“Take with you words and return to the Lord” (Hosea 14:2, NKJV).
What is weighing heavy on you right now? In order to answer that question you need to examine yourself, perhaps requiring much reflection and enlisting the searching help of the Holy Spirit.
But in order to truly excavate your deepest longings and bring them to the surface so that they no longer remain buried in the depths of your inner being, you need to clothe that restlessness with words. As you would search your closet to find just the right outfit for an occasion, so you search for just the right words to capture what you are thinking or feeling or experiencing, both in content and tone.
There is something wonderfully therapeutic about finding the perfect words to express our innermost struggles, aspirations, and conflicts. The right words help us to get a handle on what we are dealing with. They make our challenges manageable in that we can better understand and address the worries, fears, doubts, and anguish inherent in them. Clothing the unseen with words also allows us to convey them to others.
Words not only act to label; they also describe how our struggles are affecting us, what turmoil they are prompting or doubts they are unearthing. The words we employ are not only nouns but also verbs and adjectives and adverbs that paint a picture, a narrative of sorts that captures our wrestling.
Into these narratives, we can interject biblical terminology and promise. We can answer doubts with truth, fears with assurance, guilt with mercy. We can heft our newly clothed struggles and cast them upon our God knowing that He cares for us and is responsive to our pleas.
When God instructs us through His prophet Hosea to take words with us, He does so for expression of repentance. “Take with you words and return to the Lord. Say to Him, ‘Take away all iniquity; receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifice of our lips’” (Hosea 14:2).
The repentance to which God would have us bring words involves three phases overlapping each other: a motivating godly sorrow for sin, a decisive change of mind that turns from sin to God, and a committed outflow of loving obedience. The array we pack will contain fitting words to lead us to life, healing, and joy in Jesus Christ.
Like David in Psalm 51 clothes his repentance in words to express his sin, guilt, conviction, and intent before God, so are we to confess our transgressions to the God against whom we have sinned, not simply by identifying our sin but in communion with Him around the throne of grace. We are to take our faith in Christ who is God’s answer for our sin, and clothe it in the splendor of grace from the wardrobe of Christ’s righteousness. Then we adorn our garb with expressions of thanks in response to all that God has done for us.
What wisdom is there in capturing the longings of our hearts in words?
