With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? 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 give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
A couple of summers ago this particular verse struck the cords of my heart. I was away for awhile, and honestly searching for what the Lord wanted of me. I realized through this verse that God wasn’t going to give me a blueprint of what my life was supposed to look like in 10, 20, or 30 years from now. He wasn’t going to speak on the “God phone” and tell me that he wanted me to be a doctor or a teacher and live in Peru or Terkministan. I found out that God doesn’t work that way. The only thing he requires is a life pleasing to him right now, and then he’ll work out the blueprints as time goes. The verse stuck, and I felt an incredible amount of peace at the time.
Fast forwarding to now this Christmas, here again I was struggling with God wanted me to do. It seems as if I’ve been running in circles and going nowhere for about 5 years now, and I don’t have any general direction in which I want to go. This all came out in a conversation with my dad, and he brought up Micah 6:8. He reminded me that it’s not what God has for me in the future, but what he has for me now. He wants me to live justly, do love mercy, and to walk HUMBLY with my God. That sounded easy enough, so sure, I took it in, but never completely applied it.
Now, I’m starting to deal with all of this. I have taken everything that has struck the cords of my heart and ignored it for about 2 years now. Now, I’m going to start working on it and it’s not easy. Humility is a quality definately lacking in my life. I am so selfish all the time and it takes a lot of work not to be that way. I have been humbled so many times in the last week, and I am very glad. Before last week, I was holding on to so many unnecessary things in my life that dealt with me and what I wanted, and those things were starting to take control of my life. I saw myself at a point just a few weeks ago where I could have easily let go of the love of my life, for the sake of getting what I wanted that instant. It was a time for a change. It was time to be humbled before my God. Ergo: Hatsnea (Def. – to walk humbly before God).
