“Return and Know” (Hosea 6:1-3)

Experiencing God

How do you experience God? One day during a bedtime conversation Grace asked me, “Dad, how do you invite Jesus into your heart? And how do you know Jesus is in your heart?” Another day she asked, “Does God really speak? How do you know God speaks to you?” Not just Grace, not just children, but if we are honest, we all have the same question: “How do we experience God?”

God Speaks Today

God speaks to us through many ways. One of the ways is through scripture. Let me tell you my story. It was December 31, 1999 that God spoke to me for the first time. At that time I was in the army, and it was during Watchnight Service. At that time spiritually I was in the desert. I was wandering, searching, trying to make sense of life. While the pastor was giving his benediction, I heard the inner voice saying, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” That was from Jeremiah 33:3. From that moment, my life was never the same.

The most recent experience of God happened right before I went to the conference this past week. Around that time I fell stuck. I felt anxious. I was praying for the next step on my journey, and for the next vision for the church, but I saw nothing. On the day I was leaving to Arizona, the word came to me during my morning devotion time. “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you… Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in the heart!” (Psalm 32:8, 11) That moment I felt like the burden was lifted from my shoulders.

 

Return

So how do we experience God? When I think about those moments that God spoke to me (or I experienced God), there is something in common. I was at the bottom, I was in the desert, I was humbled or humiliated, I was poor in spirit, I was seeking.

 

Today’s story, the story of Hosea and Gomer, teaches us how we can experience God here and now. Hosea is a weird story. One day God tells Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman, Gomer. They get married and have three children. But Gomer doesn’t love her husband; instead, she keeps running away and loving other men. But Hosea just keeps going after her. He even pays a price to get her back. In the story Hosea is God, and Gomer is Israel. Hosea commends Gomer, the unfaithful Israelites, “Let us return to the Lord. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.” Here the two verbs are important: “return” and “know.”

First, return. At the heart of Israel’s problem is pride (or complacency). Their heart was proud. They said, “We are ok. We are good. We know God. We worship God. We give sacrifices to God. We are rich. We have enough resources to know God and to take care of ourselves.” But God said to them, “You are not ok. You are destroyed because of your pride and lack of knowledge of me. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

In Isaiah 66:2 God said to Israel, “This is the one I esteem: he or she who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” Laodicean church was rich, and they thought they were prosperous and needed nothing. But Jesus said to them, “You don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked… therefore repent (return)” (Revelation 3:17, 19).

The first step to experiencing God is to acknowledge that we have strayed from God’s ways and to return. We are not ok. No more pretense! No more hypocrisy! “Lord, I am blind, and I want to see! Lord, I am lame, and I want to walk! Lord, I am dead, and I want to live a new life! Lord, I need you.” That’s returning to God.

Know

Let us return to the Lord. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. There are different levels of knowledge. People know that I am a Korean, a pastor, a dad of five children, etc. That’s knowledge about me. My children know more about me. They know what’s my favorite color, what’s my favorite food, what food I can cook, etc. Then my wife Joyce. She knows me well enough to know my history, my personality, my secrets, my motives. That’s knowledge of me.

Here when Hosea says, “Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord,” he uses the Hebrew word yada. This same word is used in Genesis 4:1, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.” Intimate knowledge between husband and wife. Knowledge of God, not just mere knowledge about God. But what Israel had was shallow knowledge about God. For them, believing in God, experiencing God is like a formula religion, like getting a candy bar out of a vending machine: put in the money, push the button, and out comes the candy. Give sacrifices to God, live a moral life, and out comes healthy and wealthy life, a trouble free life. They didn’t know God. But the Christian life is a relationship with God. As we live out in everyday life with God, we then get to know – really know who God is – God’s character, God’s love, God’s grace, God’s ways. That’s knowledge of God.

“Let us press on” pictures one actively pursuing or chasing after God. As part of financial education, this year Lydia and Abe started a stock market investment. Especially Abe is really in it. He bought a share of Amazon stock. He checks its highs and lows day and night. When we have something to buy, he would say, “Dad, why don’t we order it through Amazon? That would help its stock price increase.” To me, that’s the image of “pressing on to know” – thinking about it, meditating on it day and night, living a life with it.

Return and Know

How do you experience God? The theme of the spiritual formation conference was “Journey into the Heart of Jesus.” During the sessions I listened to many different stories. I heard a story of Korean comfort woman whose body was broken, and who still has a big nail in her heart for several decades. I heard a story of a black mother who has walked on the thin ice to care for her three children’s safety for life. I heard a story of a grieving dad who lost his beloved son to suicide.

Where is Jesus’ heart? Where is your heart? Let us return and take a journey together into the heart of Jesus. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. And as surely as the sun rises, he will appear. He will come to us. “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (Proverbs 8:17). Amen.