LEARNING DAILY

 

Amos 8:11, “The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine on the land – not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord.”

 

Amos was saying to Israel that because the people had continually rejected the word of the Lord spoken to them by the prophets, He was going to give them what they wanted. He was going to send no prophets to them to guide them through what was to come. They would only find silence from Him. Isn’t it interesting people today do not want to hear from God either?

 

At different times I have asked students to do this experiment with me. I asked those who had spent more than one hour reading their Bible, not including church or Bible class, in the past week to raise their hand. Usually at least one person would raise their hand. I asked the class to do the same if they had spent about an hour reading; maybe one other student would raise their hand. I did the same thing for reading thirty minutes;  a few more raised their hand. And, I had a few more join them with five minutes of reading. The majority of students had not raised their hand. I was always quite concerned with this because of the Christian school environment. I believe it is representative of our times.

 

I had intended to be more positive and uplifting in the blog. It seems I cannot get away from what seems to be negatives and warnings. People, today, seem to be deceived or trying to find truth and fulfillment everywhere except in God’s Word. Ways of thinking people would never have accepted in years past are being accepted today; those who seek and follow Truth are thought to be narrow-minded and legalistic. People have turned to every kind of philosophy and feel-good teaching instead of the Bible, God’s Word. I cannot help but think of 2 Timothy 3:7 where Paul writes about the last days when people will be, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of truth”.

 

It is a pretty scary thing to have God give a person over to their own sinful desires; when that happens the person only plunges further into perversion and ends up in slavery to sin. It seems to be a slow process where the things we watch on television or in the things we do that entertain us, of doing good works we believe is important instead of spending time in God’s Word for whatever time we need has lulled us to sleep has dulled our minds until Truth becomes clouded. The only way to come to the knowledge of Truth is to spend time in God’s Word and in prayer. I fear that God is allowing people to plunge deeper into a famine of His Word.

 

The question each of us is: How much time have you spent in the past week reading God’s Word? I must answer this question as well. What have we allowed to feed our mind regarding truth? It does seem to me that we have entered a time of famine in these last days. This is simply because of the lack of time people spend reading and studying their Bibles. Do not let this be said of you. Diligently seek Him. He has promised when we do, He will be found by us.

Be encouraged and not discouraged. Let this be the day you begin a plan to read His Word so that He might speak to you through it.