This from Hosea 8 for me today:
Israel has forgotten his Maker
and built palaces
This seems to be the perpetual problem of Israel: they forget the Lord when things go well for them. God sends prophets to call them back. They kill them. God sends Babylonians (or whoever) to kick their butts and haul them into slavery. They realize their lost-ness. They return to God.
It seems that there is much the same pattern in my life. Do I seek the Lord as earnestly in good times as I do in bad?
If the Lord is after me: my heart, my affections, my attention, and the only way that he can get that is through trials and tribulations, then perhaps I better be more prepared for more trials and tribulations.
Or perhaps I need to learn the fuller, richer, wiser discipline of celebrating the victories, the sweet times with the Lord rather than apart from him. How glorious is would be to build the palaces with my Maker, rather than forgetting Him.
I think that there is a particularly daunting challenge here for those of us in ministry. It is scarily easy to build a palace called "ministry" in the name of Jesus but to forget him in the process.
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