June 30

Israel came against Judah and killed 120,000 soldiers and took 200,000 wives and plunder back to Samaria where they were met by a prophet who told them they were in the wrong. Even though God had destined Judah to be defeated, it still wasn’t just. There is a great lesson to be pondered here. God removed His protection because of Judah’s idolatry and used Israel and the Arameans to defeat Judah, yet this “using” wasn’t an order from on high. This subject requires some deep thinking and studying, but the point here is that God allows things to happen for His purposes in us that are not just. Hmmm…

I want to be like the leaders of Ephraim who confronted the soldiers and then gave mercy to the captives. These poor captives were participants in idolatry yet mercy was shown to them. They were clothed, fed, given drink and the weak ones were given donkeys to make it back home.

I need to help people make it back home. Some will certainly turn again to the Lord, but some won’t. That is not mine to decide, mine is to be merciful and help people back home – where God dwells. How much should I do? As much as the word of the Lord said to do. I cannot cool the desert with a massive air conditioner, but I can invite some people inside my dwelling to enjoy an air conditioned atmosphere. Start somewhere and work from there.

June 29

“If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all”. Even though there are many things in today’s reading that are worthy of ponder and writing, this spoke to me and stood out. What is standing firm in my faith and why is it all or nothing?

I am an all or nothing kind of guy, but even I am uncomfortable with this verse. It can be looked at as a verse of defeat or as a verse of victory – I choose victory! God is saying partial will not cut it. That strikes fear in me because even when I purpose to go “all out” I sometimes miss that mark. I don’t want to get knocked down and fail because I tried! Yet when you look at this verse as a simple fact of life it makes complete sense. If you don’t stand firm – remain standing where you are, you will not stand – remain standing where you are. Do you get it? This is a great either or and it is true in all of life. Stand your ground or give it – there is no other option!

This verse brings in the extra added ingredient of faith, which deepens the meaning to me. I have to stand in my “faith”, or in my trust in God’s ability! To do that I have to understand His ability, His will, and His love toward me – or I will “not stand”. Which could mean 2 things – either I will fall on the ground or I will be moved off my ground. For me the key for today is to continue to get “convinced” of God’s will and love toward me. Then I can stand in faith for any and everything I need to.

June 28

Great leaders, famous men and brave warriors – but they were unfaithful to God. Who cares how great you are unless you remain faithful to God! The word says that they “prostituted” themselves to other gods. That is an interesting word and frankly, it is offensive to some. It connotes a depth of intimacy with other gods that should be Gods – Jehovahs – and His alone. If you are like me you are thinking of sex when you hear prostitute and that is exactly what God wants us to envision. We are supposed to have sex with the one we have pledged our lives to, but we go off and pay for it with another. To us, this would be sick in relation to marriage, and we would think that a man or woman who did that are, “sick”. It is the same thing here! This is a shocking phrase that God uses to stir our imagery to understand how debase our sin is.

When I forsake God – when I make up my mind to be unfaithful to Him and join with another for my provision, my peace, my security, my whatever – I commit adultery against the Lord. Sadly, I have done this in my life. When I was young I sought the love of a woman to bring love to my heart. Years ago I worked hard to attain my provision – thinking that I was my provider and my family’s provider. (I am confident that this was one of the reasons for my poverty). Now I am prodded by the Spirit to search and see if there is any other lover in my life besides the Lord. Just me I think, and it is not an affair. There are roots of the mentality still left that want to propel me into an affair with my own ability or inabilities, but I am confident that I am free from adultery against the Lord.

Keep me that way Jesus. I don’t want to go out on you and trust in anyone or anything but you. Help me get rid of those old roots of thinking. You and me Jesus.

June 27

Today hope has sprung with Micah. Let it spring in me Lord. The heart of God is ALWAYS to bring back His people. Judgment, exile, punishment is about teaching a people to obey, but more than that it is bringing people to the place of understanding of the love of God! How? If God just let His people do whatever they wanted forever, they would end up like those before the flood – everything they did and thought was continually wicked. It is His mercy that drives Him to judgment. If He never sent them into exile, then they wouldn’t have ever turned back to the Lord! There is a lesson in that for us.

As so many of the prophets do, they end with or at least lace their prophecies of judgment with God’s words of longing for reconciliation. Here the Lord is saying to Israel’s enemies, don’t gloat over them, they will make a comeback and you will go down for the count. He says that about me too. When I am struggling, when I am under it, when I am down, I will make a comeback. He will make sure of it!

June 26

Many nations will come to Zion for instruction in the ways of the Lord. The original intent for Israel was to be a light into the world. Now we are that light. God keeps pressing me about reaching the lost. I am in Peru to do just that but it is the daily habit of reaching.

Nations will turn to God! They will come to Him, however they must know who He is first and that is where I come in. In my outreach I am mandated to teach who God IS. I believe that means I must display His glory and splendor by inviting Him to move miraculously in the life of others.

June 25

One of the things that hit me this morning is that these prophecies all predict judgment. Well, that is obvious right, but I was thinking about my life and how it is affected by sin and then it hit me that the great prosperity that Israel and Judah had was also taken away by the judgment. It connected for me financial ruin and sin. However, it doesn’t come quickly all the time. God is slow to anger and it only lasts for a moment, but it does come to correct us. God uses financial crisis to correct us and bring us back to Him. That is comforting to me – He loves me.

So you could fee-d the prophets and they would say pleasant things – prophesying your prosperity. That warns me about not rebuking people for their sin because I want their friendship. I really don’t equate tithes and offerings with people for the most part, but friendship and partnership is important to me. I must not hold back a correction from the Lord for the sake of my feelings or discomfort.

I will lead strong Lord and say what needs to be said as you tell me to say it. Strengthen me.

June 24

We have only begun the prophetic words of judgment and I am losing heart. The people of God are so dull. Are they today? I pray not!

Today there were 2 things of interest. First God details a plan for His people – of their redemption! “Though their sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow!” That is and has always been His plan for us! His judgment is His rulership by justice. It is the avenue of bringing us back to Him – it is all about bring us back. Then it is about us bringing others to Him.

Isaiah has a vision and he thinks he will die. He saw the Lord! God wants to reveal Himself! It should be obvious that God wants to fellowship with us and love us and us Him, however it goes deeper than that. He is asking if we will go – be sent. That’s an easy one today because as you are reading this, I am either boarding or on a plane to Peru! God wants me all the time though – every day. Peru will be a glorious time, but here, at home, my work isn’t always glorious. Sometimes as with Isaiah it is hardening people rather than softening them. Oh God help me to be willing to be used no matter what the outcome of the ministry. I’ll leave that to you!

June 23

God gets weary – wow! He gets weary when people exchange what he has given them for what sin gives them. He gets weary especially when they are religious and offer sacrifices and continue to be unjust, drunks and self-absorbed. There are a lot of lessons from today’s reading, but here is the one for me. God wants me to be real!

I don’t want to weary my God. I want to be real – as real in daily living as I am at church. I am thinking about Peru and how I will be living there. It won’t be the same. I will become something I am not here – more powerful, confident, directed. I think that it is not an act, but a desire, maybe an expectation I put on myself. I want to be that here as well, but it seems easier when you are on a mission. It brings you up a level, maybe two or three! It’s like you have permission to be that there. You are honored greatly by the people and they expect something great out of you – maybe that is the difference. It helps me believe what is true.

Oh God, help me to retain the glory you gave me and exchange no good thing for evil or even “natural”. Help me to walk in your authority and power everywhere and to love the fatherless and poor.

June 22

It’s a short read day, funny when that happens. Amaziah the priest doesn’t like the prophecy and tries to inflame the King to kill Amos. Hmmm… That sounds familiar. In fact, that has happened to me! People don’t like what I say, or how I say it and they try to stir up others against me. Amos tells me that God has my back. We do live in a different “age” than Amos, but God has my back and will defend me and see that my words from Him will come to fruition.

Amos was just a normal guy, a shepherd, and God called Him to go prophesy to Israel. Just a regular guy sent to bring a message to a people that God so deeply loves. There have been great detractors in my life and ministry, and I don’t think they will go away. However, I have a calling that cannot be revoked and a mission that must be finished. I don’t know why God has chosen me for the task that I have, but I must stay focused on it and not turn to the left or to the right.

June 21

Do you ever get the feeling like God is serious? Sometimes I think we get lulled into thinking that things are optional – as long as we are going to church and not killing people. As we see here, things are not optional, in fact, although the people did their religious duties (at least going to church and giving an offering), everything was good – or so they thought. But they had forgotten to let God be God of all! He just doesn’t want some, He wants all!

It seems like everywhere that I go lately there have been divine appointments. Nearly everyone I meet, God wants to use me. From meeting someone in a store to the guy from Craig’s list, God is doing something through me. There is no, and must be no option – I must give all to Him, especially when it comes to the needy, as Amos spoke about. I can’t save all the poor in the world, but if my relationship with God is so lofty that I don’t do anything for, nor reach out to the poor and needy, then my relationship with God has degraded to a selfish one. I can’t solve homelessness or the plight of the poor, but God’s heart is for them, and if I have God’s heart, I will be for them as well, and that heart will drive me to action.

June 19

What a beautiful end to this prophetic book. God will no doubt deal with His people, but it is ALWAYS to bring about reconciliation. Judgment always has a purpose with God. It is never venting His anger (like we do), it is meant to bring people to humility and to quit trusting in themselves (kings) and give our lives over to God.

Both in chapter 14 and in chapter 11 we see how God loves so deeply. His emotions of love run deep and His words speak to ME. I am reminded of the song lyric; “Oh, how He loves us so, oh how He loves us, how He loves us so.” I sure don’t want to be under His hand of rebuke, but better to be rebuked by the Lord than given over to my deceptions or wanderings. Yet, when I am in the middle of His heavy hand, do I think like that? I must admit, that I think I deserve what I am getting when chastised of the Lord, but I don’t like it all the time. Looking from by my perspective today, I would opt for that chastisement rather than roaming from His presence into harm and deception.

I realize as I am writing that I am speaking about deception and I will tell you why. When we wander from God, we wander towards another. When we get close to another we tend to justify it in our minds. When we do that, our thinking becomes a stronghold for them enemy to nestle in and we become deceived in our own thinking. Our mind has been taking captive. That is deception – oh God, rebuke me in the wandering so I never get to the deception.

June 18

There is one thing – no, two things for sure; First, God is emotional and He is broken by His people leaving Him. The second is that God will deal with His people! I want to concentrate of the first observation.

It is an incredible thing that God is so much like me! O.k., o.k., I am like Him. He is so emotional, so driven by his disappointment. As we read yesterday, and will read tomorrow, He loves so deep that His heart is vexed when generations choose another – a worthless other! I think God’s heart is hurt on 2 levels; personal and personal. What I mean is that His heart feels like ours (we are created in His image and likeness), (we also see this in the heart of Jesus), and God himself is bummed internally about His chosen people He has given so much to, living for themselves and giving themselves over to worshiping man made idols. The other deep level hurt is that God loves His people so much that He HATES to see them hurt themselves and not prosper in His plan for their lives AND have a great and loving relationship with HIM! I just thought of one more thing; God is bummed because it is Israel’s charge to bring the world to the knowledge of God, and they can’t even bring themselves into that knowledge because of the deception they have swallowed. Make no mistake about it, God feels and God hurts.

June 17

I don’t know about you, but I am super glad I am not the prophet Hosea! God tells us to do wild stuff sometimes… – but if I am honest, I still don’t fully comprehend why Hosea couldn’t just give a prophecy to Israel instead of marrying a prostitute and having children by her and then taking her back (paying for her too!) after she strays! However, I see a divine story line in it – do you?

“I will allure her…speak tenderly to her…” Wow! God is so good! So forgiving so forgetful! I hear His great love and His greatest desire – to have us (me) as His own! When I stray, He allures me back to Him. He loves me! I can’t help but notice that he takes me through the desert on my way back. Hmmm… The place of dependence I suppose – where I learn to trust the one who loves me most. I love you Lord!

June 16

Jonah’s whole problem is that his heart wasn’t for people, especially the people of Nineveh. His disobedience to God sprung up out of his callousness for people or maybe just Gentiles. Wherever his lack of love was focused, it was evident. We read the story of this portion of his life in 5 minutes, but it was probably weeks in the making. Imagine the time that everything took and then imagine your repentant attitude after 2 ½ days in the stomach of a great fish! Yet it still didn’t change Jonah’s heart for people, just his heart for God.

My lesson today is that my love for PEOPLE will determine much about how my life proceeds and how I proceed in ministry. I am not talking about ministry as in pastoring, I am talking about ministry as in divine appointments and “sendings” from the Lord. It is obvious to me that God will cause trouble at times of great magnitude to get me to a repentant place of humility and obedience. In this case my love for people is being called out and I again have learned a key to life – have God’s heart toward people and your life will avoid the scenarios in which God will put you in to bring you to that place of love. God lives in me and he loves – if I surrender myself, I will love. If I don’t surrender, I will spend time in a fish of sorts. That in itself may not turn my heart toward people, but it will get me to listen and obey. Fortunately for me (us) God lives in me and has already given me love for people – it is already there!

Terry, love when it is hard to love with the great love of God in your heart.