TODAY IS…

a good day to get back on course.

“’My people have forgotten how to do right,’ says the Lord. ‘Their fortresses are filled with wealth taken by theft and violence.’”  Amos 3:10 NLT

God selected Amos, who was a shepherd in the southern part of Israel, to see a vision of the Lord’s judgment that was to be passed on the people in the northern part of the country. Amos proved he was a man of God by traveling to the north and warning them of what was to come if they didn’t correct their ways.

Many of the people Amos spoke to had been doing the wrong things for so long, they had forgotten what the right thing was.

In many ways, things are not so different now than they were those many centuries before the birth of Christ. Just as they grew complacent in their faith, so have many of us. For many, rather than look honestly at themselves, defensive walls go up and indignation sets in at the mere suggestion of complacency on their part. This is nothing to be embarrassed about, or to get defensive over. It happens to many people more often than we may think.

In a world that moves faster and faster every day, it sometimes becomes easy to forget what the right thing is.

“Not for me!” many of us claim, and for some this may be true. But far too many of us fall into patterns of behavior, or thought, that are in direct violation of the things that God teaches, and we do so with no evil intent and often times no real purpose. We just “drift off course.”

As a ship moves through the ocean, currents will pull at it and if the captain of the ship does not pay attention and make corrections as he goes along, he will find the ship winding up in a totally different place than originally intended.

We must all avoid the “currents” of temptation that will attempt to pull us off course without our even being aware of it. We must avoid complacency and stay focused on our destination. Each one of us needs to take out our Bible, which is our ‘map,’ and see if we have drifted off course.

If we have, we need to take the steps required to correct it so that we arrive at the correct destination.

*******

Taken from “TODAY IS….A Gift From God”, (C) 2013 Tony Casson