Guest Blog written by: Charley Goode

It’s clear in my own life and in other people’s lives that we all try to run away from God in many different ways.  Sometimes we try to avoid God and His Word all together so we won’t feel guilty in the ways that we live.  Sometimes we even run from God if He calls us to do something and we don’t want to do it.  Today’s Bible reading clearly shows that this isn’t only a problem that stands now but, in the past too.  Jonah ran from God because he didn’t want to do Gods will.  Jonah convinced himself that he knew best, but in the end he realized he had a lot to learn.  Jonah wants his way.  God’s command was clear when He tells Jonah, “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me,”  I think Jonah underestimated God’s resolve to send him to Nineveh.  He’s crazy for believing that he can escape God.  After the craziness of being in the belly of a fish, Jonah preaches to Nineveh.  He obeyed God’s second command.  I think Jonah was surprised when the people believed God’s message and humbled themselves with fasting and sackcloth.  Even the King participated.  Jonah was afraid and worried to travel and do this work for the Lord.  I relate to Jonah because last year, I felt called to go to Honduras on a mission trip and became afraid and I began to run away from God and the mission.  I, like Jonah, tried to run away from God and His call.  God did not give me the miraculous revelation like he gave Jonah but, I could hear him whispering in my ear that he had a plan for me to go.  Once I went, like Jonah, I was so surprised by the things God had planned for me too!  I think we can all relate to moments in our lives when we underestimate God’s power and authority. In those moments, we can believe that we are smarter than God, but that is never the case.  I pray that in my life and in the lives of others that we will have more readiness to do what the Lord has planned for us.

Guest Blog written by: Colin Raynor

Of the 3 books we covered in todays reading, Hosea was my favorite, but particularly chapter 14.  But before I get into that, I want to note that I am normally a very ADD person and struggle reading with other things happening.  But something today was different, I read in Hosea 13:14 “oh death where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting?”  So I instantly looked up the song “Christ has risen”, and it went right along with what I was reading.  The whole song sings “Christ has risen from the dead trampling over death by death come awake come awake come and rise up from the grave.”  Right after that in Chapter 14 God tells Israel to come to him and repeat some things.  Starting with “Take away all iniquity; accept what is good”, and in coming to God and saying those things God says he “will heal their (our) apostasy and I (the God who they abandoned) will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.”  What an amazing reminder of our God’s love.  The past several days we have read what God was going to do to Jerusalem but today we read that all they have to do is trust Him and admit they are wrong and God freely accepts them, just like Jesus does to us even when we abandon Him for a day, a week, or years.