Hosea 10:12 Sow righteousness for yourselves,
reap the fruit of unfailing love,
and break up your unplowed ground;
for it is time to seek the Lord,
until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.
Hosea, John the Baptist, and Jesus all preached repentance—get right with God. Deal with sin. God will then give us his righteousness. What a wonderful exchange.
There is a need for major sustained repentance in our country before it is too late.
Sow righteousness means to live a righteous life. To live a righteous life among one another is to live a life of integrity and truth. Do righteous things. The church seeks to lay the blame for our decline at the feet of the world and the devil, and yet we do not really sense any need for improvement in our spiritual lives. We have been lulled to sleep by the enemy, led to believe our lack of commitment has not, in any way, contributed to the spiritual condition in our world and the decline of the church. While I agree that we face opposition and fight spiritual battles, I also know it is time for the church to assume some ownership in our decline. The church is called to repent of our sin and return to the Lord.
Break up our fallow ground. Land that is unused or idle. Fallow ground is ‘ground that has been left unplowed and become hard.’ It takes intentional work to break up fallow ground. In other words – God wants to use us to reproduce and bring forth a harvest. The question is – are we willing to break up our fallow ground in order to see the harvest?
It is time to seek the LORD. Urgent – for it is time to seek the LORD. God warned that time was running out, especially for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Sadly they would not heed His warning, and would eventually be conquered by the Assyrians. God was pleading with Israel to renew their commitment to Him and serve Him in complete obedience and surrender.
I believe we are seeing elements of God’s judgment. The urgency is real. The moral collapse in our nation is real. We cannot ignore it or take it lightly.
The needs are great in our day. Do we sense the urgency and have a desire to rise to the occasion by the help of the Lord? Will we fully surrender to God? Or do we hang on to doing what we want in some areas of our life.?
In the face of today’s deepening darkness and divine judgments, will we seek God with sincere repentance, overcoming faith and mountain moving prayer? Our hope is in turning to God.
How long are we to seek the Lord?
Till He comes.
Seek the Lord until we experience a genuine move of the Holy Spirit among us that transforms our complacence into committed zeal for the Lord. What if we all had a genuine desire to serve the Lord and reach the lost? What a difference we would see – not only in our church, but in our community as well.
If we strive to know God, He promises to draw near to us. We must press forward always to try to know Him better and better, until He consumes our whole life.
God showers his righteousness on us. God pours out revival.
The next thing that happens is rain. Water for the seed. This is God’s revival. This is the whole point of Hosea’s lesson to his people. If we will break the ground and sow the seed, God will draw near and water that crop, refresh the earth and a bountiful harvest will result. God guarantees it. We can’t make it rain. But we can prepare the soil, and sow the seed and trust God to send his rain. God is a great God who always keeps his promises. If we will break our hard heart, or allow God to do it, and if we will sow righteousness, he promises to pour out his rain of revival and love upon us.
“Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” Hos 6:3
God wants to give us showers of blessing. He wants to revive our church today. But we must make the preparations for the rain. He won’t water the fields until they’re ready.
Too often we want revival to be poured out without opening our heart and soul before God. Notice – Hosea said before the rains fall upon us that we must realize that it is time to seek the Lord! To both realize and do it – To seek the Lord with a broken and contrite heart will break up the fallow ground and doing so will open our hearts to receive the revival that God has for us!
What should we think of a farmer who allowed his finest field to lie fallow year after year?
For it is time Now is the time. Persistency is commanded … seek the Lord until He comes and rains righteousness upon us.
“Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”.
Suppose there is a pause between the seeking and the blessing, do not look in some other direction, but continue to seek the Lord.
Prayer and deep repentance is needed! A call to action.
It is time for us to seek the Lord with a willingness to allow the Spirit to break up the fallow ground in our lives. If the Lord has spoken to you today, I urge you to come and seek Him for guidance and direction. Maybe you need to confess a need or seek wisdom and strength to serve Him.
I think we are standing at a critical hour. Will we experience calamity or revival? Maybe both. Time will tell. But we must seek God fervently. I think we are to pray as never before. It is time to seek the Lord. Our future depends on it.
For it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes!