I remember encountering Amos first on my mission, which I served in Portland, OR. In my personal study, I reflected on a scripture that’s used frequently in the first lesson taught to investigators and re-taught to recent converts. While I read the KJV at the time, I prefer the wording of the NIV:

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

    “when I will send a famine through the land—

not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

    but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

12 

People will stagger from sea to sea

    and wander from north to east,

searching for the word of the Lord,

    but they will not find it.

I applied it to those I was trying to teach, but came to recognize that it was also believers who would not be able to find the word of the Lord they needed. People who were nursing the elderly, caring for children, puzzling over work situations, and agonizing over longterm decisions. In this episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast, we explore what it means to search for the word of the Lord, for ourselves or for others, and much, much more.