If you are troubled by debt, think of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet of the one true God, my God, the God of Moses and Israel, whose son Jesus, became man through the Blessed Virgin Mary, to redeem us from the consequences of sin, so that we may have eternal life with Them in paradise. Hosea lived about 700 years before the birth of Jesus and lived in the northern kingdom of Israel. The Israelites have been living in prosperity for some time because Jeroboam II was king and he extended the borders of Israel further than they had been since Solomon’s reign. Tribute money from vassal nations poured into Israel’s treasury and the people became prosperous. But with prosperity, the Israelites again forgot about our God who freed them from slavery in Egypt and fell back into moral and spiritual degradation. Idolatry was rampant as was fornication, adultery, drunkenness, perversion and debauchery. The people were fornicating in the temples that they built for Baal, their god of fertility. Indeed, even human sacrifices were offered to their idols.

So God sent Hosea to tell the people that He was much displeased with them. They had broken the first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.” God viewed Israel’s idolatry as spiritual adultery. God considered Israel to be His Wife. When Israel worshipped other false gods, it is spiritual adultery. To let Hosea feel the emotional pains of adultery so that Hosea could accurately explain to the people of Israel what they had done to God by their idolatry of the golden cows and Baal, God told Hosea to marry Gomer who by her nature was an unfaithful woman, a woman who easily gave her herself to men for material things. The LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD.”

You think your debt problems are bothering you? What if you were Hosea and God told you to marry a woman who is known to be unfaithful, a female Tiger Woods, but without the money of Tiger. Your problems are nothing compared to Hosea’s. So Hosea married Gomer and they had two children. After Gomer had their third child, Hosea sensed that Gomer was getting bored at home and that their third child was not his. God told Hosea to name his third child “Lo-ammi” meaning “Not mine.”

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