Have you ever felt used? For your service, your time, your money or your stuff... You have a giving, loving spirit and you don't mind sharing or helping... but then you realize that the "friend" doesn't want you - a relationship with you... they're only interested in what you have to give them. It hurts.
Realizing that we've been used can make us angry, hurt, bitter. It may bring out the ugly, stand-offishness or even the sarcastic side.
I know that God is holy and incapable of sin, but I have to wonder if He sometimes gets a bit sarcastic feeling when we don't reciprocate His gestures. He loves so much all the time and we, His children, don't always appreciate Him for what He's doing in our lives and seek to know Him as deeply as He knows us. We use Him for that "feel good" moment... for that "look at me and how good I am" pride thing.
In this next verse of thanks, Amos is speaking God's words in irony. It really threw me off at first, because I couldn't believe that God would talk like that. Amos is a unique prophet because he comes from common folk... he's a farmer. I love that God uses common people to do big jobs.
"Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings - boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do, declares the Sovereign Lord." Amos 4:5
Amos is warning Israel to come back to the Lord. God's chosen people have gotten very sloppy and disrespectful in their worship and have forgotten it's true meaning. They are in love with their religion and it's rituals but have forgotten about the God who loves them. They are placing religion over relationship and not remembering the things that God loves - goodness, mercy, kindness, and justice. This grieves God greatly. He desperately wants His children to return to Him and worship Him.
In my devotional, Jesus Calling, I found this paragraph to bring perspective to our need for God in this world in which we live:
You inhabit a fallen, disjointed world, where things are constantly unraveling around the edges. Only a vibrant relationship with Me can keep you from coming unraveled too.
"Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." 1 John 2:15-17
Herein lies the promise... the secret to our success... our ray of hope and reason to be thankful today. If we focus our attention on our love for God and work to build that loving relationship with Jesus, the world and its desires will pass away and we can focus our thoughts on our eternal life in heaven! Even if we've suffered being used for what we have, we will know the truth that the real value does not lie in possessions or worldly riches but in relationship with Christ. It hurts to be used and it truly grieves our Heavenly Father as well.
This song, by Third Day, shows us that piece of God's heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUI-sj23qs0
"And be thankful." Colossians 3:15b
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