A Talkative God and The Listening-Optional People

Dan Sullivan   -  

[11] And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites.   Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?”declares the LORD. [12] “But you made the Nazirites drink wine,   and commanded the prophets,   saying, ‘You shall not prophesy.’  *(Amos 2:11–12 ESV)
[7] “For the Lord GOD does nothing   without revealing his secret   to his servants the prophets.   (Amos 3:7 ESV)
[13] For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind,   and declares to man what is his thought,   who makes the morning darkness,   and treads on the heights of the earth—   the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name!   (Amos 4:13 ESV)
http://www.esvbible.org/Amos+2/
The book of Amos has a lot of punishment in it. You can’t go 20 words without some country that rebelled and is going to get burned, flooded, ransacked, starved, etc. It was a pretty bad time in the world. Spread throughout the prophesies of Amos, though, are some other hints of God’s character. God isn’t just destroying everything, He gives reasons and evidence. 
Once in each of these chapters, God also shows that He wants to talk to people to stop them before these judgments come. In Ch. 2 it says He “raised up prophets.” God sent men (and sometimes women) to speak to the nations. He even sent people to explain what the previous prophets had said. 
Amos 3:7 is an amazing statement in that God says He tells His prophets everything. God doesn’t act without a warning. This doesn’t mean we have to be like that guy that predicted the day an earthquake would happen and shut down the school can cause mass hysteria. It does mean that when we get that inkling that maybe we’re doing something wrong, we should listen! You may have heard a fire & brimstone preacher list off all of the things people should repent from, but that list usually isn’t needed. When we hear someone tell us to “repent,” we usually have an idea in our mind of what we need to repent from. 
That inkling, that intuition, might be Amos 4:13 happening. ”He who created the mountains and invented wind declares His thoughts to people.” If that statement isn’t true, then we can go on with our lives of religious activity, carrying decisions around like lead and messing things up. 
But if it’s true that God wants to share His thoughts with us, then reading the Bible and praying and following Jesus just became some of the most incredible act in the world.