"A call to repentance and a promise of restoration", by Mike Morrison

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Over the summer I have been studying the Minor Prophets (the last 12 books of the Old Testament). I have been using a commentary by James Montgomery Boice. Whilst reading the book of Hosea, Boice quoted from the writings of a man called Donald Gray Barnhouse, who I had never come across before. However I found his words, which I have recorded below, and the passage from Scripture, to be very pertinent to my own life, as if God was speaking directly to me. By sharing it in Open Doors I am hoping that others may find it helpful, that God may use these words to speak into other’s lives.

Mike Morrison.

"The pursuing love of God is the greatest wonder of the spiritual universe. We leave God in the heat of our own self-desire and run from His will because we want so much to have our own way. We get to a cross roads and look back in pride, thinking that we have out-distanced Him. Just as we are about to congratulate ourselves on our achievement of self-enthronement, we feel a touch on our arm and turn in that direction to find Him there.

“My child”, He says in great tenderness, “I love you, and when I saw you running away from all that is good, I pursued you through a shortcut that love knows well, and awaited you here at the crossroads”. We have torn ourselves free from His grasp and rushed off again, through deepest wood and farthest swamp, and as we look back again we are sure this time that we have succeeded in escaping from Him. But once more the touch of love is on our other sleeve and when we turn quickly we find Him there, pleading with the eyes of love, and showing Himself once more to be the tender and faithful One, loving to the end.

“My child, my name and nature are Love, and I must act according to that which I am. So it is that I have pursued you, to tell you that when you are tired of your running and your wandering, I will be there to draw you to myself once more”. When we see this love at work through the heart of Hosea we may wonder if God is really like that. But everything in the Word and in experience shows us that He is.

He will give man the trees in the forest and the iron in the ground, Then He will give to man the brains to make an axe from the iron to cut down a tree and fashion it into a cross. He will give man the ability to make a hammer and nails; and when man has the hammer and the nails and the cross, the Lord will allow man to take hold of Him and bring Him to the cross. He will stretch out His hands upon it and allow man to nail Him to that cross, and in so doing will take the sins of man upon Himself, and make it possible for those who have despised and rejected Him to come unto Him, and know the joy of sins removed and forgiven, to know the assurance of pardon and eternal life, and to enter into the prospect of the hope of glory with Him forever. This is even our God, and there is none like unto Him.

Joel 2: 12-13, 23, 25a, 26, 27

12. “Even now”, declares the Lord,“return to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning”.

13. Rend your heart and not your garments.Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

23. Be glad, O people of Zion,rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness.He sends you abundant showers.

25a. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten...

26. ... you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you.

27. ... you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other".