I am Gomer
Gomer.
Who names a woman “Gomer”? In the Middle Eastern culture where your name is your verb, this name defined who she was destined to become. Knowing that, why on earth go with a name which means “a wife of whoredoms”? She worked hard to live up to her name and as a result she is perhaps one of the most unlikely biblical women of influence many of us could imagine.
We meet Gomer in the book of Hosea. God calls the prophet Hosea to take Gomer as his wife. In that day and time it was not the cultural norm for men set apart by God who were prophets in the church to marry sinful women. I can only imagine the eyes God’s instruction and Hosea’s obedience raised! Imagine if the pastor at your church married a Gomer. Things would get tense fast! Yet God, in His infinite wisdom, knew He was writing an epic love story.
See, my girl Gomer, walked a path she knew. Gomer had an emptiness in her she tried desperately to fill with things of this world. She sought desires of the flesh thinking they would ease the ache in her soul. The more she tried, the more she needed. Somehow instead of the hole being patched, it grew wider with each attempt to fill it with substitute gods. It took Gomer some time before she realized the hole in her heart was meant to be filled by her One and Only love, God Himself.
Unfortunately it takes a while to accept God’s love because she is a woman entrenched in generational patterns and curses. She is walking a path around and around a mountain of sin because she knows her mountain. Every stumbling rock in her path and dip in the road are familiar to her. The brokenness and the ache she carries are comforting somehow because they are known…constant companions even.
Every day she gets up and sets out – albeit subconsciously – to walk out the lies she has been told about her worth. Her time is spent proving them to be true. She is so set on the lies being her truth she sabotages any chance she has for success. Gomer kept returning to her old patterns though God was relentlessly pursuing her. She couldn’t accept His love because she was so locked into the labels and lies she believed about herself. She had built a wall around her heart. The lies and actions that supported them were inside the walls with her but the truth God kept trying to speak over her were locked outside her self-imposed gates.
She was the mountain in her own way.
It is so easy to sit in judgment of Gomer. Yet if we would get gut-level honest with ourselves, we might have to acknowledge we all journey around some of these same mountains.
We are desperate to be loved so we pretend physical affection is love and we end up in a string of toxic relationships with grave consequences. We are desperate to prove no one could ever love us, so we allow our physical temples to be a garbage dump of junk food and our health deteriorates. We are desperate to meet the world’s standard of beauty, so we starve ourselves only to end up empty.We are desperate to keep up with the Joneses, so we max out our credit cards only to find we may measure up in material goods but the hole is still there.
I could go on and on with these examples but I am certain you get the point and can fill in the blanks, “I am so desperate for (name your poison) that I (name the sin you use to numb or temporarily fill this need).
It hurts my heart to admit in this way I AM GOMER.
I procrastinate my progress.
I block my blessings.
I defer my destiny.
I AM the mountain in my own way.
I have spent a lifetime desperate to fill a hole in my heart formed from being unwanted from conception. The enemy has hot glued a pack of lies to my soul and twisted my true identity in an effort to disarm me for kingdom work. I cannot accept God (or anyone else for that matter) could possibly love me in all my messiness so I set out to prove myself undeserving. Instead of humbling myself at His feet to thank Him for His love, I work to demonstrate the many reasons why I don’t deserve and cannot accept His perfect love.
When you accept the lies of the enemy as truth, you have allowed him to twist your true identity in an effort to disarm you for kingdom work. Share on XPraise God, my attempts to derail His affection for me fail. Every. Single. Time. Just as Gomer’s attempts failed repeatedly, I have learned God’s love is relentless. It is not and never will be conditional. It is forever rooted in who He is, not who I am, and has absolutely zero to do with my goodness or worthiness.
Perhaps you are like Gomer and me and have bought a sack of lies straight from the devil. Perhaps allowing God to love you is a challenge because you don’t feel deserving of such a gift. Hear me say to you, we believe lies. God loves us so much He sent His Son to pay our debts. He has come to set us free. The redemption happened for Gomer when she stopped running back to her sin and allowed God to love her amidst all the mess she created.
She accepted God’s mercy as He swept up the broken carnage of her life. He bound her wounds and healed her with His love and His truth. God loved her into wholeness and she never had to struggle to fill the hole in her heart again.
He does the same for us if we let Him. His love is the redemption for our broken stories. Our Heavenly Father can handle whatever we throw at Him because He alone is the Source of our blessing and the Author of our destiny. He is a mountain moving God and is happy to move us out of our own way if we let Him.
I am not certain where you are in your journey with God but today I pray you will be brave enough to call a thing a thing. If you have false idols in your life that you have used to fill a hole in your heart, confess it to God and trust He forgives you. You may find yourself starting to journey around your old mountains in different seasons in the future but each time God comes to rescue you. His pursuit of you will not end because His love for you knows no end. Trust that today and begin the path to the redemption only God can give. He is so good. All the time.
ROWing stands for Rebuilding Our Walls.It is about clearing out the rubble and finding the redemption in your story so you leave a better legacy for generations to come. She has a passion to see women allow God to heal their hearts and to walk in truth and power according to His Word. www.rowinginfaith.com
- I am Gomer - May 4, 2018
Loved what you said about having false idols to fill a hole in our hearts. I can truly relate! Thanks for this message!
Susan, so glad you enjoyed the post. May we all keep getting better at spotting those and getting them out of our lives!
Your love and grace for Gomer, helps us find ours! Thank you for this sweet write-up.
Tammy, thanks for your kind words. I do love my girl Gomer! Blessings!
Wow! This was an amazing piece…honestly, I’m a bit undone right now. This. Is. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing your heart and God’s truths!
Amy Elaine, I am deeply touched by your kind words. I can’t begin to state how much they mean as I felt this one was truly God-breathed. I pray God continues to speak to you in these areas so you can be your best self! Blessings!
Amen to all of this! I can certainly relate to Gomer- searching for worth in “things”- looking for love in all the wrong places- pursuing “something” to fill the hole in my heart- returning to the same sin over and over again- only to find that the One who carried all I ever needed was pursuing ME!! I LOVE the book Redeming love too! Such a powerful message! Well done!
Rachel, Thanks for the positive words. God blessed me with His words and insight for this post. Gomer is my girl!
I love the title and can relate. When I finally accepted the love of God, He tore down my mountains. His love is amazing. Thank you for writing this.
Thanks, Maria! So humbled you could relate and know His amazing love! Blessings!
I am a mountain in my own way. Whoa, Angel. I will be pondering the meaning of this in my own life for a while. Thank you for challenging me today. Visiting you from the Grace and Truth link up. laurensparks.net
Lauren, glad the words spoke to you and provided food for thought. Have a blessed day! ~Tammy
God did include some shocking people in the Bible, so we can relate to their imperfection. He knows our hearts well!
Thanks, Sarah! I for one am glad God included less than perfect people in His word because I am less than perfect! Blessings!
This is wonderful. And I love the book recommendation of “Captivating.” Such a perfect way to follow up on this topic.
Thanks so much! Captivating is a perfect follow up, Bailey! It was an excellent read and I one I regularly need to revisit I think!
Wow! Very powerful and moving. It is wonderful to be able to step into a place of receiving the love of our Heavenly Father and embark on a new journey in HIm. Thank you for this post.
Rosemerry, so glad this post moved you. I pray we all welcome the Father’s love every day. Blessings!
This was perfect. In the season where I am calling a “Thing a thing”, it can be scary. But thankfully God is patient with his daughter’s. And loves us enough to keep coming back for us. I pray every woman gets to experience his love.
Angel, I pray the very same thing. This world is desperate for the women of God to begin walking in freedom!
I loved this perspective! Gomer was in her own way. Much to think about.
Glad to make you think. It is so important we never stop wrestling with and asking questions of God. His Word is alive!
“Unfortunately it takes a while to accept God’s love because she is a woman entrenched in generational patterns and curses”…good word for the women today. Everyone needs love and acceptance.
Rebekah, thanks for taking the time to read and to leave a comment. I really appreciate it! Have an amazing weekend!
Hello! I found your post through Dawn Klinge’s Friday, May 4 link up. This is my first time on this link up. Great post! The title caught my attention, and I had to read it. I am Gomer, too; we all are in some way, you’re right. Thankfully, God doesn’t give up on us as quickly as we give up on ourselves. Recently, I saw a modern day version of the Hosea and Gomer story in a Bible study. Here’s the link to the first part of it on YouTube. You can follow the links after each part to watch the whole thing. It’s really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyWWXSwtPP0
Thanks again for sharing the post.
I am glad you took time to read this post today and that it resonated with you. Thanks for sharing this video series as well. I will have to check it out this weekend. I can’t wait! I appreciate your kindness!
So good! I love the story of Gomer and Hosea because I was also called to be a Hosea – not like a prophet, but called to love a Gomer. I am telling my story at God Spins a Yarn, I almost called my blog ” I am Hosea, or “The female Hosea” but thought it might come off pretentious. Basically God used the story of Hosea and Gomer to remind me that it is He who changes people, my job is to trust and obey – I thank God for everything he has done in our lives and continues to do!
To be clear – I do see the Gomer in myself as well!! My husband and I both had a lot of work and trust to do to get as far as we have!
Blessed Mess, how awesome of a God do we have?!?! Glad He is working His redemptive powers through you and your husband. May you marriage be one overflowing with God’s grace and mercy!
So honest and lovely. Yes, we want to recoil and say we are not a Gomer and then we realize we are. We justify her sin is worse than ours, and yet it is not. Thanks, Tammy. May we admit we are Gomer’s and walk in freedom and believe God when he says he loves us. Unconditionally.
This post made me want to know more about Gomer. Did she ever accept God’s love? Was her mother a prostitute and was this the life she grew up with? What happened in her life that made her feel so trapped in that lifestyle? What was her childhood like? What did she think about Hosea marrying her? How many times did she try and stop her profession and then hate herself because she kept going back?
Theresa, thank you for your words! They touch my heart. Most importantly I am touched by your yearning to know more about my girl Gomer. I hope you will take time this weekend to read the rest of the story and do some digging into what scholars have to say about this woman. Once you have a solid biblical basis for her story I encourage you to read Francine River’s Redeeming Love. It makes you love her and understand her even more. Can’t wait to hear what you think of the rest of Gomer’s story! Blessings!
Absolutely beautiful!!!
Mandi, thank you. That means so much to me!
The title of your post drew me to read it,Why? I knew you understood something. I knew you saw us all as Gomers in some capacity. And I was right. Oh, to see one’s worth in Christ takes a constant dying to ourselves and the lies around us. I fail so often and revert to a name that tells all about my nature outside of Christ. Like my name Mary, Mara, bitter. Yes outside of Christ I am, very. In Christ I am redeemed and seen through the blood. I am glad I read this.
What a powerful post! Thank you, Tammy, for making us see ourselves as Gomers. Blessedly, God’s mercy and love are relentless. Abundant blessings to you!
Thanks so much, Mari-Anna! I pray abundant blessings for you as well! Happy Friday!
Powerful! I am Gomer, too! I’ve walks round and round that mountain, fearing God’s touch… But, OH, sweet mercy and love finally broke through and set me free! Blessings to you both as you share this message of hope and restoration!
Praise God for that fresh mercy, Liz. Heaven knows we are all in need of it! Have an amazing weekend!
I love this! Gomer is such an inspiration because she proves that God will take us at our lowest moments and lift us up with His grace and mercy. Thank you for the encouragement!
Jaime, you are exactly right! He is a God of justice and righteousness which involves a lifting up and restoration of dignity and honor. Thanks for your kind words!