"Just A Closer Walk With Thee"  

Amos 5:20–24 ²⁰Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it? ²¹“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  ²²Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.  ²³Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.  ²⁴But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

            "Just A Closer Walk With Thee," putting the word "Just" in the front of the title makes "A Closer Walk With Thee" sound so simple.  But we know differently because we make walking with our God a difficult endeavor to accomplish.  Why do we make it so much more difficult?  We like to put our own twist on everything we do.  Our world wants us each to be different and celebrate being different, as chartreuse is the new yellow or green, different is the new norm.  We mark ourselves, come up with our own philosophy, beliefs, and try to change ourselves to something we are not to justify an identity that rather defies our being instead of defining it. 

            What is the old saying?  "You can't fit a square peg in a round hole."   Well, through our great reasoning, if we get a small enough peg it will fit in any hole.  And therein lies the problem, we always go smaller; instead of real progress we slip back and repeat history justifying that fulfilling our desires is moving forward and advancing our species.  I suppose if you are an evolutionist we are evolving into something we can't really become but have fooled ourselves into thinking we can.

            We are most likely the square peg and we are most likely small in a world of conflicting desires.  God looked at His chosen people and watched as they claimed to be God's people in name only.  They said they believed in God, and desired the coming of the Lord.  Their actions that were told to Amos by God, spoke differently to God then what the two Hebrew nations wanted them to portray.  God's people rebelled against Him instead of following His statutes (following God's word, law), they acted upon their erroneous desires. 

            Amos was an angry prophet; angry with God and God's people of whom Amos was kinship to also.  Amos was angry with God for choosing a shepherd to prophesy to His people, and claimed that he had no experience in this.  Amos was angry at His people who refused to listen to the word that God had given him to pass on to them because God was getting ready to punish them. 

            God wanted the people of Judah and Israel to follow His Word His way.  God's wisdom is greater than man's, but man's desires seemed to trump God's ways.  If the citizens of God's kingdom on earth did not follow God's word His way, the day of the Lord coming would not be a glorious day, but rather a day of reckoning. Reckoning in the form of rejection and punishment His people would be separating themselves from God.  It is called sin and sin is missing the mark, and missing the mark is separation from God.

            We say we desire the coming of our Lord, but we do little to nothing to prepare ourselves for that day.  The coming of our Lord will be glorious for some and for others...  We are like the bridesmaids who came unprepared and did not know enough to bring extra oil.  If we are not prepared we might miss the door opening to come in out of the bad weather we live in.  The bad weather is our wrong desires beating away at our light and diming it so we can no longer find our way to the light of Christ.

            Matthew 25:6–13 ⁶But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. ⁸And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ ¹⁰And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. ¹¹Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ ¹²But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ¹³Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

            What is a closer walk with our God, it is being in His word, and His word being in us.  We are to be the light unto the world but how can that happen when we rebel against God's word because we refuse to be in it.  We can desire everything but that does not mean that it will be handed over to us. 

            Do you love Jesus, than feed His sheep.  Are we not His sheep, do we not need the nourishment that only comes from God?  God gives us His law not to just be a mirror, but also as a guide to repentance and His word for the knowledge of His love for each person on this world.  For we who are believers are not to be in the world but to be only on this world. 

            Christ has a closer walk with us, and He performed that walk to the cross.  This is the love that God our Father in heaven gives us.  It is never too late while we have the breath of the spirit in us to listen to the Holy Spirit who is leading us to turn to God and to return to God.  It is the grace and mercy of God through Jesus that is the bread of life that God wrote us through the hands of St. John.  This bread, this truth, His way, and His life to give is for the forgiveness of our sins that breaks the separation we have with God.  Listen to the word and the Holy Spirit, they are telling us of this love of God for us.  God actually and dearly wants to have an eternal relationship with us, and this is why He gives us believers eternal life, that we too might want to have a true eternal relationship with Him.  Amen.

            1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 ¹⁷Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸Therefore encourage one another with these words.