He could have left her there on the auction block. Instead, he said, “I want her,” and he emptied his pockets to redeem her. "Here," he said, “I will pay the price to buy her back.”
Now perhaps you've been around the blocks a few times ad made some mistakes and blown some chances, and the enemy has said to you that you are beyond repair. But God keeps calling you by your name and not your shame. Listen to HIM! YOU must hear GOD calling you by name until you is so filled with WHOSE you are, that you forget what you have done. He is saying, "Beloved, I want YOU! I've already paid the price to buy you back! Daughters Come On HOME!"
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~HOSEA 1:2, 3; 2:4, 5; 3:1-3~
*Awesome offspring from Here We Are To Worship Ministries, "Keep IT Real" BlogTalkRadio Show, Broadcast, "Out Of Wedlock!" Click to listen, http://tobtr.com/s/4435203.
