The Process

When I was growing up in North Carolina I learned that I was pretty good in sports.  This led me to play golf, basketball and football.  I wanted to be best in basketball (that is THE sport in North Carolina).  But I had a talent and giftedness in football.  I soon learned, from a very good coach, that there was a process in football, if your desire was to become a good player.  In order to excel you had to give up time ... time spent in practice paid off in games.  You had to invest energy, because building muscle and skill meant expended energy, even in the hottest months of the year.  You had to invest your mind in learning and repeating the plays so you could be in the right place at the right time.  The coach told us to live, eat and breathe football during the season and in preparation for the season.  Our work paid off ... we lost one game in our best year and left it all on the field.  It felt good.
It occurs the me that there is a process expected by God.  We learn it in the negative as we learn from the prophets.  Hosea, a prophet in the Northern Kingdom, told the people of Israel that they invested their lives in the wrong things ... their time, energy, and minds were focused on things other than their God.  They thought they had success and prosperity and they attributed this to the things that occupied their misguided lives.  God was angry and called them 'prostitutes' selling out God's good things to gods, idols, practices, politics, empty rituals and false leaders.
We find out God has a process too.  His process is to lead us, and the people of Hosea's time, back to him.  In Hosea's prophecy it is clear that God's action here will be at great cost to the nation of Israel.  Many will die.  Many will be taken captive.  They will be humbled and humiliated.  God says that this is a consequence of their behavior and that their destruction is necessary to achieve their ultimate salvation.
This process is repeated as God, in the New Testament, models the destruction necessary for salvation by sending His Son to be destroyed so that ultimate victory can be won.  It is a mysterious and humbling lesson.  The question for us is ... are we willing to allow God destroy those things we have sold to the enemy so that self can be torn down to the basics.  For it is there that God can do His work of salvation (by the way, the meaning of the name Hosea).  Our lives will be a result of the process we choose.  I am banking that God's way, though my way will be destroyed, will end me in the right place.  What about you?