IBS Application for Amos 3:3

“Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?”

Although the other verses we’ve received this week to study have for the most part been about unity within the Church, this one is a rhetorical question put forth to Israel and, now, the Church by the Lord about our relationship with Him: “Are we not walking together here? Did we not mutually agree to this relationship?”

It’s a very compelling question, because so often do we wander away from God. Of course, if we have salvation and if God has a plan for a person’s life, that person can’t wander so far away from the will of the Lord as to become exempt from it. He won’t completely abandon anyone with whom He’s made a covenant. Take Israel, for example. They regularly left God, their first love, in pursuit of idols and the things of the world, and while the Lord regularly gave them over to those things, He would always seek to bring them back to the fold, often times only through one person who would serve as a spiritual leader amongst the people. If the fact that God was willing to bring the people back to Himself because of the obedience of one person isn’t grace, I’m not sure I know what is.

We could and perhaps should draw comparisons between these Old Testament leaders appearing at times when Israel desperately needed them and Jesus. Each time God gave Israel a faithful leader before Christ, God was issuing a promise to the people of the world that He always intended to send a permanent, pure, spotless leader to us in the form of Christ. And for what purpose does Israel, and later the Church, need such a leader? To bring them all into relationship with Him.

Sin creates a valley of distance between us and God. Without intercession, we are forever separated from the One who gives life to us and blesses us with His love. But in sending His Son as an intercessory leader and sacrifice for the sake of the purging of our sins, He made a way for all to come have relationship with Him.

We as the Church, having all claimed to be justified by the blood of Christ, are all claiming the promise of salvation and relationship with God. With this promise comes the charge from Christ Himself to share the good news of the renewal of relationship between us and God with the world. There is no way we can fulfill this commission if we aren’t walking through life with Him. We are called to seek to know Him as we are known by Him. As Paul said, after all things have passed away from the earth, the whole point of having lived by the love and grace of God for us as individuals is to “know fully, even as I have been fully known.” That’s what a completed life looks like: A life in perfect relationship with our Creator, such that we know Him as He knows us.

None of what I’ve already discussed has even touched upon how crucial unity with the Lord is to our unity within the Church. If we fail to be in relationship with Jesus, how can we be a member of His body? How can we love as we’ve been loved without knowing that live? It all starts and ends with knowing and having unity with the Lord.

This is going to crucial to our growth as Class 14. Unity with each other has to start with unity with the Lord. Operation in ministry apart from Him is doomed to fail, and we will be unable to properly love each other as a family in Christ without a proper, healthy, growing relationship with God.

My application for this verse will be to pray for at least the next week, both when I start the day and end the day that God would help give me a drive to seek and know Him better, so that I might better live in unity with both Him and my team. The most important and practical application I think I can attempt, however, is to just continue to grow in my relationship and love for Him as I have been, and get closer to Him everyday.