|
The Preacher
and the Hooker
Chapter I
Never Ending Love
Alcoholics Anonymous
World Services, Inc. states that:
Step 5 We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being
the exact nature of our wrongs. Where
do you begin to write a love story? How can you have a love story with a hatred so intense that jealousy
can provoke death? Is jealousy justified? Yes! Is hatred justified?
Yes! Is death justified? Yes! Is mercy from God justified?
I believe mercy and grace can ONLY be justified by God. Can mercy, grace, reconciliation, forgiveness
be justified by man? I say no. Mercy, grace, reconciliation and forgiveness can only
be justified if through an understanding of both God’s anger and God’s mercy. If we can understand
God’s anger over our own horrendous sins then we will praise him forever for his completely unmerited mercy and grace.
When we are forgiven by man, through God, we will then be able to show the same kind of love to man. Bottom
line: It takes God.
If I hurt
someone, is his or her anger justified? Yes. The same as God’s is.
Can those I love forgive me? Answer: Can the angels win the pennant? It can happen,
as a young actor states in the movie, Angels in the Outfield, and with God, anything is possible.
The book of Hosea has talked to me more than any other book
of the Bible I have ever read. I have asked in prayer for God to open his word to my understanding so that
I can understand his word more. I have learned more this last month of God’s feelings toward sin
than years of studying. I have been praying specifically for the fear of God in my life for years.
This does not mean to fear God, (which we do need) but means to see sin as God sees it. The fear
of God is to hate sin. This is what I have prayed for. I am now beginning to see and
understand. As you study, I pray you too will find understanding for you.
In this one book, the book of Hosea, we will see, anger over
sin, the heartache of God, the heartache of Hosea, the separation of Hosea from his wife Gomer, prostitution, financial bankruptcy,
judgment, self recovery techniques that do not and will not work, denial, a God given prayer that does work, intense love,
mercy, grace, reconciliation with God and the reconciliation of Hosea with Gomer his wife.
Hosea was a prophet of the people of the northern kingdom
of Israel. Hosea’s ministry was from 755-722 B.C. There were five different kings
that ruled during this time. Not to worry, you won’t be tested on this history come Friday.
The name of one of these kings was Ahaz. This guy was one bad dude. It was Ahaz
who brought to the kingdom the worship of false Gods. I’m not talking about some guy claiming he’s
Jesus. I’m talking about the worship of Baal.
Baal, lord, possessor: Sun-god of Phoenicia, and the supreme deity among the Canaanites
and various other pagan nations. His full title was Baal Shemaim (lord of heaven), the equivalent of the
Greek Zeus. Each locality had its own Baal and the form of worship varied from place to place.
The Baal worship that King Ahaz brought into this section, outside the S.W. corner of Jerusalem was Baal Moleck worship.
This worship started with Asherah or groves. Idols were made of poles that would stand straight
upright or erect in the ground. Originally, they were idols of the Tree of Life, but later were perverted
to the origin of life carved with male organs into them. The worship included orgies, horrible sexual sins,
perversions and child sacrifices to Moleck. The statue of Moleck was a figure with outstretched arms holding
a large metal dish or bowl under which a fire had been set, causing the bowl to become white hot. King
Ahaz himself sacrificed his son to invoke Moleck’s blessing. 2 Kings 16:3, Leviticus. 18:21, Isaiah 30:33. These are the sins that God’s own people were involved in when Hosea began to warn the people.
The priest in God’s own temple smiled on and enjoyed watching the people sin. Hosea 4:8. The priests rejoiced in the sins of the people; they lap it up and lick their lips for more. Hosea 7:1-4 God wanted to forgive but their sins were far too great. No one could even live in the town without being
a liar, thief and bandit! The people never seemed to recognize or realize that God is watching.
The King was glad about the wickedness and the princes laughed about their lies. They were all adulterers.
God wanted to redeem them but God said to them in Chapter 7:13, My people have deserted me: let them perish. (They brought on their own destruction.) They
sinned against God. Hosea 7:13, They lie there sleepless with anxiety but won’t ask my help. Instead, they worship heathen gods
asking them for crops and for prosperity. The people of the nation put their trust in the king (their leader)
to keep peace. However, Hosea 12:1 tells us they were chasing the wind, yes, shepherding a whirlwind - a dangerous game! For she has given
gifts to (both) Egypt and Assyria (playing one rival nation against the other) to get their help, and in return she gets worthless
promises, (trying to make peace without trusting God.)
God pleads with them in Hosea 12:6 Oh, come back to God. Live by the principles of love and justice, and always be expecting much from Him,
your God. But, the people justify their actions of being crafty merchants with dishonest scales by saying,
Ha, it works for us. Hosea 12:8 I am so rich! I have gotten it all by myself.
God has had it. This is His case. Hosea, Chapter 4:1-4 the Lord tells us, I have filed a lawsuit against you listing the following charges: There is no faithfulness, no kindness,
no knowledge of God in your land. You swear and lie and kill and steal and commit adultery.
There is violence everywhere, with one murder after another. That is why your land is not producing,
it is filled with sadness, and all living things grow sick and die; the animals, the birds, and even the fish begin to disappear.
God will touch your finances to get your attention, for me he dried up my finances and used my wife to get my attention.
It worked- I went for help.
God knows we play the blame game before we do it. Hosea 4:4, Don’t point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame to him! I am pointing my finger
at you. Hosea 8:5, How long will it be before one honest man is found among you? When will you admit that human
hands made this calf you worship! (The thing you have made will not help you.) It is
not God! Therefore, it must be smashed to bits. If it is yourself you trust in, you
will have to be smashed to dust. Hosea 8:7 states, When we have sown the wind we will reap the whirlwind. My pockets have holes in them.
My cornstalks stand barren, withered, and sickly, with no grain. Hosea 8:4 states: You and I we
are a lonely wandering wild ass.
God will touch your finances. Hosea Chapter 9:2, Therefore your harvests will be small; your grapes will blight upon the vine. The time has come, punishment
has come; the day of recompense is almost here, and soon we will know it. Hosea 9:7 states: God set nature itself against these people and will do the same to you and me.
God sees our attitude and knows our hearts before we even speak the words to him
in prayer. In Hosea 5:15-6:3 God speaks, I will abandon them and return to my home until they admit their guilt and look to me for help again,
for soon as trouble comes, they will search for me and say: Come let us return to the Lord; it is He who has formed us.
He will heal us. He has wounded- he will bind us up. In just a couple of days,
or three at the most, he will set us on our feet again to live in his kindness! Oh that we might know the
Lord! Let us press on to know him, and he will respond to us as surely as the coming of dawn or the rain
of early spring.
Let There Be Sorrow
Now, if you have stopped the enabling and your
mate is on his or her own way down, has hit bottom, watch and listen to their words, remembering words have meanings.
Pleading and begging with such words, as I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry are not enough.
You can be sorry you were caught; you can
be sorry you fell down and broke your arm. True sorrow is for what you did before you were
caught. The sorrow would be feeling remorse about your drunkenness that caused you to fall down and break
your arm. Sorrow for being an addict and being controlled to the point of having caused pain and hurt by
whatever or whoever, will have to be revealed for healing to take place. True sorrow will be; I am sorry
that I chose to do what I did. I admit and take full blame, for what I did was wrong before God and man.
Any control we allow to dictate to us and control us that alters our thinking other than God is apostasy.
When we do not pray for guidance, we are putting our faith in our own abilities.
I allowed controls other than God to control me and my
way of thinking. I took what was programmed into my mind and allowed it to destroy my life.
I became a slave to my addiction of pleasing- a dependency. What are you using or allowing
to be put on you to please or what control are you using or allowing to be used on you.
King David had committed murder and basically rape when Nathan pointed his finger
at him and said, you are that man, when confronting David with his sin using his power and manipulation to take Bathsheba
as his wife. David had used his power to rape Bathsheba. Bathsheba could not say no
because David was the king. [Rape was my opinion at the time, now open for debate. 7/19/09]
David first confessed to Nathan. 2 Samuel 12:13, 14a, I have sinned against the Lord. Then Nathan replied, yes, but the Lord has forgiven you and you won’t
die for this sin. But’ you have given great opportunity to the enemies of the Lord to despise and
blaspheme Him. Nathan states outright that the things that David had done can be taken and used by the
enemy. The enemy will take our sin, the way you and I handle things and use them to try to destroy the
next and their next generation of children. God understands better than we how this happens.
This is why he tells us to confess the sins of our ancestors. Please listen up. Stop
the insanity. David then goes directly to God and prays Psalm 51:1-4, O loving and kind God, have mercy. Have pity upon me and take away the awful stain of my transgressions.
Oh wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. For I admit
my shameful deeds- it haunts me day and night. It is against you and you alone I sinned and did this terrible
(horrible, despicable, horrendous, mind controlling, manipulative, scaring thing that can cause a second and third generation
to take on and follow) thing. You saw it all and your sentence against me is just. Psalm 51:6, You deserve (100%) honesty from the heart; yes utter sincerity and truthfulness. Oh, give me this wisdom.
We must remember that it took an outsider, a second person (for
me, it took Scotty followed by my pastor and counselor), to help David see how he had used manipulation and control and his
own power to satisfy his lust. David prayed as we must pray that God would give us the wisdom and total
honesty in our heart. We must be sincere in searching for truth and the total truth of how we have
used the things we learned, programmed, or had programmed into our minds, that created binding chains of destruction in homes,
into the lives of our children and into those lives that we have touched and continue to touch. If we cannot
look at ourselves, we will continue to find one relationship after another broken, one marriage after another broken and leave
a path of destruction and heartache for our children to follow. If we learn to justify our own failings,
our children will learn to justify their failings, if we run from confrontation than our children will run from confrontation.
If we are quitters, our children will be quitters. If we do not forgive, our children will also
learn to not forgive. That is why God wants us to confess the sins of our ancestors, to break the chains that are past down
to us. Please think about what you are teaching your children. This is the reason why
I have been sending copies of my writing to my children. I want the cycle of controlling addiction to stop
with me, the way that we have been taught; the ways we have learned to handle things will continue to be passed from
generation to generation if we do not receive wisdom from God and break that cycle.
Many answers can be found through the books Search for Significance and Untangling
Relationships. These books have helped me more than any two books I have ever studied.
They can be bought through the Southern Baptist Bookstore or your local Bible bookstore. Please
take the time to study them. God wants to heal those who are hurting, and God has anointed a man in Robert
S. McGee and others who can help you. (Robert S. McGee wrote Search for Significance).
David continues by asking for restoration
and a spirit of obedience so that he can teach others with the same problems Psalm 51:12-13. It is revealed to David that God does not want penance but a broken spirit and a broken and contrite
heart. David then prays to God to not punish his people and asks for protection of his people against the
sins he had committed. We also need to turn to God as he reveals to us the things that we have done, that
can be put upon those we love just by them following in our footsteps. David was praying to God to stop
the cycle of destruction. David was searching and praying for wisdom, for God to show him how and what
to pray for, so that he could teach others how to break the cycle. When we can admit our faults as David
did and ask to be shown how our destructive ways will be put on our loved ones, we will then be able to pray the cycle of
destruction will stop with us. I pray it will stop with me and that you will pray for wisdom and understanding
that your destructive pattern will stop with you.
God gave me a hunger to help others when I was sixteen years old, but how could I help others when I was wearing
blinders? How could I help others when I myself was bound by destruction controls that a left a wake of
destruction wherever I went? How could I help a person in need, a person with a splinter in their eye,
when I myself had a board in my eye?
Pages
10, 11 and 12 are dedicated to those whom I have hurt. I truly from the bottom of my heart, loved and still
love, but allowed a parallel of selfish self-seeking love to take control. I am sorry. Please
forgive me.
When
I was a teenager, I was fixing a bike and as I was trying to get a nut off with a hammer and chisel, a metal splinter went
into my eye. It was so painful that it felt like a log. My eyes began to tear from the
pain. I had to feel my way from my grandmother’s chicken coop into the house, because I could only
open the uninjured eye for a split second. My grandmother tried to wash it and looked into my eye, but
could not see anything. My Dad took me to an eye surgeon who found a hole just off center of my eye.
He thought that a piece of metal might have gone into the eye. They put medicine in my eye to relieve
the pain, and a patch over the eye, and then he sent me to the hospital for an x-ray and told me, if it has gone into the
eye, he would have to operate. The x-ray did not show anything in the eye, but to this day I can still
see a squiggly line just off center in that eye if I look for it. Such a tiny metal splinter to cause such
pain and leave a scar for life. Quite a lesson! When drilling a hole into a piece of
metal I can create fine splinters (almost dust) that appear to be absolutely harmless, but if they were to accidently get
into one’s eye, it would feel like a log.
So here I am hoping that I can help remove splinters from the eyes of others when I am the one who put
the splinters there that feel and look like logs when you look out from behind them. Should I say, friend
let me help you get that speck out of your eye, when I could not even see because of the board in my own eye?
Board nothing it was a log! No! This is why I am just sitting on the back row
in the balcony of my church. How can I share and help others when I am only beginning to understand where
and how I have been so wrong. I’m just starting to see how I have had a compulsion to please others
that developed into an addictive habit that has controlled me for thirty-three years. Hypocrite, Jesus
says, yes I am. First get rid of the board, then you will see to help your brother. Daily,
page by page with much prayer the log is coming out one splinter at a time. It has been very painful, but
in removing splinters (the sin) from my life, I can see more and more. Not just of myself, but understand
more and more of the pain I have caused others.
As the pictures of this parable flashed before my eyes, I began to weep before God, God what have I done. You gave
me a gift to talk before audiences; you gave me a gift to talk and communicate, to teach your word. You
gave me a sincere desire to minister to the hurting. You gave me a love for the hurting. I
have taken that gift and bastardized it. I have used it to manipulate and control. God,
I’m sorry, God I’m sorry. I am very sorry. I have hurt you and my friends.
I realize that in what I saw as pleasing and harmless has wounded and broken the hearts of those whom I loved and who
loved me.
I
know what it is like to have a splinter in my eye. I know of the pain and I know about the scar.
I know that what I thought was a little splinter that I inflicted, has become a log when you’re looking out from
behind it.
I pray those whom I
have hurt (my children, my in-laws, former in-laws, relatives, step children and the hundreds of lives I have touched over
the years) will know I am and have been praying for them. I am very, very sorry that I allowed my addiction
to control me.
If anyone I have
hurt needs to talk, scream, cry, whatever, I humbly beg of you please call me or my pastor, I am praying for a healing.
I am praying your scars will heal and fade also. 11/10/96 Sincerely,
S
|
