FINDING GOD THE HARD WAY

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God. He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals His thoughts to mankind,
who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord God Almighty is His name.”

Amos 4:12-13

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I’ve always been a believed that we all will come to God one way or another. No one will ever go through life avoiding Him. It’s impossible to do so.

Given this, since we all will come to meet God in life, then we need to know that it will come under two conditions:

We can come to meet Him the easy way or we can meet Him the hard way. Which way we meet Him is entirely up to us.

Let’s look at the easy way first and then the hard where we will use our scripture today as an example of how not to find God in life.

The easy way of meeting God is when we do it willingly and willfully. We turn to Him because we believe in Him and trust that He is true to His promises. And we live in a way that shows we respect God enough to honor Him with all that we think, say, and do.

God favors this way of encountering Him because we are taking the initiative, seeing Him as our Supreme Maker and Master, the One we should be bowing down to, the One we should be submitting our will to, the One who is more than able to meet any need that we have. When we seek the Lord with our fullest conviction and dedication, we send the message to Him that He is all that matters in life to us and He responds to that message with His blessing and provision.

Now let’s turn to the hard way and it would be easy to say that it’s just the opposite of the easy way but it’s really not as simple as that and the scriptures from Amos, Chapter 4 show us why.

First of all we need to remember that the Israelites were giving every outward appearance that they had placed their trust in God, worshiping Him with their sacrifices as prescribed. One would believe in observing them that they were pious and holy, devoted to the God they bowed down to.

But sometimes looks can sometimes be deceiving and this certainly was the case with the Israelites in Amos’ day.

I say this because the Israelites were not giving their full loyalty to God and God alone as He commanded (Exodus 20:3-4a). Rather, they were bowing down to other pagan gods and idols, sometimes behind the scenes but also even being so bold as to worship these false entities in God’s holy temple. As we saw in yesterday’s devotion, God had tried over and over and over again to get the attention of His people through various forms of punishment. He impacted their food and water, He sent blight and drought to destroy their crops, and He even sent plagues similar to the ones that He attacked Egypt with but none of them had the desired effect. None of the penalties had resulted in the Israelites repenting and turning back to Him.

In other words, the Israelites wanted to find God the hard way and God was ready to oblige them. Look at today’s verses, the closing words of Amos 4:

“Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God. He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals His thoughts to mankind,
who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord God Almighty is His name.”

The Israelites didn’t want to come to God willingly and willfully so God would impose His will upon them. They would feel the full brunt of the Lord’s almighty power, the Lord who had the might to form mountains, create wind, and reveals His thoughts to mankind. Indeed, the Israelites were going to see God reveal Himself to them in a big way.

For we know that first the Assyrians and then the Babylonians attacked the northern kingdom of Israel and southern kingdom of Judah respectively, laying the entire nation to waste and leaving it in ruin before carrying off the Israelites into captivity. There would be no doubt that the people of God had brought God’s judgment upon themselves, no doubt that they had found Him the hard way.

The whole account of what happened to the Israelites will be forever sad to me because it never had to be that way. They never would have had to endure the hardship of God’s consequences if they had only chose to submit to Him in obedience, giving Him and Him alone all the honor, glory, and praise He deserved through their worship.

Hopefully, we can learn something from their mistakes today as we look at their story. Because we all need to remember that we’re going to meet God in our life. Whether it’s the easy or hard way is completely our call.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
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