As a young child, he did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was even expelled from school. Albert Einstein later won the Nobel Peace prize and changed the face of modern physics.
He was once quoted as saying, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Said by the winner of five MVP awards and six NBA championships at which he was the MVP each time, Michael Jordan.
Lastly, his teachers told him he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Work was no better, as he was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. Even as an inventor, he failed 1,000 times to solve a key issue in one of his most notable inventions, the incandescent light bulb. This is, of course, Thomas Edison.
These are stories of people that seemed to be on one path in life, and yet they received a second (or more) chance. We love stories like these because we can see ourselves in them. We hope for ourselves that we might have that “second chance” at life. We feel we failed earlier, we got off track, we made mistakes, made bad decisions and the combinations of those things lead us to a place we don’t want to be.
So, there is hope. For those of us in recovery, our higher power is the original author and creator of the second chance. The bible is replete with stories of people getting a second chance. So, what does a prostitute, a prophet and a people have to do with second chances?
One of the most powerful stories in scripture is about a man, a prophet, named Hosea… and a woman, his wife, named Gomer.
The book of Hosea and its message focus on Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord. And that unfaithfulness is personified in the marriage of Hosea and Gomer. Most of us know the feeling of being betrayed, and betrayal by a lover – that is the stuff of Dateline and 20/20 episodes. So, imagine Hosea knowingly, with God’s urging, marries a woman that he knows is and will be unfaithful. We all probably have a sense of the heartache this must have caused him.
Hosea wrote this book to remind the Israelites—and us—that ours is a loving God whose loyalty to His covenant people is unwavering. His covenant is a perfect covenant, unlike many of us who have made a covenant in marriage and failed to keep it. God never fails to keep his covenant. Despite Israel’s continual turning to false gods, God’s steadfast love is portrayed in the long-suffering husband of the unfaithful wife.
Hosea and Gomer’s Story – Broken Love
Read: Hosea 1:2-3, Hosea 2:5-7
God calls Hosea to marry Gomer, a woman who would be unfaithful. He has three children with her. And even though she entered a covenant relationship with her husband, Hosea, and even though he provides for her – as a single woman had little opportunity to do so in those times – and even though she is now a mother to three young children, she chooses to return to her former profession.
How many of us have been in difficult, uncomfortable, painful, dangerous situations in our lives – especially during our active addition – have found some relief from it, yet we return the same thing that brought us misery? I personally recall too many times looking at the wrong side of bars in a jail or kneeling in front of a toilet and when things looked up again, I just returned to the same filth that made me miserable. How many times did God rescue you from terrible situations?
Gomer walks away from the marriage, even after being loved well and cared for. This is adultery. Her choices reflect our spiritual adultery—she was chasing after other lovers and we were chasing after doing things our way, solving our problems with our best ideas and effort, going it alone, not needing God as we have our own solutions to our problems.
Like Gomer, we often run back to what broke us—even after God rescues us.
Here’s the Point. Our sin doesn’t surprise God—He pursues us anyway. As disappointed and heartbroken as Hosea must have been when his wife stepped out on him, I would imagine he wasn’t surprised. No different that our God isn’t surprised by our mistakes, our self-centeredness, our rebellion against him – he isn’t surprised by any of it. So why would God want to be in a covenant, promised relationship with someone like that?
God’s Relentless Pursuit – Love That Buys Back
Read: Hosea 3:1-3
Gomer ends up enslaved and Hosea buys her back…or another word used for that is to “redeem”. Why did Hosea do this? Did Gomer deserve it? Had she proved to her husband that she was turned around, cleaned up and that she had deleted all her boyfriends from her mobile phone and Facebook? Hosea redeems her not because she earned it, not because she deserved it, but because of his love for her.
Picture this. This is how God loves us. Even when we relapse, fall, and feel worthless—He buys us back. He redeems us. We don’t deserve it. He does this because he loves us.
God doesn’t just forgive once—He redeems continually. His grace doesn’t run out.
You are never too far gone for God to redeem you.
God’s Love Is Transformational – Not Transactional
Read: Hosea 2:14-16
The “her” in this story is the people of Israel. God says He will lead Israel (as well as us) into the wilderness to speak tenderly. I know everyone has had some “wilderness” moments. We wouldn’t be here if everything in life had come up roses.
God meets us in those wilderness moments and he speaks tenderly to us. He doesn’t shame us. He doesn’t scold us. He doesn’t point out the number of times we’ve strayed away from him. No, He restores us. He meets us where we are and he loves us. Just as the father in the prodigal son parable runs with reckless abandon towards the son that disowned him, our God runs toward us. The ones that have disowned him.
What does God want for us? To be comfortable? To serve others? To be in healthy relationships? To be a good parent? To be sober, clean or in recovery? No, those are the goals. Those are the byproducts.
Those are all potential outcomes of what our ultimate goal is: intimacy with the One who loves us. He wants you to join into an intimate, covenant relationship with him.
He wants to change your identity – no longer an “addict” “co-dependent” “one with mental health issues” or “failure”. He wants to change your identify to his “beloved”. God doesn’t just clean you up— He calls you His own, his beloved, his son and daughter.
Second chances. Something we hope for. In the case of Gomer, she met and married a righteous, loving and devoted man in Hosea. Yet Gomer returns to her old ways. She did just as the people of the time, the Israelites did. God saved them and provided for them over and over and over and they strayed every single time. God wanted the people then and now to see the lesson of Hosea and his wife Gomer as an object lesson for how he loves us.
No matter where you are in your journey—first step, recent relapse, or in long term recovery—God is calling you back. God is redeeming you. God wants you to be his beloved.
Can you imagine God doing just as Hosea did with Gomer, standing at the auction block, holding up his number and saying, “You are STILL mine. I will redeem you. I will bring you home with me. And I’ll do it again and again and again.”
Will you let Him love you like that? Will you surrender or recommit to surrendering again today?
Richard Bahr 
I am beloved. It is easy to think how terrible Gomer is and become indignant until you realize God was saying we are like Gomer too. Humbling but then grateful for God’s relentless pursuit of us…Grace…Thank you Lord!
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