Dear Friends,
Have you ever felt, “Why is everything such a mess?” Ever wondered why everything seems to be going wrong? Today’s devotional gives you one possible explanation. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Hosea 13:6-8 (ESV)

  6 but when they had grazed,[a] they became full,
  they were filled, and their heart was lifted up;
  therefore they forgot me.
  7 So I am to them like a lion;
  like a leopard I will lurk beside the way.
  8 I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs;
  I will tear open their breast,
  and there I will devour them like a lion,
  as a wild beast would rip them open.

“When men forget God, they may expect that they will meet with some terrible judgments; and God’s own people especially will find this to be the case with them if they forget the Lord. Our God is a very jealous God; and when his children will set their hearts on other objects instead of upon himself, he will take care to embitter those objects of their affection to them, he will make their idols to be loathed by them. If God did not love us very much, he would think little of our faults, but just because he loves us so much, he cannot bear that any part of our heart’s affection should go away from himself. So, if he sees that we deal unfaithfully with him, he will make us realize that sin is an exceedingly evil and bitter thing. His anger against us will be like that of a bear that is robbed of her whelps, or of a lion or leopard leaping upon his prey.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit LII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1906), p. 96]