Not Just in Times of Trouble

My lovely roommate and I recently decided to read a book of the Bible together, and being the highly random person I am, I picked Hosea.  Now, there was a slight bit of reasoning for why I picked it, the first reason being that I have really never studied the Old Testament, and the second being that, from previous experience, I've also found the most glorious nuggets of God's truth in the very smallest books.  So never discount them.  (I'm not underestimating the value of the larger books, but I just wanted to give my piece for the small ones.)  Anyway, I came upon this verse today:

"Then I will return to my place until they admit their guilt and turn to me.  For as soon as trouble comes, they will earnestly search for me."
-Hosea 5:15

I should probably give you a little background on Hosea, because I definitely had no idea what it was even about.  Basically, God gave the message in the book to Hosea when Israel was consumed in sin and pagan worship and Hosea wrote it down.  The verse written above is God speaking to Hosea about Israel and its downfall due to all of the sin there.  There is a lot about God's anger, which typically scares me when it comes to the Old Testament, but think about it.  God is love, the total opposite of sin.  Its against His entire nature, and He wants us to love Him.  If your children loved something sometimes that was entirely against your nature, wouldn't you be upset?  Its not to say that He doesn't love us; rather, its that He loves us so much that He hates to see us love something that isn't Him.  It talks a lot more about this at the beginning of Hosea, but what I really wanted to emphasize is the verse above. 
Think about how true it is.  I know in my life I often come to God when I need Him, not all the time.  When there's trouble, its easy to turn to Him and admit that we've done wrong because its extremely obvious.  But what God truly wants us to do is trust Him and come to Him instead of sin in the first place.  So, I think that's what we should strive to do.  Just let go and let God instead of trying over and over again to do it ourselves.  After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  Don't rely on yourself time and time again and expect it to work out.  It never does. Chase after your loving and reliable God and make Him the God of your life always.