Special Saturday Edition
Ethan Barton, Pastoral Resident, Tallowood Baptist Church
Independence is the American virtue. Across the map, we all love to view ourselves as completely autonomous beings. “I am the master of my fate,” William Ernest Henley famously wrote; “I am the captain of my soul.” But Scripture informs us that this degree of independence is a fantasy. Everything and everyone depends on something. God himself is the only exception.
What do we depend on? What do we trust to supply our most fundamental needs? For the Israelites in Hosea’s time, it was their military prowess. Their powerful army had made them a powerful nation, and so that power became the object of their pride and their dependence. It’s astoundingly easy to idolize some part of yourself, and lose sight of God, when that part brings you success. But armies conquer and armies fall, and Hosea forewarned them of a humiliating fall indeed. They had depended entirely on something entirely undependable!
Just about all of us are guilty of the very same mistake. My own story is one of foundations falling out from under me, and all of my own merits in which I had trusted starting to fail me; that’s what it took for God to convince me to place my dependence on him rather than myself. I’m confident most everyone’s stories are just the same.
Speaking through Hosea, God calls his people to sow righteousness, which precisely means trusting and depending entirely on him. Our Father is the giver of all good things, and he is constantly working out the good of those who love him. So when we flourish, pray with thanksgiving; when we struggle, pray for strength; when we despair of life itself, pray adamantly for restoration. We serve a God who has never failed to give us what we truly need.
