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.
Captain and Tennille were right . . . Love can keep you together. Even when you don’t like what the other person is doing. You realize that difference is that "like" means you are happy with them but "love" means you can’t live without them.
Like is based on chemistry while love is about commitment. So, what that means is simply this . . . I don’t have to like you to love you! My level of like has nothing to do with my level of love. But I have to pick the power of love.
In fact, let me clue you in single folks your level of like will vacillate! What you thought was cute while you dated will disturb you when you are married. However, just because my like level vacillates my love will not allow me to vacate our relationship.
I may have liked you better before gravity but my love is stronger than gravity. I may have liked you better receiving that paycheck but my love for you doesn’t change for richer or poorer. I may have liked you when you were healthy but my love for you is stronger than sickness. So, I am responsible for picking the power. Why does making a choice to pick love matter?
Love Leaks!
Hosea 3:1 (Message)
Then God ordered me, “Start all over: Love your wife again, your wife who’s in bed with her latest boyfriend, your cheating wife.
Did you catch it? Start all over. . . Love your wife again. If he has to start over and love her again that says to me that his love had leaked. He had lost the love. However, Hosea illustrates for us that you can renew the love supply but it is a choice. In fact, go back and read Hosea 2:1-13 and it is apparent and stated in no uncertain terms that Hosea is disgusted and hurt. In fact, until verse 13 it sounds hopeless. But then he stops the leak.
In Hosea 2:14-15, he gives us his plan to stop the love leak.
“And now, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to start all over again. I’m taking her back out into the wilderness where we had our first date, and I’ll court her. I’ll give her bouquets of roses. I’ll turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope. She’ll respond like she did as a young girl, those days when she was fresh out of Egypt.”
He intentionally loves her. He goes back and starts over. Some of us, who have been in relationship for years, have allowed all of the love to leak. So, our attention settles on like and there is nothing but strife, contention, failure, and pain. What if you went back and started all over in love? Maybe you too could turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope! Listen, if Hosea could start over and if he could bring love back, then we should be encouraged that we can do the same. But to do so you have to stop the leak! What small step, small act, small action could you do that would plug the love leak? What could you do to start over? Would a tender touch be a start? Would a date night get the ball rolling? Would helping around the house break the ice? Would a flower rekindle the spark?
What you do doesn’t matter as much as having a plug plan!
Big problems are fixed in small steps! I know you may not like them right now but what could you do to love them?
