I Hate My Marriage & How To Get Out! - Pt. 4 - I Love You But Don't Like U! Series

Pt. 4 - I Love You But Don’t Like You!

I. Introduction

It is one of, if not the, most complicated and messy relationships you can read about in Scripture. An up and coming preacher is instructed by God to go visit the red light district. Can you imagine how that conversation went over with the other preachers? So, God told you to go get a hooker? Yeah right. Go find a hooker and marry her. Make her your wife. A preacher and a prostitute. It is the story of Hosea and G. Talk about an illustration of obedience. Man when I feel like getting the big head about obeying Hosea stands as a humbler. This guy put everything on the line . . . Reputation, personal preference, and his emotions . . . On the altar and obeyed.

But I have also mentioned that we tend to sanitize and sterilize Scripture. Hosea did obey but don’t get it twisted what he experienced was not something he liked. Go and read the account again and read it from the perspective of a betrayed and broken husband. In Chapter 1, he holds a baby he isn’t sure is his and in Chapter 2 he chases Gomer down trying to get her to come home again. Pain was apparent. Pain was a major part of this relationship. Bad days were common. Extended and excruciating hurt was Hosea’s experience. He shows us what we already know . . . The closest relationships in life have the potential to produce the most and deepest wounds. His wife’s choices cost him. His wife’s decisions cut him. His wife’s decisions hurt. Don’t play like that being obedient to God lessened the agony, embarrassment and frustration. I am pretty sure there were more days than not that Hosea didn’t like Gomer.

How many days do you not like the person you are doing life with? How many times have their poor choices cut you, cost you, and crippled you? What do you do when you don’t like the person you are married to?

I want us to go back to the account and learn a few things.

Hosea 1:2 (TLB)

Here is the first message: The Lord said to Hosea, “Go and marry a girl who is a prostitute, so that some of her children will be born to you from other men.

I want to stop here a moment. I think there is something for us to consider in this first statement. When you don’t like the person you are with I think it is essential to back up to this moment too. Did you catch it? The Lord said to Hosea . . . Go marry Gomer. I can almost promise that every couple here who is married had these powerful and passed over words spoken over them in their ceremony. Whom the Lord has joined together let no man put asunder. What am I saying? In order to make it through days when you don’t like the person you are married to you must come to grips with this question . . . Who put you together?

If we stand up and declare that this relationship was God’s idea, invite Him to be the 3rd strand then, if God put us together how dare we dismantle what He was responsible for establishing? I know it was you who called, courted and candied but if it was God who put it together. If it was God that pulled strings to move you from one area of the country to another so that you would cross paths. If it was God that broke up countless other relationships to get you to this one person, then we need to remember that on the days we don’t like this person that God told us to do this. God sent them to you. God sent you to them. So, if you get away from them you get away from God!

Pick the Power!

Because we throw the word “Love” around so flippantly we have also diminished our concept of the power of love. We love pizza, love corvettes, love cocker spaniels, love jeans, and a variety of other things and our love for those things can change on a whim! Then we say we love someone and without realizing it we have confused like and love. They are not interchangeable. They may mean the same thing in our mind but the truth is Hosea’s account and Scripture bears out that love is different than like. Love is strong. Like is weak. Like changes daily . . . Today I like blue but tomorrow I like red. Not love. Love has power. We read this at weddings too but we underestimate just how strong love really is.

Paul states that love has the power to endure. Love has the power to hope. Love has power to be patient. Love has the power to put up with anything. There is power in love.