Thursday, October 28, 2010

Walking in agreement with God

Amos 3:3 (NLT)
3 Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?

After exposing the sins of the people in the various surrounding areas and proclaiming God’s judgment upon those people Amos now speaks to Israel. The first question Amos asks is, “Can two people walk together without agreeing on a direction?” If the people are at odds with God there can be no fellowship with Him. To walk with God they must first accommodate that which is in difference to God. Amos expresses the idea that one cannot expect God to be present with us or act with us unless we have reconciled ourselves to God through repentance and alignment with God’s will.

The Rev C H Spurgeon delivered this message as a portion of his Oct, 30, 1864 sermon at Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. Yet again, dear friends, are we agreed this day as to our utter helplessness in this work? I caught a good sentence the other day. Speaking with a Wesleyan minister, I said to him, "Your denomination during the past year did not increase: you have usually had a large increase to your numbers. You were never so rich as now; your ministers were never so well educated; you never had such good chapels as now, and yet you never had so little success. What are you doing?—knowing this to be the fact, what are you doing? How are the minds of your brethren exercised with regard to this?" He comforted me much by the reply. He said, "It has driven us to our knees: we thank God that we know our state and are not content with it. We have had a day of humiliation, and I hope," he said, "some of us have gone low enough to be blessed." There is a great truth in that last sentence, "low enough to be blessed," I do fear me that some of us never do go low enough to be blessed. When a man says, "Oh! yes, we are getting on very well, we do not want any revival that I know of," I fear me he is not low enough to be blessed; and when you and I pray to God with pride in us, with self-exaltation, with a confidence in our own zeal, or even in the prevalence of our own prayers of themselves, we have not come low enough to be blessed. An humble Church will be a blessed Church; a Church that is willing to confess its own errors and failures, and to lie at the foot of Christ's cross, is in a position to be favoured of the Lord. I hope we are agreed, then, with God, as to our utter unworthiness and helplessness, so that we look to him alone.

Pray our nation would look to God for His thoughts and that we, His people, would follow Him. Pray that our minds may be one in agreement with God and give thanks always for God’s generosity, grace and mercy.

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