Hosea: God Does Love Us - Even When We Sin

Some activities that we do in church include singing and praying and listening to stories from the Bible. This story is about two people who got married in a church.

In God’s Holy Book the Bible, there is a little book named Hosea. The book of Hosea is about a man named Hosea, who was called a prophet. Hosea’s job was to tell the truth about God.

The most important truth Hosea told the people is that God never stops loving His people. During Hosea’s life, the people in Israel were doing very wrong things and not show any love at all toward God. And although God did not stop loving His people, the way they were living made Him sad.

Hosea actually had a life experience that taught him this truth about God.

One day, God told Hosea, “Go marry Gomer. Love her. Be faithful to her.”

So Gomer and Hosea got married. They promised God and each other that they would love each other their whole lives by being kind and respectful and faithful. “Faithful” means that you do not love another man like you love your husband or love another woman like you love your wife.

Hosea tried very hard to be a good husband – helping around the house and taking care of the children and earning money for food and clothing and loving Gomer like he promised God he would.

Gomer, however, did not keep her promises to God and Hosea. She did not love Hosea and she was not faithful to him. She saw other people doing very bad things and she went to do them also. She thought they were having fun.

But, actually, the other people were sinning against God. Sinning means we do what we want to do, rather than what God wants us to do.

Gomer did not care if God thought that this stuff was bad; she wanted to do it anyway. Gomer did not think about the punishment for sin, she just did whatever she wanted to do.

Hosea was sad that his wife wanted to do these bad things, but he did not stop loving her. He tried to explain his love for her and God’s love for her and convince her to stay with her family, but it did not work. She left her home and her husband so she could sin with the other people.

This made Hosea upset. He had done as God asked and married Gomer and kept his promises to her and God. Just like we should do when we have a problem, Hosea prayed to God about his marriage. He said, “Lord, I did what you told me to do but Gomer did not keep her promise to me. She does not love me; she does not even love you, Lord. I am sure that her choices make you sad. What should I do, God? I want her home with me and our children.”

Hosea was right - God was very sad about Gomer’s choice to sin. God wants us to love Him and when we choose to sin, it makes him sad. But God loved Gomer. In the Bible, we can see how God answered Hosea’s prayer. Hosea 3:1 reads, “Go get your wife. Bring her home. Love her even though she loves sin – for I love people even though they sin.”

And that is just what Hosea did. He searched a long time for his wife, Gomer. When he finally found her, she told him that she was wrong, that she did not have fun doing those bad things with all the other people. So, Hosea took his wife home and loved her like she had not done anything wrong.

That is how God loves his people. Even though we do bad things, God never stops loving us.