Memo From the Mann

A library is a house of  hope (we could stop there) ...

It’s a place where we all, whatever our situation,

can feed our ideas and developed our dreams.

A cartoon showed (a father handing a child a book to his teen-age son):

“It’s a book you say, ..uh, what do I plug it into?” You mind!

Apart from the word of God, human life knows only chaos. It is the word that speaks order into creation and that sustains all the processes of nature. It is the word that motivates all history and brings it to fulfillment. It is the word alone that gives guidance, and forgiveness, and blessing, and fruitful life. It is in the word that God draws near to his chosen people and abides with them.

I share this because just as in (the Minor Prophet), Amos’ time...

(a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. ~ Amos 8:11)

There are many today who are tragically ignorant of their Bible.

...and some are weekly church goers!

They don’t’t know scripture, they don’t read it, or study it.

...I heard it said that those that do dabble with commentaries

are guilty of not creating their own.

The Biblical illiteracy among Christians is epidemic.

Father, our land is ripe for the hearing of your word

Let each and everyone of us begin a disciplined approach to your word

Reading it, studying it, digging deeper into it,

questioning what it means, praying on its application...

and then sharing with those around us the riches of doing so

sharing it in a way that excites others to join us

In your Son’s name we pray...

Pray on...

Song: His Word is Good

...break up your unplowed ground ~ Hosea 10:12

One of my daughters was a stubborn child. She knew what she wanted, and wasn’t going to have it any other way. Her will was strong, her heart could turn hard during such an exercise, her upsetment occurred because she wasn’t getting what she wanted ...much like many adults, like many unhappy souls in the world ...dare I say much like our politicians ...their stubbornness, their inability to see past their hard hearts, is the cause for much turmoil in their world and ours.

In Hosea 10:12, God uses metaphors from agriculture to set forth his requirements. Sandy Adams shares, We need to prepare the ground before we plant a garden. The strongest plants grow in the worked, and softened soil. The barren spots were the ones that were unworked.

Repentance does to our spirit, what a tiller does to the hard ground. A repentant heart sees its sin’s true ugliness. True repentance turns my life over and over breaking up my hardness. It allows the seeds of God to take root and create spiritual growth. But if the heart is not prepared the seed won’t take root. This why we need to turn up the soil of our heart. We need to work over that soil with a thorough repentance.

Tilling ground is laborious, hard, backbreaking, agonizing work ...and so  is real repentance ...the results though are worth the effort. The strongest stands of spiritual fruit, will grow where you have worked the ground.

Pray on...

Song: Once Again Lord

Woe to you who are complacent ~ Amos 6:1

Don’t you just love people who are full of themselves? They have an arrogant way about them, one that seems to allow them the belief that we commoners, we sheep,  just grazed around them as they carry on the important aspects of their day. 

Smugness wears ugly ...don’t you think. I mean we don’t wear it as a compliment. We don’t greet a great man or woman with ...my, you really look smug today ...I love that jacket, you look really smug in it ...or maybe, you know, you wear smugness well!

The self-important quality rests on an innate security that they have, even when based on a faulty premise. In Amos 6, God tells Israel that their security is false. 

It’s truly amazing just how many examples over so many years, that we’ve seen or read, about the same arrogance revealing itself. Human kind just can’t get over itself. 

The ideal of physical power has always been at the forefront of disagreement, battle, and death. 

The Israelites saw judgement as very far away, much like children and young adults. There’s always a false comfort in putting off what we don’t want to face until tomorrow or some time in the distant future.

Let’s agree to rest on these on two things -

Pray on...

 Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? ~ Amos 3:3

Amos 7:14 (NIV): 14 Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees.

Pray on...

They kiss calf-idols! ~ Hosea 14:2

To whom are you expressing your loyalty, your devotion, and your love?Now you can answer in any number of ways, but ultimately it’s your life that will express

the truth when it comes to your loyalty, your devotion, and your love.

Here in Hosea 14 we read that Instead of seeking life from God, Ephraim sought it from the fertility rites of baal worship, which was probably a small molten image, modeled after the bull of Bethel, which was made of bronze and overlaid with silver. Kissing the idol was part of the ritual of such worship.

What does your lifestyle say?

What do your purchases say about you?

Has your life revealed a side of compassion? ...a giving nature?

What does your history say?

How have you reacted to problems when they’ve occurred?

...to disappointments when they’ve appeared?

...to darkness when it unexpectedly dropped in?

What does your prayer life say?

Have your prayers been centered on wants or needs?

Have your prayers been centered on you or others?

Have your prayers been centered on expectations or doubts?

Have your prayers been centered on dependency?

Psalm 2:12 warns us -

”Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction,

Take the time to reflect on your life, to step back and see a clear picture ...get a glimpse of the whole story that you’re telling the world, and then ask yourself...

To whom are you expressing your loyalty, your devotion, and your love?

Pray on,

Song: Kiss the Son (Album: IHS)

Turn & Return

All of us have guideposts that mark our journey, and some of them we’d no doubt like to remove ... but then that’s an impossible feat, they’re posted there indelibly, we lived them, and we can’t undo our history ... we can only learn from them. They’re reminders, not only to grow by, but also not to repeat.

In Hosea 12  the Lord admonishes Israel to live no longer in sin (as Jacob did), but to return to God and act with love and justice. The full verse reads -

And that’s exactly us... when we wander away, when we stumble, when we fall, God says turn away, turn around and return to me. We are firmly reprimanded to act with love and justice. That requires us to step back, get a clear picture, and to make the needed changes ...and maybe more importantly, we’re told to wait for Him always.

Yes he said wait, what a dreaded thing it is to wait ...but in waiting, we have to put our actions aside and that can be an uncomfortable place ...we’re in stand-by (most often impatiently) until something else happens ...in this case a response from God.

Lord, enact in us a habit of waiting for you; help us to return to you when we wander; and to maintain love and justice in our daily lives. 

Pray on,

Song: I Remember (Album: IHS)

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, ~ Hosea 11:3

I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something foreign. ~ Hosea 8:12

Most of us as children didn’t like being in the dark. We were afraid of what we couldn’t see. Now, even as adults we’re not fond of being in the dark ...as in not knowing what’s goin on. 

No one likes to be in a situation where they feel out of control, it’s uncomfortable. We get that uneasy feeling, it’s unsettling. 

The unknown is a daunting place, a place where we’re prone to being surprised ...where at any moment that Jack-in-the-Box is gonna jump into our path and make its unwanted presence known.

Let’s be honest , I think most of us will admit we’re some kind of control freak. Yet we’re living a life that’s being controlled by someone else. Fortunately for us, it’s the God of love ...whose plans for us are good and perfect. So we need not fear the future.

In Hosea 8:12 we read where the Israelites are living in the dark, where all of God’s previous writing, his laws, were regarded as forgiven, as strange. They had broken God’s commandments, and they had turned aside from their covenant relationship with the Lord. They wandered away from him ...sound familiar?

This is why we need to stay in God’s word everyday ...there are constant distractions pulling us away, pulling us into the darkness. We need to stay connected, we need to stay close, when it comes to God and his word, we need to be like familiar friends.

You see familiarity breeds confidence, security, and a sense of calm. Now who doesn’t want to live in that space? Let me leave you with this thought from Pastor Sandy Adams.

Rather than a stranger, the Bible needs to be a familiar friend. ~ S.A.

Hey, don’t put off that connection to your good, life-long friend, stay in touch, don’t become a stranger.

Pray on...

They do not turn to the Most High; they are like a faulty bow. ~ Hosea 7:16

When speaking about appeasing God I often refer to myself as coming up short. In other words, not being able to measure up, or hit the mark. 

The breakdown is in my turning away from God, when I don’t turn to him for help, for direction, for council. How can I hit the mark when my aim isn’t true. I can be really stubborn, really foolish ..okay, really dumb. Can you relate to this, am I describing you from time to time ...I bet I am. 

Sandy Adam’s put it this way, “Israel missed the mark not because her aim was off, but because the bow itself was bent and incapable of shooting straight.”

He goes on to say, “our sin is not the result of an occasional slip, or a bad aim. Our very nature is warped ...and you can’t repair a warped bow, it has to be replaced ...and this is what Jesus does for us. It’s called regeneration (the new birth).”

Hey, let’s remind ourselves to turn to the Most High for all of our help, for all of our direction ...and for all of our council. Let’s remember what Jesus has done for us.

Pray on...