Tag: Prophecy

Digging in Deeper: Amos 7:5-6

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“Then I said, “Lord God, please stop! How will Jacob survive since he is so small?” The Lord relented concerning this. “This will not happen either,” said the Lord God.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

What good is the church? If the church suddenly disappeared from the world, would it make any difference? If you count yourself a follower of Jesus, your knee-jerk anger to that is probably a quick, “Absolutely it would!” but think about it a little more than that. Make it personal. If you are a church person, if your church suddenly vanished from its community, would anyone notice? Unfortunately, for many churches, the answer is no. Yet God intends for His people to have a transformatively significant impact on the world around them. Amos gives us an example of that 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: Amos 4:4-5

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“Come to Bethel and rebel; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tenths every three days. Offer leavened bread as a thank offering, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings, for that is what you Israelites love to do! This is the declaration of the Lord God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever done the right thing in the wrong place? I was watching one of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies with my boys the other day. In one scene, the main character was at a hotel with his family. After a misadventure out in the parking lot late one night, he went back to his room and crawled in bed with his parents only to discover the next morning that it wasn’t his room at all. He had spent the night with another family. That was a pretty funny episode, but as Israel reminds us here, doing things that look right in the wrong places can actually be a pretty dangerous thing as well.

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Morning Musing: Amos 3:7

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“Indeed, the Lord God does nothing without revealing his counsel to his servants the prophets.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Are you the kind of person who likes to know what’s going on? Some people are go-with-the-flow people. They’re content to just sit back and let life come to them. Some are more of the type-A model. They’re the ones who sit on the top of life and are constantly leaning forward to see what’s coming next. I think I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m definitely not type-A, but I also like to be very well-informed as to what is coming down the pipe at me if I can help it. Surprises aren’t really my thing. That’s why I love what God says here through Amos.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 2:4

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“The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Judah for three crimes, even four, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes. The lies that their ancestors followed have led them astray.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Are you a good test-taker? Or are you someone who tends to freeze up when you are put in pressure situations like that? Your answer here really doesn’t have anything to do with how smart you are. I had good friend in high school who was crazy smart, but who struggled mightily to get a decent score on his ACT because he wasn’t a good test-taker. Okay, but why do they have tests in school? Why not just teach the stuff and move on? Because, like it or not, tests are the best way to hold students accountable for what they should have been learning. Without tests there’s no way to really be sure we’ve learned anything. Holding students accountable for what they’ve learned is important. Judah learns that here the hard way.

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