Hello friend, and welcome back to Blonde Girl Writing, where I talk about writing, God, and reading! Today, I wanted to share a verse that I've really been loving lately and just some thoughts I have about it.
This verse is Hosea 10:12 (NLT):
"I said, 'Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.'"
In this verse, God is talking to Israel through the prophet Hosea. The heading for this particular passage of Scripture (Hosea 10) is "The Lord's Judgement against Israel," and most of this chapter is God pointing out all the sins Israel has committed and how they need to turn back to Him before they are destroyed.
One of these calls is Hosea 10:12. God is calling Israel to plant seeds of righteousness to harvest a crop of love. God is calling Israel to seek Him with open hearts. And I think one of the reasons why this verse stuck out to me was that this is something that can applied to our lives today. This shouldn't surprise me--the Bible is God's living, breathing Word and still speaks today--but a lot of the times when I'm reading through the prophets, such as Hosea, Jeremiah, or Malachi, I have a hard time relating to it because I haven't done the things Israel had.
And yet, I still struggle with sin. I still sometimes plant seeds of anger, fear, and destruction. I still sometimes come to God with a hard heart, or outright run away from Him. So this verse is a good reminder.
But how do we "plant good seeds or righteousness"? How do we "plow up the hard grounds of [our] hearts"? From what I've heard from God, this looks like choosing to read God's Word consistently, going to church, and staying away from bad things and things I don't believe in. Planting is a specific action that you purposefully do, and I think it all comes down to choices. As for plowing the hard ground of your heart--again, seek God. Read His Word. Pray. Listen to His voice. Open yourself to Him and give Him your all.
Thank you for listening to my little ramble today. Just wanted to share some encouragement and a cool verse I discovered recently. If you like to have verses close by (like I do!) I designed these phone and desktop backgrounds, so you can see Hosea 10:12 all day and remember God's truth.
Well, have a great night, friend! See you tomorrow (:
Best wishes,
~ Jonah
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