Learning to be blessed/loyalty

I want today to direct your thoughts to Hosea 6 and see the loving kindness in God's longsuffering patience toward us. Hosea 6:1-7 (New American Standard Bible)
1"Come, let us return to the LORD for He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. 2"He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him. 3"So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD, His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth." 4What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes away early. 5Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth; and the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth. 6For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 7But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt treacherously against Me.

We see the covenant response of mankind to God through God's eyes. When we are not loyal enough to Him to heed His Word to us, allowing something in this realm to be more important to us than His Word, we are transgressing the covenant. There is no way that we mortals could not have broken this covenant with God even if Adam had not done so. We have so much more of God's revealed purpose and the sacrifice of Jesus to give us an even greater covenant and we still do not give to Him our first and complete loyalty as He has given to us. God wants us to seek to know him. He wants our first and devoted love above all other recipients in this realm. He wants our conversation and our relationship. There are times when we give this. There are times when we seek Him. But if we treat the relationships we have within this realm as we do the relationship we have with God, those relationships would not survive. God has such a love for us and such a desire to have us as His Sons and share in His glory in eternity that He exhibits to us love and longsuffering patience and kindness that is easily trampled on by human lack of knowledge of God.

It is amazing to me that we have allowed the deception that Satan has distributed so fully among God's own people to succeed. One facet of that deception is that we cannot know God. To have a people that know Him is God's great desire toward us. It is the method we use to know Him that God refutes. God has given His Spirit to minister continually to this realm. One day we will look at the many faceted ministry of the Holy Spirit, but for now let us look at His ministry to lead us in our search to know God.

In the sixth chapter of John, Jesus said that no one had seen the Father but the One who is from the Father but He was showing the difference between being taught of God and seeing God. He said the prophets had declared that God would teach in the New Covenant. The prophets were Isaiah and Jeremiah. Let us look at Jeremiah 31 where he tells the people that there would be a New Covenant. Jeremiah 31:31-34 (New American Standard Bible) 31"Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 33"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34"They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

In that same chapter of John, Jesus continued with His telling the people to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood to have Life in them. There is a Way to the knowledge of God but we must go His Way.

Hosea 6:3 (King James Version) 3Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. There must be a progressive nature to our seeking to know Him. Passive contentment with what we have is not true loyalty to The One Who has given so much to draw us to Him. The knowledge of God does not come from our study. Yes, study is important, but there is a following The Lamb that must inspire our reading. It cannot be from duty or habit and have that progressive quality we need. He will lead us in the way He wants us to go. David saw that leading and likened it to his own way of minding his sheep. It is sometimes in quiet pasture and still waters. It is sometimes in places called the shadow of the Valley of Death. There are enemies that would attack us but He provides a table in their presence. Jesus said to follow Him and take up our cross. Our cross is very individual. No one has one quite like it. Only I can die on my cross because it is my nature that is the enmity to God and that I must surrender to have His Nature live in me.

John 17:3 (New Living Translation) And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

Our covenant response is to seek, follow, and learn at His feet.