Wednesday, August 27, 2014

God's Recurring Nightmares

The Minor Prophets Speak to Today 


Bad Dreams Come True

Hosea 11:5-7 NLT
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My people are determined to desert me.
They call me the Most High,
    but they don’t truly honor me.
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Parental Nightmares!


During my parenting years, I had dreams that in enthusiastic foolishness or disobedience my children would slip beyond my reach and die.

Often, that was literal in my dreams. My daughters especially ran across  bridges only to fall into deep swift rivers. I ran to the edge and reached for them but each time I just missed them or I couldn't even get close to where they struggled and were pulled under. I awakened terrified. A parent's worse nightmare.

In another series of dreams, my child would suddenly run behind a car that was backing up and be crushed under the rear driver's side tire. Sometimes I was the driver. Often I was the helpless observer. I have known families where those exact dreams have come true. It makes my heart ache.

God, in his knowledge of what his children's disobedience will lead to, has similar terrifying dreams. Well, not dreams, but foreknowledge of what will happen if they do not forsake their foolishness or disobedience. In Hosea he reveals those parental terrors.

molly

God's Parental Terrors


The consequences of refusing to return to God are the stuff of nightmares. Especially troublesome is the fact most often we will not admit that we need to return. Despite his calls we run straight into fire.

God lays out the picture.

Since my people refuse to return to me:

1.   They will return to what used to enslave them.

Many of us look back on our old life and declare we will never go back across that bridges. God knows otherwise. In our walking in our own ways a day will come when we will return to what used to enslave us. We will return freely. No force needed.

2.   They will be force to serve new brutal masters.

Not only will we return to enslavement, we will find ourselves under the control and compulsion of new, heartless masters. The abuses of our old sins and those or that which mastered us before will pale compared to the strength and captivity enacted by the new.

3.   War will swirl in their cities.

Such is happening among some Christians already today. Those of us in the Western churches are being given plenty of warning that full scale assault is imminent in our own towns and cities. In some countries like England and France it occurs regularly with further internal threats to take over their cultures and replace them with violent jihad. America and the rest of us need to take heed. The warriors are being trained by participation in utter brutality and war. They have their eyes trained on us and will come unless God stops them. Already our governments' actions have been shown impotent to stop the next successively greater terrors.

4.   Their enemies - our enemies will:

      a.   overcome our defenses,
      b.   destroy us, and
      c.   trap us in our own evil plans.

Why does God see these terrors coming?  Because --

You call me the Most High,
But you do not truly honor me!



Photo Credits:
J'habite pour vous by molly some rights reserved @ flickr.com

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