Hosea 10:12

When Hosea was told by the Lord to prophesy and preach to the children on Israel, he was supposed to stress the point that Israel had gotten away from God and had started to do their own thing. He was more of an object lesson because God told him to marry a whore and have children and show the nation of Israel what exactly they had been doing. Israel had gotten away from God and took on different worldly things and started to serve the world instead of God. This verse is toward the end on the book of Hosea but he is starting to wrap it up with them and he is saying to them break up that fallow unused ground and start seeking the Lord again. Fallow ground is land that had once been used to lay crops and was used to planting and farming but is now lying dormant and dried up unused ground. That is the way that Hosea is trying to tell Israel that they had become. Israel was once a great nation and one that fallowed God but they started to get involved in different worship and not in the Lord. That is what Hosea is saying to them is they have not been used in a long time and they have been dried up spiritually as a nation. Hosea is stressing that point on them and saying they need to break it up. When farmers break up the fallow ground it becomes much softer and more soil like then from when it was hard and dried up. When they break up the dry ground it opens the ground back up for buisness and allows them to plant and grow crops again. Hosea is telling them that they need to break up that dry, unused ground in their lives and allow the Lord to come in and start working in them and through them again. That is what Hosea was telling the children of Israel. But how does this pertain to us these present days? Sure this is a great story of how God spoke to the Israelites and how they got away from God. But how do we take this to heart and try to learn from it? Well I have three things of where without a doubt us as individuals, as church's, and as Christians serving God have gone dry and where we have allowed ourselves to be hard and unused. There are many more, I'm sure, but these are three obvious things that should be quite common and an easy part of our everyday schedule. The first to look at would have to be praying. Christians all over America have really slid back and become lazy on their prayer lives. Not only as individual Christians are we lacking prayer but even as whole church families we have began to slip back in the time we take to talk to the Lord and praise Him. People do not pray as much anymore, and when we do pray it does not have our full respect and attention to the fact that we are talking to God. When we pray sometimes it just becomes a habit to just say stuff and not really think about where your saying it to. We often times forget that we are actually talking to our Lord and Saviour, the one who died for us. There is not much respect and adoration toward Him anymore. Most people only call on the Lord when they want something and they feel like He is some magic jeanee that if we ask for what we want from Him and tell Him what we need we will get it. But not many of us spend the time to go to Him and thank Him for what He has given to us and praise Him for all He has done. Prayer is a lot about asking Him for what we want now days rather than just wanting to talk to Him. I mean if you ever try to pray and talk to God without asking for one thing its hard because that is what we normally think, but if you try to not ask for anything and just go to Him just to talk and praise Him it really is a sweet time in fellowship with the Lord. It's just that now days we either go to Him to ask Him for something we want for our greedy selves or we don't go to Him much at all. This is where we are really starting to lack and become dry in our hearts and I'm thinking that we need to start breaking up that fallow ground and pray and fellowship with the Lord more.

The second thing that we are lacking in as Christians is reading our Bibles. Even though there are many who may pray there are very much even fewer people who read their Bible. Usually when people pray they think that God answers them and they can just hear Him inside them. Many times that just our consciounce telling us the answer that we want to hear. God doesn't speak back to us by telling us in our head what to do. Now the Holy Spirit does lead us and guide us with right and wrong but the Lord does not talk to us in our minds. How God answers back is by when we read and study His word and seek His will. The Lord speaks to us through the reading of His word and when we study it the Holy Spirit reveales and teaches us things that help us grow and walk closer with the Lord. Many people today don't read their Bibles I believe because they think it might be a waste of time and its just a bunch of stories. And while it may be a lot of stories it is all truth and we can all take something out of each and every passage and apply it to our lives and try to better ourselves and serve Him better. Only people that read the Bible regularly can tell you what a blessing it is to just read and spend time studying the Word of God and the many lessons it has for us. And we ought not just read it when we really need help with something like the prayer deal. We shouldn't only go and search the Bible when we need some advice and direction in our lives and let it only be a blessing to us then. The Bible should be a continuious non stop blessing in our lives and always a pleasure to dig deep in it and find out what it has in store for us as Christians. That is another thing where we are becoming fallow in our spiritueality and its time for us to break it us and use it again and get back to serving God with it.

The final most obvious thing we need to start to break up the ground in is our soul winning and witnessing to other people about the Lord. There are many people out there that are lost. They more than likely out number us Christians and it is up to us Christians to witness to the lost and show them the way to the Lord and lead them to Him. It's not just a good nice courtesy thing that Christians should do because they think its good but it is a command from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself. Matthew 28:18-20 is the great commision and it commands us to go and teach to everyone and show the lost the only way to be saved and lead them to the Lord. This is probably the biggest lack now days out of reading the Bible and praying. Not many people go out on one day a week with their church to try to tell the lost about the Lord. And those people that don't even take the opportunity to go out with the church probably don't even witness to any of their accuantenses in their every day life. If people don't take the wide open opportunity to do it with other people the more than likely defanitly don't do it by themselves. It's a very sad thing to hear that we don't care enough about other people to try to show them the way to go to Heaven and keep themselves from burning in hell but it is a very true thing.
The reason for us all being this fallow and dried up in our walk with the Lord is because we have become lazy and satisfied! Satisfaction is the worst thing that we can have in our Christian walk with the Lord and our witnessing. When we become satisfied with where we are it causes us to become lazy and changes our mindset to where if we just do this only its good enough and thats all I will do. It is never enough!!! There is no such thing as enough in our Christian walk and shame on us for getting to the place where we are spiritually satisfied and content with our walk with the Lord. As a closing I will just say that we should never become content with ourselves. We should always want more and more and more and never stop until He comes and takes us home. We need to break up that fallow ground because we are way past due and it is time to seek the Lord now, and serve Him more now, and keep going higher until He comes again!