Hosea had a harshest experience of embittered love, frustrated love. Was it meant to be a micro experience so his kin and neighbors at his elbows would feel badly and pray for him? No. God had this godly man experience the disloyalty of his beloved wife to bear in himself the wound of God for Israel. Hosea embraced for the WHOLE, the macro.

Romans 14:7 For none of us lives for himself and none dies for himself. 14:8 If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

I believe we are seeing our personal experiences set up to see this. Our experience reflects this for the sake of the whole, because we are no longer to live or die to ourselves.

So many believers are thinking their lives are micro, just about them: my pain, my hurt. No longer. The aerial view yesterday on the airplane opened SO much before the Lord. Gary, IN became a transitor radio data board; the mountain ranges became a wrinkle on a shirt. His order, His parallels from macro to micro. We must feed into the bigger picture. (Henry Blackaby speaks to this in Experiencing God.)

The power of God is when we realize we are a part of the Large Gospel Story.

Scripturally (Matt 14), this plays out as Jesus CAME to the boat tossed by the contrary winds in the middle of the sea. Peter saw the COMING. He wanted to do what Jesus was doing. If this WAS Jesus, tell me to do the SAME thing. (It IS Jesus.) This is a Kingdom yearning in Peter and starting to open much pleasure in Jesus for Peter to rise up beyond his own circumstances into the realm of what Jesus is doing. Jesus did command/order him to do the SAME thing. So Peter started the “CAME” to Jesus (same Greek word). Peter then saw the earthly wind and fright filled him. Jesus could have seen this fulfilled in Peter, doing the SAME thing as Jesus, but Peter got caught up in the micro. Peter did fall short (yet ventured out). I feel in Jesus’ words of disappointment in WHY do you doubt, not have more faith/trust, that He wants us each inevitably to fulfill the BIG picture, not just the micro picture of our own wounds.

I believe our times are speaking: there is no longer just a micro version of life, living or dying merely to ourselves.