Hard Calling: The Hosea Anointing

“When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, He said this to Him: ‘Go and marry a woman of promiscuity, and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord.’”- Hosea 1:2

God tasked Prophet Hosea with the calling of denouncing Israel’s rebellion and unfaithfulness to the Lord by marrying and having children with an unfaithful woman. Hosea’s marriage to a harlot painted a living picture of not only God’s jealousy over Israel, but also God’s divine love, commitment, pursuit, and faithfulness to Israel during a time when Israel was unfaithful to God.

God’s people rarely have it easy, especially the ones who make history.

I recently read a devotional titled “Hard Calling”, which explained Hosea’s hard calling of putting his flesh, heart, and comfort on an alter to do the will of the Father.

It wasn’t easy for Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman and to relentlessly win her back when she had forsaken him for other lovers, time and time again. It was painful for him to endure this season of heartbreak, betrayal, rejection, and humiliation. Yet, he was obedient to the call of God, for Hosea’s calling had redemptive and restorative purpose for the people of Israel.

Reading about Hosea in this devotional about Hosea’s hard calling put into perspective the calling that God has placed upon my life.

I used to believe the therapeutic, feel-good messages about the Gospel that preached that God would never lead us into something that hurt us, or was too challenging, or too much for us to handle. As I learned more and more about the nature and character of our God and grew into deeper fellowship with Him, I learned that His priority was not to make us comfortable, but to mold us into His image, even if it meant leading us into the fire to refine us.

Like Hosea, God has given me a hard calling. And I have been walking in that calling for over 3 years now. At first, I didn’t believe that what God wanted me to do was of Him because of the pain and anguish it brought to me. The more I sought Him and the more I walked in the journey that He set before me, I felt my heart change. And I learned more and more about the depths of God’s love for us. I caught a glimpse of the deep, steadfast, enduring, sacrificial, never-ending love that God has for us. I learned how He stops at nothing to win us over. I learned how His love for us is what enabled Jesus to see to the other side of His suffering. I’ve experienced fellowship with Jesus in the sense of being willing to suffer, even to the point of going to the cross, in order to fulfill the will of the Father. More than anything, my calling has led me to stay continually filled up in the Spirit which has caused me to experience the power, presence, and love of God on supernatural level.

God could have simply given Hosea a verbal message to Israel, but instead, He placed Hosea in a position to live out God’s message.  Hosea was called to demonstrate God’s character as a proclamation to His people.

Like Hosea’s hard calling, I believe that the difficult season that the Lord has been leading me in carries prophetic meaning to someone that needs to experience the redeeming, sovereign, reckless love of Jesus.