Hunker Down People of God, and Take Refuge in the Lord

 Greetings in the Lord~

This week's prophetic word comes from Amos 3 & 6, and Jeremiah 16, as well as an accompanying dream and visual confirmation--which usually means there is an urgency to the prophetic word.  Let's jump right in.

These chapters in Amos pretty much say the same things: God's judgment is coming, mainly in the form of foreign invaders.  The Lord allows the invasion because His people for the most part have become apathetic in their faith, even outright idolatrous and corrupt, in their love of the world and false gods.  In chapter 3, the Lord will even invite other nations to witness the trouble and confirm that God was just in His decision to bring correction to His people.  The judgment is mostly directed at the rich leaders among His people, those that chose to better themselves at the expense of the country, who have summer and winter homes filled with luxurious things gotten by oppressing the poor and common in the land.  They think they are "rock stars," and relish their fine life, caring nothing for the demise of their country.  For that, the Lord says, "their partying will come to an end."

"What sorrow awaits you who lounge in luxury in Jerusalem, and you who feel secure in Samaria!  You are famous and popular in Israel, and people go to you for help.  But go over to Calneh and see what happened there; then go to the great city of Hamath and down to the Philistine city of Gath.  You are no better than they were, and look how they were destroyed.  You push away every thought of coming disaster, but your actions only bring the day of judgment closer!"  

"Can horses gallop over boulders?  Can oxen be used to plow them?  But that's how foolish you are when you turn justice into poison and the sweet fruit of righteousness into bitterness.  And you brag about your conquests of Lo-debar.  You boast, 'Didn't we take Karnaim by our own strength?'  O people of Israel, I am about to bring an enemy nation against you," says the Lord God of Heaven's Armies.  "They will oppress you throughout your land--from Lebo-hamath in the north to the Arabah Valley in the south."  Amos 6:1-3, 12-14.

Jeremiah 16 gives us a little different look to this word, in that it emphasizes the urgency and imminence of the coming invasions and trouble.  The people will experience these things soon and see the terrible times with their own eyes.  In fact, much of the reason why Jeremiah was told not to marry and go to funerals or parties was that these counter-cultural choices would be a sign to the people that these prophetic decrees would be carried out very soon--in their days.  Who gets married during an invasion?  Who hosts a funeral when everyone's life is in danger?  To make this point very clear to me, the Lord gave me a dream and sign.

In my dream, I saw young people dressed in tan vests with black pants and long sleeves attacking a specific neighborhood in a city that reminded me of when I lived in Syria.  They had made and distributed maps of this whole neighborhood so they could get around very easily, even knowing entrances and gates of houses and buildings to attack and capture people.  The people in the homes were scurrying around to gather their families quickly, to drive away and escape the intruders.  It was a very chaotic time in my dream and people were frantic, as you can imagine.

Then the next day, as I pondered that dream, I had to pick up a customer that was dressed like I had seen in my dream--she wore a long tan sweater over black pants and a black shirt with big black boots, probably in her late 20s.  Her age seemed important, as if these were people who had been easily recruited with a lying narrative that they strongly believed to be true.  It wasn't that the belief made sense, rather, it was a spiritual connection -- a darkened heart that did not know or want to know God Almighty.    

So today, I pray that God's people will take refuge in the Lord, as His judgments are about to be meted out on the land, for its sin and corruption has come up before the Lord.  We take shelter in God our strength, and pray until the disaster has passed.

~Be blessed and be a blessing.