46. Be Amazed

Be Amazed: Restoring an Attitude of Wonder (Minor Prophets). Warren W. Wiersbe. 1996. 212 pages. [Source: Bought]

First sentence: Prophets sometimes do strange things.

Warren Wiersbe has three commentaries covering the Minor Prophets. Be Amazed covers--I believe--the greatest number of minor prophets. (Though math is not my strongest subject.) It covers Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi. Each chapter covers multiple chapters of the Bible. I don't know that I would describe the commentary as being verse by verse commentary so much as covering passages from all chapters. 

I wanted to read Be Amazed because I'm reading Jonah through thirty times in a row. And Wiersbe's insights on Jonah were definitely worth it. I underlined SO much in these chapters on Jonah. 

I do think if you're looking for insights on all of these minor prophets it would be worth your time. 

Quotes:

One of the greatest judgments God can inflict on any people is to let them have their own way. God is holy and will not permit His people to enjoy sin for long or to live on substitutes. Eight times in the Bible we read, “Be holy, for I am holy”; God means what He says.

What is the book of Jonah about? Well, it’s not simply about a great fish (mentioned only four times), or a great city (named nine times), or even a disobedient prophet (mentioned eighteen times). It’s about God! God is mentioned thirty-eight times in these four short chapters, and if you eliminated Him from the book, the story wouldn’t make sense.

The book of Jonah is about the will of God and how we respond to it. It’s also about the love of God and how we share it with others.

To Jesus, the will of God was food that satisfied Him; to Jonah, the will of God was medicine that choked him.

Jonah also had a wrong attitude toward the Word of God. When the Word of the Lord came to him, Jonah thought he could “take it or leave it.” However, when God’s Word commands us, we must listen and obey. Disobedience isn’t an option. “But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46 NKJV).

At one time or another during their ministries, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah felt like giving up, but God wouldn’t let them. Jonah needed Nineveh as much as Nineveh needed Jonah. It’s in doing the will of God that we grow in grace and become more like Christ.

There is no substitute for good theology, whether in our sermons or in our songs. The shallowness of some contemporary sermons, books, and songs may be the major contributing factor to the weakness of the church and the increase in “religious entertainment” in meetings where we ought to be praising God. The thing that lifted Habakkuk to the mountaintop was his understanding of the greatness of God. We need a return to the kind of worship that focuses on the glory of God and seeks to honor Him alone.

The great British expositor G. Campbell Morgan said, “Our joy is in proportion to our trust. Our trust is in proportion to our knowledge of God.”

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible