HOSEA’S CALL
Hosea’s Call[1]—a ministry of faith, hope, and renewal (Hosea 1-3)—is a counseling program for singles and couples who find themselves in a devastating and impossible situation.
In addition to my long experience as a spiritual counselor and work as a premarital counselor for the Department Health & Human Services, I am a certified by the American Association of Christian Counselors and the International Christian Counselors Association as a Mental Health Coach in Premarital, Marital, and Divorce Counseling with particular specializations in “Abuse, Trauma, and the Emotionally Destructive Marriage,” “Affairs and Sexual Betrayal,” and “Coaching for Sexual and Spiritual Intimacy in Marriage.”
My success rate is 100%.
If you truly need God to intervene, contact me at any time of the day or night – 380-260-0408 (or) pastor@firstpuritan.com – Tuesday thru Sunday.[2]
WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT DIVORCE
Many Christians have divorced. Many divorced Christians have remarried. Many now come to sit in the Sabbath pew for reasons that are unclear to me . . . because the unlawfully divorced and unlawfully remarried live in a state of perpetual adultery and cannot enter the Gate of Paradise. And it shall be likewise for the one who has taken a partner who has been unlawfully divorced and for the parent or other who supported an unlawful disunion.
Yes, this is exactly what is spoken in the Word of God . . . no matter what to the contrary you wish to believe, no matter what you’ve been told by the Progressive in the pulpit, and no matter what has been made legally permissible by a civil government.
The cold hand of death and damnation is upon many of you by way of an unexamined religion, a fallen society, cowardly pulpits, and your own want of sin. Perhaps it is time, while you still have time, to search the Scriptures to see for yourself whether these things are so (Acts 17:11).
Or perhaps it’s time for you to stop calling yourself a Christian and accept that the reality that the eternity for which you once hoped has been lost because of your adultery.
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This ministry is not one of what God “suggests” but one of what God commands may or may not be done in the matter of marriage and divorce, of what must be done if a divorce occurs, and under what circumstance the departing spouse must be received back into Covenant no matter how difficult that reconciliation might be.
It is a ministry that warns the adultress[3]—she who has broken a Covenant promise made before Almighty God and a Covenant that can be neither undone nor altered—of the sure and certain punishment that will come to her no matter how she excuses her behavior.
It is a ministry that reminds the adultress of the punishment that will remain reserved for her soul even should she remarry to move on with her life in the misguided assumption that God will “forgive and forget.” Such is never the case in Scripture. Ever. It is always the opposite.
It is a ministry that trumpets Heaven’s ominous warning to anyone who would lie in the arms of a divorced, now condemned in his own adultery for taking what is not his to take, given by one who has no right to give.
Likewise, it is a ministry that gives warning to those parents, family, and friends who have enabled or supported the unlawful disunion of a Covenant promise made before God. These, too, will be found guilty at The Judgment.
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The words of this ministry will be stinging words of death and of eternal darkness and they are meant to be so. And yet its words will offer the hope of unimaginable forgiveness and reconciliation after adultery and divorce, and even after the murder of an unborn—a path so often thought necessary because of the adultery.
There is a path of forgiveness and reconciliation for those who have committed adultery in their marriage, for those who have or who are considering the murder of an unborn soul, for those who now live in an adulterous state of divorce or are moving toward a divorce, and for the aggrieved spouse who wishes to turn back the clock of time.
Take comfort in knowing that God is willing to forgive everything that you have done and that He is able (and desires!) to make new all that was destroyed, and that there is hope that God and spouse will forgive the unforgiveable.
But God’s Hand of Mercy is upon your shoulder today. Take advantage of this great mercy, given at this very hour and at this very moment—because there may be no tomorrow for you to enjoy and because you may have already crossed the line of “no more chances.”
You have but a moment—perhaps this moment only—to choose between Light and Darkness, between God and the Evil One, between Heaven and Hell, and between that for which you lust and that which God commands you must not taste.
Nothing stands in your way expect PRIDE.
THE MINISTRY
My goal is to restore the marriage Covenant that is “irreparable” and I guarantee that I will lead you to your next “together-goal” (step-stones that will undoubtedly change as we go and as progress is made) . . . but I can do so only if you truly want to get there and are willing to place your trust in God.
Although you may not yet be ready to be fully honest with your spouse (or even yourself), I will expect you to be totally honest with “me.” I have served as Master Chaplain in military service and I assure you without any hesitancy that “I’ve heard it before.”
While there have been cases when secular counselors have been ordered by the court to share notes and to reveal what was discussed “in confidence,” we enjoy the pastor-penitent(s) privilege, similar to the attorney-client privilege. In the State of Ohio, no priest or minister may be called to testify “concerning a confession made, or any information confidentially communicated, to the cleric for a religious counseling purpose in the cleric’s professional character.” In other words, I cannot reveal—nor can I be compelled to reveal to anyone (not even your spouse, if we’re meeting separately)—anything that we discuss in our sessions.
The induction process will be very selective. I work with only three couples at any one time so that I can focus on these couples rather than on a business of providing services to “as many as possible.” My couples are not impersonal “once-a-week hourly appointments”; our work will be as often as it will be intense—perhaps meeting two or three times per week, along with phone calls and exercises—all proceeding under the Eye of Almighty God..
We will use of first session so that I can understand where we are, where we want to go, how far you’re willing to go to get there . . . and to help me to see if I can get you from a miserable today to a happily-ever-after tomorrow; I will then draft a plan of action with specific and measurable levels of success and with specific timelines for completion. Our end point may be as minimal as sitting in a room to air the grievances, after which we will have agreed to walk away; at the other end, your together-goal may be total forgiveness and reconciliation.
I am not interested in “perpetual counseling” as a source of “perpetual income.” I will expect you to make serious effort, working through the exercises that we will do both together and which you will do (alone and together) as “homework.” In any case, even in the most of complex and unhealthy of relationships, we will set a countdown timer when you begin counseling and you will have no more than one year to reach your together-goal.
You will pay only for the levels you complete.
I’m old. I’m dying. I’m poor. I draw no salary for my work with the church and I have no time for those who have no interest in what I have to offer. You may discontinue at any time; likewise, I may discontinue working with you at any time if I feel that you’re not being honest with me or with your spouse or if you’re not making sufficient progress.
You will reach your together-goal.
I guarantee it.
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[1] See On the Mischance of a Careless Husband, as Volume 2 of Adultery, Divorce, and Remarriage According to the Word of God for the multiple manifestations of God’s call to Hosea—from what Hosea had to offer in exchange for the redemption of his wife, to the prophet’s obedience in forgiving the physical adultery of Gomer, and to the generosity of the Father in forgiving His children for their adultery in the matter of their Covenantal relationship with The Creator.
[2] Because priests and ministers are generally occupied with services, hospital visits, etc., on Saturday and Sunday. many in the clergy take “Monday” to keep the Sabbath.
[3] The pulpit at First Puritan makes no attempt to be “politically correct” or artificially inclusive to soothe the artificially offended and argues that, before the reader can assign any merit whatsoever to what is being said in the pulpit, the reader must first have a sufficient facility with the language as well as the accompanying willingness to comprehend what is being said in the pulpit.
In Scripture, the term “adultery” (as are “divorce,” “harlotry,” and “whoredom”) is used in metaphor for a turning away from one’s First Love, God. It is used less in reference to the physical adultery of a spouse and more-oft directed toward the female bride (the Church) leaving the male bridegroom (Christ).
“Adultress” (the archaically unused but technically correct spelling of “adulteress,” often confused with the homophone “adulterous”) is used to reference the female Church as she stands before the male Bridegroom. Here, the “female” adultress has nothing to do with a sexual hierarchy or to insinuate that “she” is any more or less guilty than “he”; its use is merely to conform to the speech pattern used by the Church for thousands of years. It is a speech pattern that may offend today’s overly sensitive dullard but is a speech pattern that sheds light on the theological analogy—an analogy used throughout both the Old and New Testaments and an analogy used by Christ Himself.
In preserving the grammatical practice of Scripture and to avoid the cumbersome wife/husband vs. man/woman and “she to him and in like manner he to her,” the text is presented in the style that “she” commits the adultery against both God and her husband and we leave it to the sensible reader to understand that the situation could just as easily be reversed. It is not that the man does not commit adultery; in the text, “she” takes the generic blame for the physical adultery against her husband merely because we follow the word pattern of Scripture.