Which prophet was a shepherd from Tekoa who also tended sycamore-fig trees?

The Answer

Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa in Judah who also cared for sycamore-fig trees when God called him to prophesy against the northern kingdom of Israel. When the priest Amaziah told him to go home, Amos replied that he was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet — just a working man whom God had taken from the flock and sent.

Amos had no seminary training, no prophetic pedigree, no professional credentials. His resume said shepherd and fig farmer. Yet God plucked him from the pastures of Tekoa and gave him some of the most thunderous words in the Old Testament — including the famous cry to 'let justice roll on like a river.'

God has never limited His calling to the credentialed. He looks for availability and courage, and He supplies the words.

Do not disqualify yourself from what God might do through you because of what your background lacks. The One who called a fig farmer to confront a kingdom knows exactly whom He is calling when He calls you.