“Come, let us return to the Lord for He has torn us, that He may heal us. He has struck us down and He will bind us up.”
– Hosea 6:1
What a powerful picture of God’s grace in disciplining us, and God’s love in refining us. Hosea says, “Let us return to the Lord for He has torn us.”
Why? Why has God disciplined us in this way? So that He may heal us? God has struck us down and He will bind us up. God tears down in order to heal.
God strikes down in order to bind up. God refines us with His discipline. God purifies us. We know this from Hebrews chapter 12. The illustration that God gives us there of how any loving parent lovingly disciplines their children for their good, for their refinement, for their joy. Not because they wish their children ill, but because they wish their children good. They want the best for their children so they discipline to teach them to walk in ways that are good for them and good for others and glorifying to God.
Let’s do this in our relationships with God. Let’s return to the Lord. Let’s pray. God, do whatever work is needed in each of our lives to cleanse us of sin, to purify us from sin, to make us holy. God, I pray for that in my life. God, I pray that you would purify me. I pray for your loving discipline in my life. I want it. I need it. God, we pray for this in each of our lives. We want to be holy. We want to be pure.
We want to walk in ways that are good and right and just and loving and merciful. We want to be more like you, Jesus and we know we are prone to sin in all kinds of ways. We know that we often have blind spots where we don’t see our sinfulness. God, expose our blind spots. Help us to see our sin and help us to run from it. God, we want to be pure. God, we want to turn to you with all of our hearts and all of our souls and all of our minds and all of our strength.
With everything in us, we want to return to you. We pray, tear us down that you may heal us. Strike us down that you may bind us up. Do whatever you and your wisdom and your love and your mercy toward us. Do whatever you need to do to refine us and to purify us, to make us holy, to make us more like Jesus. God, we pray that at the end of today, we would look more like Jesus than we do right now. That we would be farther from sin and more in love with you.
God, we pray this in Jesus’ name, the name of the one who makes holiness and purity and refining in our lives possible by His grace. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
