Walking the Way: A daily devotional

Amos 3:8 Everyone is terrified when a lion roars— and ordinary people become prophets when the Lord God speaks.   Thought for the day – Speaking up Recently we had a discussion about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and how it seemed the Holy Spirit turned those people it came upon, into prophets. Think King Saul, David, Moses, Ballam and Bezalel. It didn’t happen in the same way we as Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit but rather it was for the empowerment of a task. And as I said, the majority of the time they prophesied.   And I find myself asking the question, if those that Spirit moved in in the OT prophesied, why don’t we who are the people of God, filled with the Holy Spirit prophesy more. I know that prophecy is a gift of the Spirit and that the Prophet is one of the ministries in the fivefold ministry Paul lists in Ephesians. And I wonder if we think that we can’t prophesy because we may not have the gift or because we don’t think we fit into ...

Amos 1:15 Ammon's king and leaders     will be dragged away. I, the Lord, have spoken!   Thought for the day – When the Borders Get Too Small Amos 1:15 is a verse you could walk straight past. In the CEV it reads, “Ammon’s king and leaders will be dragged away.” It’s the tail end of a prophecy against a nation most of us couldn’t find on a map, so it’s easy to skim. biblehub But look at what comes just before it. In Gilead, Ammon’s soldiers cut open pregnant women to grab a bit more land. The most vulnerable people imaginable were treated as collateral damage for a bigger border. And God, through Amos, says: I saw that, and it won’t go unanswered. Then he signs his name to it. Notice who gets named. Not just the king, but the leaders too. The very people who were supposed to protect Ammon were the ones who built its cruelty, and nobody gets to hide behind their position. Isn’t that uncomfortable? Because it’s so easy to read Amos as a book about other people. John We...

Joel 3:10 Beat your plowshares into swords     and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weakling say,     “I am a warrior!” Thought for the day – Reversed Thunder As I was reading our chapter today I had to do a double take. I read our verse today and thought ‘hang on a sec, that’s the wrong way round.’ Isn’t the passage ‘ they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Not in Joel. Joel reverses the image. It’s Isaiah and Micah that take the words Joel uses and make them peaceful. And I found myself thinking how often we do that? Think we know a passage, read it for the umpteenth time, and something different pops out at us. And if I’m honest it’s not just in our Bible readings either. God is very good at taking what we think we know and turning upside down. So the words of Jesus come to mind. The first will be last, the last first. The weak shall be made strong and the strong made weak. That sort of th...

Joel 2:13 Rend your heart,     and not your garments; return to the Lord your God,     for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;     and He relents from punishing. Thought for the day – Evidence that demand a verdict Firstly, apologies for nicking the title of a well-known book by Josh McDowell for the title of today’s thought. But I think today’s verse is asking us a really important question about how to demonstrate that we are repenting from the sin God has highlighted in our lives. God asks the people through Joel, to tear their hearts not their clothes.  And it got me thinking about how many people say the sinners prayer, give Jesus their hearts and then carry on like nothing has ever happened. And I find myself asking the question what would I need to see that would show me someone was truly repentant and wanted to follow Jesus? What evidence can I see that demands me to make a verdict about the chan...

Joel 1:4 What the fledging locust left,     the adult locust has eaten; what the adult locust left,     the larval locust has eaten; what the larval locust left,     the hopper locust has eaten. Thought for the day – Locusts When I was a kid, probably about 11 or 12, we were living in a very rural part of South Africa. I remember waking up one morning to this incredible buzzing sound. A swarm of locusts had enveloped the little town we were in. And by the morning, they had stripped every green thing of its leaves and its flowers. There were tens of thousands of these giant hopping Black and yellow locusts that just devoured everything. It was scary. If it was a problem then, it's still a problem today. So much so that in 1986, the Senegalese government sprayed 1,000,000 acres of land with pesticide to kill off the locusts in the area. One square foot of land can contain up to 1000 newly hatched locusts. And a single locust c...

  Hosea 14:9 Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;     whoever prudent, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right,     and the just will walk in them;     but the transgressors stumble in them.   Thought for the day – The same road I love walking. But there's something I noticed on every single walk that I go on. I might enjoy the walk but the path that I'm walking on doesn't care about me. It's the same puddles, the same slopes, same stones. So, I walk along it not thinking about it and the next thing I've either stepped in a puddle, or I've turned my ankle over on a stone. And the reason why I'm talking about paths not caring and me walking on them is that because actually as we read Hosea's last chapter today and the very last words of Hosea, that's what we're dealing with, we're dealing with the ways of the Lord. And irrespective how we feel about them, the ways of the Lord are right. T...

  Hosea 13:14 I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death. Death, where are your barbs? Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.   Thought for the day – What God wants of us I’ve been reading a book called 4000 weeks. Any guesses to what it might mean? Well, it’s the number of weeks we have to live if we live to 77 years old. The book is about realising that we only have a finite time on this earth and that trying to micromanage our time is futile because to paraphrase the philosopher Heidigger, because we are temporal and corporeal, we are time.   It’s a challenging read because as a Christian, I firmly believe in the concept of life after death and that we as followers of Jesus have nothing to fear when we die, because of Jesus and because he will bring us through death to see the face and the glory of God. Our verse today is echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as he talks about how Christ has overco...