I doubt God’s goodness and faithfulness like it’s my job. Like a dog who sees a squirrel, I keep forgetting the salvation that He has called me to through Christ. I keep forgetting His power He has shown in my life and turn to my own power and control. I forget that God doesn’t want my efforts, but that He wants me. He wants you.
We are not alone in the struggle of amnesia. Micah shook the Isrealites trying to get them to stop running after their own tails too.
He told them, “My people, remember…Remember your journey… that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD,” (Micah 6:5 NIV).
Friend. Remember. When you are scared, or lonely, or anxious, or depressed, or grieving, or heartbroken, or just plain broken… REMEMBER. Remember your journey with God.
Remember your journey with God.
Remember the times He was the only one listening at midnight when you needed peace.
Remember when He pulled you out before and gave you new life and new perspective through His Spirit.
Remember you are already made right and already completely cherished and loved without an ounce of payback required.
Remember that He wants you for YOU not for what you can do — because really, what could we do greater than the cross?
Micah continues to press their hearts asking, “With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6:6-7NIV)
Our earthly striving selves need to be set free from this desire to pay back God everyday. He doesn’t want our fearful, guilt-ridden ‘have to’, He wants our thankful, heart-pounding, awe-struck ‘want to’.
He doesn’t want our fearful, guilt-ridden ‘have to’, He wants our thankful, heart-pounding, awe-struck ‘want to’.
This struggle is not a new one in the kingdom of God. Thousands of years ago His people were trying to please the Lord with spilling out whatever they had physically, when all God really wanted was their hearts. In their time it was giving of offerings to make things right. In our time it looks a little different.
We do what a ‘good Christian’ should do. We go to church to say we went. We don’t do this or that because we shouldn’t. And we do, do, do because we should. We tally up our good and try to hide our bad. We try to lay all our “shoulds” at His feet when He never asked us to strive. He doesn’t want our “shoulds’ He wants our hearts. So why do we withhold our hearts from Him?
Micah 6:8 “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
He has shown us what is good through Christ on earth. In Colossians 1:15 it says that Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He showed us how to live as sons and daughters of the King because He was one!
The way to walk humbly with our God is found in following Christ.
The way to walk humbly with our God is found in following Christ. Loving like He loved with the strength of the Holy Spirit within us. Forgiving crazy abundantly like He continues to forgive us. Reaching across ethnic, cultural, racial borders like He shattered the border between Jews and Gentiles, seeing the poor and oppressed and weary as equal and worthy and priceless like He saw women, children, and beggars.
Knowing Christ is knowing what God wants of you. He wants you and He wants your heart and He wants your life plan and your control and your time and your everything. Not because you have to, but because you love Him back and you want to do life with Him because life without Him is no life at all.
Sister, I pray that we walk humbly with our God today. That walk will not disappoint.
Andrea Chatelain 