Learning to Live in Covenant - Encountering God Together
Amos 3:3
Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?
Introduction: We, the body of Christ at Life Church Assembly of God, believe the Lord has brought us together for His glory, and therefore, we make this membership covenant: “We’re doing life together as we encounter, connect, grow and serve.” As members together at Life Church, we have agreed to walk together.
Don’t forget the context of Amos 3:3. Why does the LORD ask this rhetorical question of His people. They have said they would walk together with God as His covenant people, but they were actually walking with the wicked. Amos begins with a message from the LORD pronouncing judgment upon the Gentile nations around Israel. But God doesn’t stop there because Israel is no different from all the other nations. Even though they claimed to walk with God, they actually lived just like the pagans.
You and I are learning to live in covenant. We have said we would walk with God, to do life together as we encounter, connect, grow and serve. We don’t want to be like Israel in the days of Amos, to say one thing and do another.
If we have agreed to do life together in covenant relationships, then how are we to walk together? What is this GOD ENCOUNTER we have committed ourselves to?
We give our word to encounter God together as our loving heavenly Father, and celebrate as His children our confession “Jesus is Lord,” and our sure faith in His substitutionary death on the cross and resurrection from the dead (Romans 10:9; 1 John 3:1);
That statement has a lot theologically to unpack - Let’s focus on the big idea: WE GIVE OUR WORD TO ENCOUNTER GOD TOGETHER.
God is relational desiring to be encountered by you and me.
1 John 4:8, 16
God is love.
Love is a verb - love initiates an encounter with another to be expressed through relationship.
God sent His Son Jesus to make it possible for you and me to have a relationship with the LORD.
The LORD made us to encounter God together.
Genesis 1:27-28; 2:1-3
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth . . .
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Walking together in covenant to encounter God effects the way we live.
Setting apart time to “Shabbat” and return to covenant together.
Making time to pray together.
Enjoying times of worship together.
Being attentive to God’s Word together.
Recognizing a place set apart to encounter God together.
