{"id":7616,"date":"2021-07-14T15:38:05","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T20:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/?p=7616"},"modified":"2021-07-14T15:38:05","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T20:38:05","slug":"devotional-on-amos-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-amos-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Amos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 2048px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-BWJW_iFjbBA\/YO3BMSS2xnI\/AAAAAAABKuk\/zo34wdcv0dY9cjQRHy8TNR_zaSCcGs06wCPcBGAsYHg\/s2048\/P7228759.JPG\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1536\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2013 &#8211; Niagara Falls &#8211; Rainbow Bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nIntentional worship<br \/>\nAmos 4: But you never got hungry for me. You continued to ignore me.<br \/>\nThe people Amos preaches to are religious people.  They&#8217;re faithful to attend worship services, to make the correct sacrifices, and to pay their tithes.  The casual observer might conclude that they&#8217;re just the sort of people God wants.  However, that isn\u2019t the case.  Amos complains that all they&#8217;re doing is putting on a religious show.  At the core of all their religious activities is, not God, but themselves.  Even as Amos delivers his sermons the Lord is acting to bring a stop to it all.  The fact is that God won\u2019t be ignored!  He, who created me, demands that I focus my life on him.  That&#8217;s true in all of my life, and it&#8217;s especially true in my religious life.  The issue of what I \u201clike\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t like\u201d is, ultimately, unimportant.  God isn\u2019t looking at the show I put on.  Instead, he&#8217;s looking at my heart.  The issue in play in my worship activities is whether or not I hunger for him.  I want to do church \u201cright.\u201d  I want the worship services I attend to be well thought out and intentional.  However, beyond all of that, I want the Lord to see that more than anything else, my worship activities are a reflection of my hunger for him and of my rejoicing in his presence.  God won\u2019t be ignored and a God-ignoring worship experience is a waste of time.<br \/>\nTake Away: The Lord isn\u2019t looking so much at how we do church as he is looking at our hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intentional worship Amos 4: But you never got hungry for me. You continued to ignore me. The people Amos preaches to are religious people. They&#8217;re faithful to attend worship services, to make the correct sacrifices, and to pay their tithes. The casual observer might conclude that they&#8217;re just the sort of people God wants. However, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1486,6,7],"tags":[119,905,1169],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7616"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15397,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions\/15397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}