Christian Devotional – April 1, 2026

Change of Plans, Day 5

What happens if God’s not there? Read Hosea chapter 5.

We often talk about how God is everywhere and God’s presence can be felt everywhere. We also will often discuss how we can come to God at any time and in any way. That knowledge can make a verse like the one we read today seem confusing. Here we have the people who have betrayed God and gone away from God. Then when they start to come back to God, it says he’s not there.

As we understand this verse, what we can see is that yes, God is everywhere. However, God is not at our “beck and call.” This cannot be a situation where we just expect that whenever we decide we want God in our life that we can ask and he will magically appear to do our bidding. God is not a genie in a bottle. If we are seeking him and truly coming to him first and foremost in every area of our life, that is a different situation than what’s being described here. Here, the people are really only coming to him out of convenience and just to see what they can get from God. God is under no obligation to honor a request like that. He is the God of the universe. We are to come to him in humility, not with a laundry list of requests that we expect him to fulfill.

Are we coming to God in humility? Are we coming to God in genuine desire to seek him and to know him more? Or, are we coming to God solely for what we can get from him? If we’re looking at God just as someone to give us stuff all the time, we need to recognize that God is under no obligation to do that. If that is all we want God for, we may find that He is not so quick to answer our requests.

Watch the video devotional here: https://youtu.be/NGGGwKVV73s