Psalm 141:5  " Let the righteous smite me in kindness and reprove me; It is oil to my head; Do not let my head refuse it."  David prays.   Tell me my faults and failures, but do it out of kindness and righteousness. That I might confess my sin, repent of my deeds, and return to God.  This is true love. Ps. 145: " The Lord sustains all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down"  We do fall, we will have faults and failures, but when we do, we can trust The Lord to take hold of us and lift us up.  Ps. 37:24 " When he falls, he shall not be hurled headlong; Because The Lord is the One who holds his hand."  This is speaking of one whose steps are "established by The Lord and He delights in his way" He does not say "if" he falls, but "when" he falls. We are all in need of reproving.  May it be from kind and righteous friends who are not afraid to tell us the truth.  And may we be that kind of  friend, willing to gently come alongside and help a brother or sister recognize a fault or failure , so that they can confess their sin, and He who is faithful will forgive them and grand him righteousness.

Hosea 11-14  God speaks of Israel as His son.  A beloved son. He taught him to walk, he held him in His arms, He bent down and fed him. He wrapped in in bonds of Love.  What a beautiful image that is, of Father and son.  But Ephraim/ Israel rebelled.  They refused to return to God. They were full of lies and deceit, violance and idolatry. They were given everything, but they became proud and forgot the source of all things was God. And in their pride, their sins multiplied. In their rebellion against God, destruction and pain would overwhelm them.

God is a righteous judge and a loving Father.  He mourns the punishment that He will have to bring,
"How can I give you up, O Ephraim?  How can I surrender you, O Israel?" 11:8.  " My heart is turned over within Me,  All My compassions are kindled" 11:8b  Over and over He calls for His people to return to Him. 12:5-6 " Even The Lord, the God of hosts; The Lord is His Name.  Therefore return to your God, Observe kindness and justice; And wait for you God continually." and 14:1-2 " Return O Israel, to The Lord Your God.  For you have stumbled because of your iniquity; Take words with you and return to The Lord, Say to Him, 'Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously, That we may present thr fruit of our lips'"  
There will come a day when the people of God will be healed of their apostasy and " his beauty will be like an olive tree"  They will find mercy when they return to  Him.  " Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; Whoever is discerning let him know them.  For the ways of The Lord are right and the righteous will walk in them, but transgressors will stumble in them." 14:9  Hosea ends with this precious and solemn Truth.  Our God will save and forgive those who return to Him and call out to Him.  He loves us enough that He paid the price of our redemption Himself.   But, He will not ignore our rebellion and idolatry.  Sin and iniquity will be punished.  Judgement is certain for those who do not call on the Name of Jesus to be saved.  We have all stumbled in sin, transgressing His laws. We are all unrighteous until we receive the righteousness of Christ .  Thank You Jesus for paying the price, dying on the cross to "take away the sins of the world" .  Taking away my sins.  Oh the mighty love and grace of God! "I will extol Thee, my God, O King!  I will bless Thy name forever and ever!"  Amen!!!!

  Psalm 141  David's prayer.   v 3-4 Two requests.   First, David asks for The Lord to set a guard over his mouth; then he asks The Lord to keep his heart free from evil/ wickedness.   Oh what a prayer! To  seek the Lord's presence and to ask The Lord to take charge of what we say and what we do.  Every day this is necessary for sin creeps into our hearts and comes out of our mouths.   Matthew Henry's commentary says that this is asking that Grace keep the door of my mouth so that I speak no words that dishonor God or hurt another.  It requests that GRACE restrain and mortify every inclination to sin in my heart, so that I will not practice any evil work, no matter what others around me do.  "And do not let me eat of their delicacies" David adds.  Oh the sweet temptations of this world that would turn me away from God, I pray that God will keep them from my sight and by His grace keep me from them. "I need Thee, O, I need Thee.  Every hour I need Thee!"  I echo David's prayer for myself.

Hosea 9-10  Ephraim and Israel are punished.  They have played the harlot, forsaking The Lord.  They have offered sacrifices that do not please Him.  They have "gone deep into depravity"  " All their evil is at Gilgal; Indeed, I came to hate them there! I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more!" v13.   He who was formed to be a fruitful vine will be fruitless, stricken, a dried up root.  "You have plowed wickedness , you have reaped injustice, You have eaten the fruit of lies; Because you have trusted in your way, in your numerous warriors." 10:13    Exile, destruction, suffering came to Israel.  Their lies and rebellion cost them dearly.  But sad to say, they are still far from God.  They still "speak mere words with worthless oaths"

Yet God says " But I will come over her fair neck with a yoke;"  He will plow with Judah and Jacob.
"Sow with a view to righteousness, Reap in accordance with kindness.  Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek The Lord until He comes to rain righteousness on you" 10:12  Brings to mind the parable that Jesus told in Matt. 13.  The sower went out to sow seed, and some fell on the side of the road, some on rocky ground, some among the thorns, and some on good ground. Fallow - idle, uncultivated ground,  untrained, inactive, unproductive. The ground needs to be prepared for sowing, the heart needs to be prepared for righteousness.  God says He will come and put His yoke on His people.  Jesus says for us to come to Him for his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  Lord, may I be a plow in Your field,  preparing the ground for the sowing of the seed of righteousness. Of Your holy Word.
Amen

Psalm 141  David seeks God's ear and His presence in verse 1.  In verse 2 he asks God to accept his prayer as "incense" and  as "the evening offering" .  David was not able to worship at the tabernacle, but he did not make that an excuse not to worship.  He did not make up his own altar or worship in any way that would go against God's commands ( which by the way was the point of Hosea 8).  David understood that worship was not about a place, but about coming before God.  This is what Jesus talks about in John 4 with the Samaritan woman - "But an hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers" John 4:23  David worshiped God in spirit and in truth.  He humbled himself before God and lifts up his prayers as holy offerings.

Hosea 8  Israel is quite the opposite of David in the matter of worship and relationship to God.  Here, God declares that they have transgressed His covenant, rebelled against His law, rejected His good,  and ultimately "forgotten his Maker" ( v14).  Their "worship"  included idols made by craftsmen of silver and gold.  They  have "multiplied altars for sin", regarded His Words "as a strange thing", and gone through ritual sacrifices that God refused to accept.  They claimed to know God, but their actions showed that they did not know Him at all.  They set up kings and princes on their own,  they hired Assyria to try to help them, they built for themselves fortresses.  In every way they rejected God as their King, Protector, and Refuge.  "How long will they be incapable of innocence?" They would not humble themselves before God, and He judged them for it.  "For they sow the wind and they reap the whirlwind."   There would be famine - no head of grain,  there would be oppression - they would be "swallowed up" .  They would diminish.  They would be punished for their sins.

We can not forsake God or ignore His Word and think it does not matter.  God is Holy and His Word is True.  We are no longer under the Law, but we are still called to righteousness.  This is established by God, Who is our Maker.  What He calls right is right and when we don't agree we are calling Him a liar.  Very dangerous ground.  This is much on my mind today with the Supreme Court hearing the cases regarding homosexual marriage today.   No matter what excuse or reason we have, sin cannot be called anything else.  It is clearly sin.  As Paul said in Romans 3 "Rather, let God be found true , though every man be found a liar" .  God help us!
But even as I pray today for the Justices and for the lawyers presenting their cases, I know that God is not focused on what is happening in Washington DC.  He already knows what will be decided.  He knows that we are also incapable of innocence.  He knows that we need to humble ourselves before Him and pray.  His desire is for each of individually and corporately to come worship Him in spirit and in truth.  So once again I turn to David's prayer, seek God's ear and His presence and offer my prayers to Him.  Be exalted O God!  Let Your Kingdom come and Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.  Amen.

Psalm 141 is a prayer of David.  This week I want to learn from his example and incorporate these truths into my own prayer life.  V1-2 speak to the most vital aspect of prayer.  Matthew Henry's commentary says that fervency and earnestness in prayer denote the faith and fixedness of our prayers to God.  David begs God to 1) hear him; and 2) make haste to come to him.  The desperate appeal is for God's Grace - to hear us and to come to us.  This is the foundation of true prayer.  Anything else is just useless, vain repetition.   Oh God, forgive us for making prayer anything else than this. Too often it becomes a list of desires and worries.  Change my heart O Lord.  Teach me to pray.

Hosea 7
"When I would heal Israel..."  God desires to heal, to restore, to forgive, to answer our deepest needs. But... as in David's prayer in Psalm 141, there is a need for rebuke, for sin to be uncovered and exposed so that the sinner can confess his sins and repent, to return to God.  Then God will heal and restore.  So "The iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered" :
They deal falsely.
They are thieves.
They are bandits.
They don't think that God sees or remembers their wickedness.
They lie.
They are adulterers.
They plot evil in their anger.
"None of them calls on Me" v7; "Yet they have neither returned to The Lord their God, Nor have they sought Him" v10;  " And they do not cry to Me from their heart" v14; "They turn, but not upward" v16.
Judgement is coming, sickness, fire, strangers to devour them.   v4-8  use a picture of an oven -
It is heated by the baker, who stirs up the fire v4
Their hearts are like an oven - with anger smoldering in it all night v6
All of them are like a hot oven, ready to consume the rulers and kings, v7
They are like a "cake not turned" v8
He also describes Ephraim as a "silly dove, without sense" v11
They have strayed from God and rebelled against Him and God cries out to them " I would redeem them, but they speak lies against Me"
They have every opportunity to repent, to find help in the One Who can save them.  But they refuse.

The Shepherd's voice speaks clearly, for this is Truth - our sins will be uncovered.  We either confess, agree with God that this is sin and repent, or we refuse and continue in our rebellion, calling Him a liar.  One way leads to healing and restoration.  The other leads to judgement and derision and condemnation.  All the while, God has provided the way of deliverance - Call on Him, Cry out to Him, Turn to Him - He will redeem us. This is the Gospel of Christ!  Hallelujah!

Hosea 1- 6  Sadness and disappointment spread over me as I read these words.  The wife of Hosea and the nation of Israel, both have become harlots and adulterers.  God desires the faithfulness and love of His people, but they have run to other lovers.  Useless idols receive the worship and gifts that God had blessed His people with.  Yet He promises restoration and healing, compassion will return and the people will become His people again.  Why then am I so saddened?
I can see our country going down the same wrong paths that Israel went down.  Ch. 4:1b-3 " Because there is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land.  There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery.  They employ violence,  so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes"  V 6 " My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."  Because Israel rejected God's Word, they would lose their position as God's priest. They were multiplying their sins, they were not giving heed to The Lord, and a spirit of harlotry had led them astray. They were in deep depravity, their deeds so evil they couldn't return to God because they no longer knew Him.   Ch 5:15 " I will go away and return to My place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me"
America will languish and be destroyed because of the lack of the knowledge of God and the refusal to heed His Word.  We are heading toward the same kinds of depravity that Israel was judged and chastised for.   But America does not have the promise of God for restoration.
Oh God, You are gracious and merciful. Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. Your mercy is over all Your works.  Including this nation.  Let America acknowledge You, heed Your Word, confess our sins, and seek You earnestly.  Revive us O Lord!  Make us a nation "under God".
Chastise those of our leaders who want to lead the people into sin. Bring them to repentence I pray. In Jesus' Holy Name.  Amen

Colossians 4  As Paul concludes the letter to Colossae he reminds them once again of the importance of prayer ( v2) .  Devotion to prayer ( devote - proskartereo - to be earnest toward, to persevere, be constantly diligent, to attend assiduously, to adhere closely, attend continually).   ( prayer - proseuche - prayer, worship, an oratory, earnest prayer, supplicate, worship) .  "keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving"  Paul asks for prayer for himself and later tells them of Epaphras's earnest laboring in prayer for them.  The emphasis of his prayer and Paul's also in chapter 1 is on their steadfastness in their faith.  " that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God" v12.
Paul prayed " for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience" 1:11 and then emphasized the point again in v23 " if indeed you continue in the faith, firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard"  In ch. 2:5  he rejoices in their stability of faith, and in v7 reminds them that they have been "rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith"

To pray for fellow believers , for each other, earnestly laboring in prayer for their steadfastness in the faith, seems like a really wonderful and needful work.  Yet, we fail to do so.  At least for me.  I pray for salvation, health, safety, blessing..... and I am learning to pray for sanctification, for the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of friends and family.  But, I see that I have often neglected to be devoted to earnest prayer that others may stand perfect and fully assured in the will of God.   That they stand firm and be made complete in Christ.  Yet this is my heart's desire for my children and grandchildren, my brother's and sisters.  Once again I ask You Lord, teach me to pray.

Ps. 142  David uses his voice to to "cry out" , " make supplication" v1, "pour out my complaint", declare my trouble" v2;  "cry out" and say " Thou art my refuge" v5.; and all that to lead to v. 7 " So that I may give thanks to Thy name" .  The Lord is His hope.  That God will "deal bountifully" with him is the end result that David hopes.  In faith he lifts his voice in earnest prayer believing that God will hear and deliver him.  David does not hold back in his prayers.  He cries, complains, asks, declares, and thanks God.  In a time of trouble, when he is overwhelmed with enemies, and he is in despair, " brought very low"  God is his refuge.  He is also mine.  Oh Thank You Father that you will "deal bountifully with me" also.  I put my faith in You alone.  I cry out to You and pour out my heart to you. You are my portion. Amen

Colossians 3
In Chapter 2 Paul teaches that we must not put our focus on the outward, the elementary principles,  the rules of self-made religion.  But, to focus instead, on the things above.  On Christ, "who is our life"  This is our "new self" , the old self has been crucified with Christ, put to death.  As such we are to consider ourselves dead to " immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed"  also "anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech";  and "Do not lie to one another" .  All these are "evil practices"  of the old self.  Lust for things ( greed) is just as evil as lust for sex ( immorality, impurity, and passion) . All desires for that which is evil is idolatry.  This will bring God's wrath, not His blessing.  On top of this, Paul teaches that we must put aside : anger ( passion of the mind, abhorrence, indignation, vengeance, wrath), wrath ( fierceness,  to breathe hard and blow smoke -to slay/kill) ; malice ( badness, depravity, trouble, naughtiness, wickedness); slander ( blasphemeo - to vilify, speak impiously, defame, rail on, revile, speak evil) - abusive speech and lies.
Our new self is being renewed "to a true knowledge" - to the image of the One who created us.  Christ is all and in all.  We have been "chosen of God, holy and beloved"  So we " put on a heart of compassion( pity, mercy), kindness, ( usefulness, excellence, gentleness, goodness) , humility, gentleness, and patience" v12.  We are to bear with one another ( put up with, endure, forbear, suffer)  and to forgive one another ( grant as favor, gratuitously, in kindness,  pardon or rescue, deliver, freely give or grant grace to ) .  Following the supreme example of Christ's forgiveness to us.  And above all else the new self puts on love ( agape - affection, charity) - which brings unity.  We need the Peace of Christ to rule our hearts.  (Peace - eirene - to join, one, prosperity, quietness, rest - set at one again)  To rule our hearts( our thoughts and feelings) . And we are to be thankful.
When all we do, all we say, all we speak, and all we serve is focused in Christ, for Him, and to Him. Then we are walking in a way to receive the reward of the inheritance He has prepared for us.  That is a whole different life than trying to follow a set of rules that focus on what you eat and what day you consider holy.  And I know I can not in anyway do this on my own.  It is His Life in me that transforms me from the life that practices evil to the one that does everything in His Name.  Oh Lord, help me.  I am your child and I need your Spirit to renew me to a true knowledge "according tot he image of the One who created" me.