Hosea 11:7 (NLT) For my people are determined to desert me. They call me the Most High, but they don’t truly honor me.

The history of Israel, the chosen people of God, is one of a constant turning away from the Lord, no matter how good He had been to them. He was their redeemer, their provider, their protector and their covering, but they would always wander away from Him and turn to worthless idols, becoming corrupted by them. That is why the fact that they still exist today is so amazing. It just speaks to the incredible mercy and grace of God.

But before we get all self-righteous about our faith in God, we need to examine our own history. Each one of us has a personal history with the Lord. When I think about my own history with the Lord Jesus, I am left shaking my head and wondering not only what in the world I was thinking, but also wondering why God had mercy on me. I failed Him many times but He never gave up on me. I am sure that this is the same story that you have about your own history with the Lord, because in you resides the same nature that resides in me: a very sinful nature. Even when we received Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we still had a long journey ahead of us. On that journey, we may have turned away to other "gods." A god or an idol is anything that you put ahead of your love and devotion to the Lord Jesus. When we do that, we not only grieve the Holy Spirit of God, but we do great damage to ourselves and to those around us.

In this day and age that we live in where many churches still have not been able to open up because of government restrictions, we need to examine ourselves. Are we guilty of calling God the Most High without honoring Him by the way we live? Were we going to church on Sundays but living as we please from Monday to Saturday? Did our actions and our way of life leave us like it left the Israelites: determined to desert our God? I pray the signs of the times that we are living in would be a wake-up call for us all and that we would get sober and serious about our relationship with God. God sees our hearts and He knows whether we are truly honoring Him or if we are just saying that we are. Let's be determined to follow Jesus at all costs instead of being determined to desert Him. Let's determine to never turn back to how we were before we met Jesus. Let's be determined to live as children of the light with the help and the power of the Holy Spirit so that we will live upright lives, which will enable us to be ambassadors of Jesus, leading the way to salvation for the lost and dying of this world. Now is the time.

Pastor Joey Vazquez