If you don’t listen to God, he will stop speaking to you. This is the message that God gave to Amos for Israel. The Israelites at this time were very religious. But their religion was just a system of token gestures designed to make them feel that they were alright when they were not. They could not wait until the Sabbath day of worship was over so that they could get on with their competitive and selfish lives. God was willing to forgive them, this had been made abundantly clear. But they had stubbornly refused to hear what God was saying to them and now their time was up. The time was ripe for judgement. And what was this judgement? It was to be “a famine of hearing the words of the LORD”. They would go into exile, to the Assyrian territories and they would no more have a prophet in their midst. Even the people of Judah, when they went into exile had prophets speaking to them (Ezekiel and Daniel). But for Israel there would be only silence and therefore she would disappear in exile. It is the constancy of God speaking into our hearts by his Spirit that keeps us spiritually alive. We must learn to tune in to what God is highlighting in our lives and what he wants to teach us. We should regularly reflect with open, hungry hearts on the Scriptures and wait on God in stillness to allow space to receive his light. It is a terrible thing to live with the silence of God. What is God saying to you?
Ask God to illumine his word in your heart and to continue to teach and guide you.
Read Amos 8
