This is a warning to the Israelites that should send chills down our spine. In the Old Testament always remember to think of the Israelites as ourselves as Christian’s. This is the family that we have been grafted into when we accept Jesus as our lord and savior. We should always be careful and learn from the past. We should learn from the past and use it as spiritual wisdom today. The Israelites have been blessed at the time of Amos, just like America today. They still had their religious festivals and meetings just like we have Easter, Christmas, and church every Sunday. God has watched the Israelites ignore all of the warnings from him. He has also watched the Israelites treat all of the religious festivals and meetings as a to do list and not for true worship. Sound familiar? I know many times I have treated Easter and Christmas as just another holiday to celebrate. Sure I go to church and give God thanks because I’m supposed too, but it has also just become something I do because I have always done it. This is dangerous waters to tread in. In this chapter of Amos this is exactly what the Israelites are doing, and God has become totally fed up with them and they have gotten to the point where God will not hear their repentance. Sometimes I wonder if we have gotten to this point. In America I believe we have become this. In America we abort children for our convenience, we have become a hub for sex trafficking, there are pedophiles on every block, we don’t know the difference between a man and a woman, Homosexualism is celebrated and has corrupted God’s interpretation of marriage, it is unheard of for any couple to save themselves sexually for marriage, prosperity and comfort makes you successful, and poor lower class people are used for economical growth for the wealthy. This is the America we live in and ignore. We have been greatly blessed by God but have taken him out of every aspect of life as we Christian’s stand idly by and we should fear that we could get to a point of no repentance just like the Israelites did. Changing this nation is going to start with everyone’s personal decision to put God first in their lives. Fathers are the spiritual leaders of the home. God fearing fathers can change the direction of their families for generations. The ripple effect of what could happen in this country would be enormous if every father made it their personal mission for their whole family to follow Jesus. I want to challenge you as father’s and husband’s today to always make it your #1 goal to make sure your wife and kids see and know for a fact that you love Jesus more than anything this world can offer. Just doing this can change the direction of your family and change the direction of this nation. Make God an everyday thing not just a Sunday thing. Make sure your family sees you walking with God and not just visiting. Make him a staple in every choice and every decision you make. Every man’s mission should be to make sure they see their family in heaven one day. It is the most important God given mission that we have been given. Love y’all! Have a great day!
Amos 8:1-14
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“The Lord God showed me this: a basket of summer fruit. He asked me, “What do you see, Amos? ” I replied, “A basket of summer fruit.” , The Lord said to me, “The end has come for my people Israel; I will no longer spare them. In that day the temple songs will become wailing” — this is the Lord God’s declaration. “Many dead bodies, thrown everywhere! Silence! ” Hear this, you who trample on the needy and do away with the poor of the land, asking, “When will the New Moon be over so we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, so we may market wheat? We can reduce the measure while increasing the price and cheat with dishonest scales. We can buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and even sell the chaff! ” The Lord has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: , I will never forget all their deeds. Because of this, won’t the land quake and all who dwell in it mourn? All of it will rise like the Nile; it will surge and then subside like the Nile in Egypt. And in that day — this is the declaration of the Lord God — I will make the sun go down at noon; I will darken the land in the daytime. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make that grief like mourning for an only son and its outcome like a bitter day. 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. In that day the beautiful young women, the young men also, will faint from thirst. Those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, “As your god lives, Dan,” or, “As the way , of Beer-sheba lives” — they will fall, never to rise again.”
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