When you don't hear God

A while back I started a series on Hosea. I was reading it and listening to a teaching by Mike Bickle on CD. I didn't finish. I just left the last cd in the case...never touched it until last night.

Instead of Mike Bickle, another man who is associated with FOTB (www.fotb.com), Alan Hood, was speaking. What he shared was something I've needed to hear for so long. I wept...and my heart swelled up with love and understanding flooded my being.

The book of Hosea is about a prophet, named Hosea, whom God asked to take a wife of harlotry. This story is a representation of the love between God and Israel as well as between God and each one of us individually as well as the love of God for His whole church. This is the first time that God is revealed as a BRIDEGROOM in the Bible.

He tells Hosea to choose Gomer, a woman who has been raised by a prostitute and was brought up to know nothing more than how to sell her body. Imagine how cold and hard her heart must be by the time Hosea took her as his bride. She has been used and abused her entire life, and she believes that there is nothing else she can do or will ever do. Her mom did it, she did it. This is her life, this is how she survives. Even as a child men used her body. If she tried to escape, she was hurt and punished. The walls that have gone up are so thick and strong, there is no more childhood left. Any memories of innocence are fairytales now.

When Hosea takes Gomer as his wife, he is tender with her, and God causes him to love her deeply. But, Gomer feels so uncomfortable in this situation, she goes back...she goes back to the life she led before because there is a part of her that doesn't know how else to live. She was used to certain things, nice clothes, expensive food, etc...that she didn't get with Hosea. Hosea experiences the same heartache that God does when His children go astray. He is genuinely sad, not MAD! It breaks Hosea's heart to see her go, he knows what she is doing. God tells him, "Go again" and get her, love her as I love the children of Israel.
Hosea has to go and actually BUY her out of slavery. She was a love slave at this point to someone, who would not let her go freely. Hosea tells her that this time she will not have her other lovers, she will not go after them again, nor will she even have him in intimacy until her heart has turned towards his. There was to be a time of celibacy, a time of silence.

I don't have the exact words, but here is what struck me on the last CD:
God's silence is sometimes His way of allowing the trauma of our hearts to mend. All of those things we've done tht have hurt our bodies, those things we are ashamed of, He doesn't want in the way when He comes to love us, He wants us to be able to focus on Him and not our past. His silence is a time to heal, time to be prepared for just what He wants to speak to our hearts. Just like Hoseah tells Gomer that there will be a period of time that she'll have no other lovers nor will she have himself - this so that her heart can mend. All she's ever known was being used and abused, he doesn't want to throw her into the same cycle by claiming her too soon, he doesn't want her to think he is using her, but he wants it to be genuine love, love that lasts forever, true, he will woo her to him.

God's silence is not rejection, it's so that when He speaks to us, we won't misinterpret the motive. He's honoring us so that our hearts can receive Him in due time. Do not despair, He will "go again" and love her who has given up on Him, and He will reprogram her heart and heal her wounds so that she can accept His love and to return it.