DECEMBER 14, 2023

  “You cannot fulfill God's purposes for your life while focusing on your own plans. ” 

― Rick Warren

AMOS 1-3

 They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name. They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge. In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines. (2:6-8)

REVELATION 5

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is and is to come."(4:8)

JOURNAL 

In reading the last 3 books of Hosea, Joel and Amos; they were written almost 200 years before Daniel, right before the destruction of Israel and the exile to Babylon.  It is like going back in time...so to have read about all that Daniel went through serving foreign Kings, we get to see why that happened and that God had warned the people repeatedly.  Not only through "Prophets" but also through laymen, for that is what all of these men were. It was very clear that the people of Israel were collectively very far from worshiping God. 

Then to read Revelation and how all things are coming and building to God's kingdom...It almost makes me queasy to think about how I take so many things for granted and how negligent I am of God and the story of which I am a part. We all are a part of that story, each human who is born and lives is a miraculous creation that has a part to play.   

It is so easy to forget in the course of even a few hours that we are so blessed and yet I seem to daily get spiritual amnesia and forget that we are created to glorify God, not ourselves.

5In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6Who, being in very nature^a God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature^b of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

8And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

PHILIPPIANS 2:5-8