I have to admit that I was a bit nervous, sitting there for my first 1:1 catch up with Richard Sweatman my MTS trainer.

See that’s the thing with reading the Bible 1:1 with another guy. You catch up, talk about life, pray together, and it’s good. Really good. But the key time is when you suck it up, open the Bible and read a chunk together that neither of you have looked at. There’s no pre-reading, no prep, just two blokes, a bible, and my nerves.

Foolishly, this week I admitted that I didn’t know much about the minor prophets – so we went to Amos. This is what we read: (Amos 1:1-2)

‘The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa – what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel. He said:

“The Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds dry up and the top of Carmel withers.”’

And the thing was, as we dug into these two verses (with the help of the Bible Dictionary and NIV study Bible notes telling us where to look up the names and places) we met God.

We saw God choose this simple shepherd from Judah to take his message to Israel. We heard God’s voice roaring and thundering from his holy city and mountain towards the mountain of Baal worship in Israel.

This is our God, powerful in judgment over false gods and all nations, the God to be feared and listened to.

And so it began, 1:1 with Sweaters. There was no need to be nervous (at least, not scared of Sweaters. But God on the other hand…). It was just two guys and the Bible, hearing the powerful voice of God.

Tags: 1:1, Bible reading

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Maturity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.