Choices

Hosea 2:2-8 “But now bring charges against Israel – your mother – for she is lo longer my wife, and I am no longer her husband. Tell her to remove the prostitute’s makeup from her face and the clothing that exposes her breasts. Otherwise, I will strip her as naked as she was on the day she was born. I will leave her to die of thirst, as in a dry and barren wilderness. And I will not love her children, for they were conceived in prostitution. Their mother is a shameless prostitute and became pregnant in a shameful way. She said, ‘I’ll run after other lovers and sell myself to them for food and water, for clothing of wool and linen, and for olive oil and drinks.’ For this reason I will fence her in with thornbushes. I will block her path with a wall to make her lose her way. When she runs after her lovers, she won’t be able to catch them. She will search for them but not find them. Then she will think, ‘I might as well return to my husband, for I was better off with him than I am now.’ She doesn’t realize it was I who gave her everything she has – the grain, the new wine, the olive oil; I even gave her silver and gold. But she gave all my gifts to Baal.”

This is what your Nation has done. This is how I see you. You have prostituted yourselves. You have sold yourselves for comfort, money, fame, celebrity, sex, drugs – any and everything that causes you to feel pleasure. You have traded all of my gifts for garbage. You have turned your backs on me and chosen to worship the darkness. You choose to believe in lies and reject Truth. You choose to worship yourselves, your own lives. You may believe that you are in charge of your lives, you may believe that you can change my creation, that you can reject me and survive – you may believe anything you wish to believe. You may choose to worship whatever or whomever you wish. That is free will. That is a gift – another gift – that I gave to you. Another gift you are, in essence, throwing away. Another gift you are choosing to use against me and – ultimately – against yourselves. I will not honor every choice you make. I will honor your ability to do so and allow you to make those choices, however I will not protect you against the consequences of your poor choices any longer. As you have seen, my protective covering is being removed from your Nation. Once it has been completely taken from you, your Nation will fall. It will no longer exist as it once was. I will never leave nor forsake my children, but I will not protect your nation much longer. It is a cesspool of evil and darkness and if you do not rise up and take it back it will fall. Soon. Another choice you must make. Will you stand up and protect what I gave to you over 200 years ago? Or will you allow it to be swallowed up by evil? I will honor whichever choice you all make.