Key Verses: Joel 1:14,19a
Declare a holy fast;
call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders
and all who live in the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.
…O Lord, to You I cry out!

When in trouble “CRY OUT!” There are two ways to do this: (1) In a sacred assembly togeth...

Key Verses: Joel 2:13, 17, 28-29
“So rend your heart, and not your garments;
Return to the Lord your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
Slow to anger, and of great kindness;
And He relents from doing harm.
…Let the priests, who minister to the Lord,
Weep between the porch and the altar;
Let th...

Key Verses: Joel 3:14, 16b
Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!
For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.
…But the Lord will be a shelter for His people,
and the strength of the children of Israel.

The “decision” made concerning the multitudes gathered in the “val...

Key Verses: Amos 1:3a
“Thus says the Lord…” (repeated 8 times in Amos chapters 1 & 2)
There are eight prophecies to eight different nations. We can draw the conclusion that God cares about every nation on earth. Each message from God in today’s reading begins with the statement, “For three transg...

Key Verses: Amos 3:7, 4:13
Surely the Lord God does nothing,
Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.
…For behold,
He who forms mountains,
And creates the wind,
Who declares to man what his thought is,
And makes the morning darkness,
Who treads the high places of the earth–
The ...

Key Verses: Amos 5:4, 6:14
For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel:
“Seek Me and live…”
“But, behold, I will raise up a nation against you,
O house of Israel,”
Says the Lord God of hosts;
“And they will afflict you from the entrance of Hamath
To the Valley of the Arabah.”

God, in His mer...

Key Verses: Amos 7:14b,15
I was no prophet, nor was I the son of a prophet, but I was a herdsman and a tender of sycamore fruit. Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go prophesy to my people Israel!”

Amaziah, a priest serving the northern kingdom of Israel, ...

Key Verses: Amos 9:9
For surely I will command,
And will sift the house of Israel among all nations,
As grain is sifted in a sieve;
Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground.

God pays attention to “the smallest grain.” Nothing escapes His attention! It is impossible that God could be...

Key Verses: 2 John 1:5, 3 John 1:5-6
And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one another…
Beloved, you do faithfully whatever you do for the brethren and for strangers, who have borne witness of yo...

Key Verses: Obadiah verse 17
But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance,
And there shall be holiness;
The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.

The Edomites were descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob, sons of Isaac and Rebekah (read Genesis 25:19-23). Rebekah “went to inqu...

Key Verses: Jonah 1:17, 4:11
Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights….
And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between thei...

Key Verse: Micah 2:1
Woe to those who devise iniquity,
And work out evil on their beds!
At morning light they practice it,
Because it is in the power of their hand.

Micah reveals the compassion of God for people who suffer social injustice at the hands of a powerful corrupt elite. Micah strong...

Key Verse: Micah 4:2
Many nations shall come and say,
“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths.”
For out of Zion the law shall go forth,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

In yesterday...

Key Verses: Micah 5:2, 6:8
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting…
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord req...

Key Verse: Micah 7:19
He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.
You will cast all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.

Most of Micah’s words tell of the troubles that will come on the world because of sin, personal and collective. The cumulative result of rejecting G...

Key Verses: Jude 24-25
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,
And to present you faultless
Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
To God our Savior,
Who alone is wise,
Be glory and majesty,
Dominion and power,
Both now and forever.
Amen.

This short but powerful letter...

Key Verse: Nahum 1:7
The Lord is good,
A stronghold in the day of trouble;
And He knows those who trust in Him.

Anyone quickly reading today’s chapters may well assume that Nahum is only about judgment. Why? Because the theme is about the destruction of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire,...

Key Verse: Nahum 3:18
“Your shepherds slumber, O king of Assyria; your nobles rest in the dust. Your people are scattered on the mountains, and no one gathers them.”

It is certain that Nahum knew all about the repentance before God by the king, the nobles and the people of Nineveh approximatel...

Key Verse: Habakkuk 2:4, 14
Behold the proud,
His soul is not upright in him;
But the just shall live by his faith.
…For the earth will be filled
With the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
As the waters cover the sea.

“Habakkuk” means “One who embraces.” This prophet, motivated by love, embr...

Key Verses: Habakkuk 3:17-19
Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls —
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the ...

Key Verse: Zephaniah 1:6
Those who have turned back from following the Lord,
And have not sought the Lord, nor inquired of Him.

Zephaniah is the great-grandson of King Hezekiah. Hezekiah led in calling the people back to the true God. But the king’s son, King Manasseh, reintroduced the worship...

Key Verses: Zephaniah 2:3, 10
Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth,
Who have upheld His justice.
Seek righteousness, seek humility.
It may be that you will be hidden
In the day of the Lord’s anger.
…This shall they have for their pride,
Because they have reproached and made arrogant threats
A...

Key Verses: Haggai 1:5, 7, 2:7a
Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!…” Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Consider your ways!…and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,” says the Lord of hosts.

...