What does the Lord Require of Me?
With what shall I come before the LORD, And bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:6-8 NKJV)
What does the Lord require of me? What can I give Him that would please Him?
It seems to be the way of humanity to try and find ways to appease God, especially when we've run head-on into our own brokenness. We take one look at our failings and our weakness, and know instinctively that we must somehow make up for it in the eyes of God. If we are to be acceptable in His sight, we must give Him something or do something for Him--or, at least, so the reason goes.
But the Lord has different ideas. Regarding sacrifices, He says in Psalm 50:12, "If I were hungry, I would not tell you; For the world is Mine, and all its fullness." He's essentially saying, "You're missing the point. I don't need your stuff. I don't want your stuff." There's something else that He's after.
Since we find out very quickly that the Lord isn't that impressed by our elaborate sacrifices, we resort to other means of recompense. This is where so many unattainable vows are born. "I promise, God, I'll never do such-and-such again for as long as I live..." "Lord, I want to show You how much I really do care about You, so I'm going to witness to at least one person every day..." "I'm going to be a good Christian--I swear that I'll read 50 chapters a day in my Bible if it kills me..." We feel we must offer God some kind of service to make up for the fact that we're messed up, goofy human beings. The problem, then, is that since we are messed-up, goofy human beings, our well-intentioned promises easily fall to the ground unfulfilled, whereupon we grit our teeth and vow that we really will do it this time--no, really--because we have to do this for God, or else. Then we stumble again, and then we up the ante again, so we make another vow, etc., etc., etc. It becomes a sort of death spiral, albeit a sincere one, that propels itself straight into self-condemnation.
And in the middle of this, we don't realize that we're still missing the point. Daniel 7:10 gives us a breathtaking picture of the throneroom of the the Ancient of Days: it describes His brilliant appearance, His fiery throne, and then goes on to say "...A thousand thousands ministered to Him; Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him..."
It sounds like God is pretty well set for servants.
So what does the Lord require? What does He ask from this weak race of humans who struggle to live for Him but so often miss the mark?
To do justly. He does want us to live in a life of integrity and purity. He wants us to walk according to the ways of righteousness and justice. It doesn't take much reading to discover that He cares intensely about the holiness standard in our lives. He loves righteousness and hates wickedness (Psalm 45:7), and wants to see us living uprightly, without compromise and sin. But this is only the beginning...
To love mercy. I believe that this is applicable to us in the sense of us extending mercy and compassion to others, but I also believe it reaches even deeper. We are to love the mercy of the Lord. When we are sincerely pursuing Him, sincerely reaching for righteousness, and then we sincerely blow it, we are to love His mercy.
This is the God who gave His only Son on our behalf. This is Jesus, who is the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His person--the eternal, living Word of God--who became flesh. It will boggle your mind if you pause to consider it. This is the God who came after us when we were enemies of Him. This is the God who loved us and gave Himself for us, when the only thing we deserved was eternal condemnation. This is the God who saw me--the weak, broken, flawed person that I am--and said, "I want that one." This is the God who looked at you and said the same thing.
He delights in mercy. If we really stop and consider, if we take our eyes off of our failings for a moment and truly gaze at the unfathomable mercy of God, it will completely undo our hearts. It will cause us to love Him for it.
To walk humbly with your God. This is the crux. God isn't after what we can give Him. He didn't save us so He could make us do things for Him. He wants our hearts. He wants our affection. He's longing for our love. We belong to a God who is madly in love with us. Do we realize what that means?
This is so liberating to understand! When we stumble, when we collide with our sin nature, when we fall short of the standard we know we want to live up to, God's opinion of us hasn't changed. He wants our love, and He wants our hearts; if that much is still in line, we still have hope...
When we have a handle on this, and we begin to know and love the mercy of God, it will anchor our hearts. It will cause us to walk humbly with God when we realize His magnificent love and mercy. It will actually drive us to deeper holiness when we realize that we're not striving for some unreachable goal; rather, we're growing and maturing, step by step, under the care of a God who is crazy about us.
So what does the Lord require of me? He wants my sincere love. He wants a life that reflects that love.
He wants my whole heart.
Jesus said..."You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38 NKJV).
posted by Amanda @ 5:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home