Tag: Repentance

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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Digging in Deeper: Amos 5:14-15

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“Pursue good and not evil so that you may live, and the Lord, the God of Armies, will be with you as you have claimed. Hate evil and love good; establish justice at the city gate. Perhaps the Lord, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the most dangerous things in life is to be convinced we are on the right track when we are really on the wrong one. More than once in the writings of the Hebrew prophets we find them including the response of the people to God’s declaration of judgment coming on them. And in several of these responses we find them expressing shock at the reprimand they have received. They genuinely believed they were on the right track and weren’t doing anything wrong. After all, they were practicing various aspects of the religion faithfully. Wasn’t that enough to make God happy? Yet He wanted more. Let’s talk about what more He wanted from them and what this might mean for us.

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Digging in Deeper: 2 Corinthians 2:14-15

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“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in Christ’s triumphal procession and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of him in every place. For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A few weeks ago, I was riding in the car with some friends. As we drove, one of them popped a mint in her mouth. It was something she’d done numerous times before. For whatever reason, though, this time was different. A few minutes later, not realizing what she had done, I began noticing an odd smell in the car that was gradually growing stronger. It was minty fresh, but it was quickly becoming overwhelming. Eventually, wanting to be sure I wasn’t the only one smelling this, I asked what was going on. We finally had to have her spit out the mint and we opened the windows the smell was getting so strong. What has me thinking about that this morning is recent, heartbreaking and infuriating news from the Southern Baptist Convention, and something Paul says here about our lives smelling like Jesus. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Luke 15:14-16

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“After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing. Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He longed to eat his fill from the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one would give him anything.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever considered someone to be irredeemable? It’s easy for us to do. When someone does something terrible enough, our first instinct is to write them off. Or, when someone falls into a pattern of troubling behavior long enough, the ones who have tried to help them out of it for a long time finally throw up their hands and give up on them. Sometimes, when another person just irritates us enough, we pass a final judgment on their character as terrible, and that’s the end of their story as far as we are concerned. How many marriages have ended with the stated reason given being “irreconcilable differences”? In all of this, we begin to believe a lie: That person or situation will never change. This is certainly a tempting lie to believe, but a convincing lie is still a lie. Let’s talk about the truth this morning.

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Morning Musing: Mark 4:21-23

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“He also said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed? isn’t it to be put on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be brought to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus famously describes His followers as the light of the world. In that context, He says that we are not to live such that our light is obscured, but rather to shine for all the world to see. That is, indeed, the purpose of light: to be seen. When we come to these couple of verses in Mark and see Him talking about not putting light under a basket as He did in Matthew, we’re tempted to think He’s talking about the same thing and move on. I’ve thought that before. Taking a closer look, though, reveals something else is in view. Let’s talk this morning about what that is.

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