Tag: Listening to God

Morning Musing: Amos 8:11-12

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“Look, the days are coming – this is the declaration of the Lord God – when I will send a famine through the land; not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and roam from north to east seeking the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever made someone so mad that they wouldn’t talk to you? That’s a rough place to be. If they’re yelling and screaming, at least they’re engaging with you about it. You can work with that. But silence? You feel cut off. You don’t know what they’re thinking. Eventually you start to get desperate for something, anything from them. The longer the silence stretches on, the worse it gets. This is the kind of judgment Amos describes here, and it sounds pretty terrible indeed. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Mark 9:5-7

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“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it’s good for us to be here. Let’s set up three shelters: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’ – because he did not know what to say, since they were terrified. A cloud appear, overshadowing them, and a voice came from the cloud: ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him!'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been around someone who is a nervous talker? That’s always an interesting experience. Nervous talkers express their anxiety with words. The words may not be about the anxiety itself, but the higher their anxiety level goes, the more words come out of their mouths. They’ll talk about anything. Really what you’re getting is a kind of stream-of-consciousness as they do everything they can think of to reduce their nervousness. The trouble is, when words are coming out in a flood, sometimes those words aren’t well thought out or particularly suited to the situation. In most situations when we feel overwhelmed, the best thing to do is not to talk, but to listen. Peter had to be reminded of that here. Let’s learn the lesson with him this morning.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 8:11

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“Look, the days are coming — this is the declaration of the Lord God — when I will send a famine through the land: not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Did you ever get separated from your parents when you were a kid? I’ll tell you a story of my own in just a second, but there are few things that feel scarier than that. This fear is not rooted primarily in the thought of what could happen to you without them nearby, but rather in something entirely simpler than that: being alone. We weren’t made to be alone. Being separated from people is scary. Feeling separated from God should be even more so. He obviously thinks so in light of what He says to the people here.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 4:6

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“I gave you absolutely nothing to eat in all your cities, a shortage of food in all your communities, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord’s declaration.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

“This is for your own good.” Did you ever hear that growing up? I’m grateful to say I don’t think I did. But what is usually the context of that particular gem of parental wisdom? It means something is about to happen that you aren’t going to like–probably a punishment of some kind. And if someone saw the outcome of whatever “this” was without the appropriate context, whoever did it was probably going to look pretty bad. That’s kind of the situation we have here.

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Digging in Deeper: Hosea 7:13

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“Woe to them, for they fled from me; destruction to them, for they rebelled against me! Though I want to redeem them, they speak lies against me.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

This verse starts out the way most folks expect the prophets to go. There goes God judging the people again, promising doom and destruction on them. It ends the way we would expect something from the prophets to end. There goes God again, accusing the people of wrongdoing. It’s that thing in the middle that catches us off guard. God wants to redeem them? Wait, what? Let’s look into that one a bit more.

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