What a glorious morning!  I have labored in my heart over a command of the Lord that I did not understand and this morning He sent me clarity.  I have wrestled!  This one little phrase has haunted me, I have written about it, I have pleaded over it, and with such simplicity today He says, this is the gist, this is what I’d like for you to understand about it today.  Our God is a cool, cool Man! Walking with Him is the greatest thrill you can ever have; you need no money, you don’t have to leave home, it requires no tools or expertise, you have it all right here.

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.                                                    Micah 6:8

I want to do all that He requires, but what if I don’t understand what He is requiring of me?  What does it mean to act justly?  How do I do that?

The three aren’t meant to be taken apart.  I kept trying to tackle them one at a time, but that wasn’t what He had for me this time around (God’s Word is living and active and may speak a different Word to me here some other time, but this it the skin it’s taking on today.)                                                                                                                                      

There are three parts of you.  The outer circle is the body, the middle is the mind, the inner is the soul.  This simple explanation has so much to offer your life by the way.  You know why it is that some relationships just hit it off right from the start?  You know how sometimes you can really work at a relationship and it just never gains any depth?  It’s all about the circles.  The deeper into you you go, the greater the connectedness.  If you meet someone who shares your core, they click right off the bat, you share that inner circle.  If all you have in common with someone is that outer circle, same gender, nationality, social status, then you aren’t going to gain much depth because there isn’t any.  If you look like someone and you tend to think the way they do, you can build a halfway decent relationship.  But if you want real depth, if you want something that you feel can weave its way all the way through your life, find one that connects with you at the soul level.  In that center is your God-shaped hole.  In that center, you meet with the the Lord and you house His Holy Spirit.

So how does all this answer my perplexing question?  The requirement goes core deep.

To act justly is a governmental word, it connotes ethical living, fairness, justice, getting what one is due, good or bad.  It involves the outer layer.  It puts dictates on the way that we conduct ourselves on the body level.  It says, treat people well, don’t abuse, put skin on that love you profess, control your own actions and conduct.

To love mercy, which would be translated grace in the New Testament, goes a layer deeper.  It says, let it touch the emotion in you, let it permeate to the heart of who you are.  Love and value and dispense grace, cherish and protect it.  Don’t just act, believe, emote, take it beyond what you do to what you are.

Walk humbly with your God.  We find ourselves at the center.  And here at the heart of us we find not a dictator on the throne, not an old man in a rocking chair, but a Husband and Father and Savior and King.  At the heart of this requirement is a relationship.  Our God doesn’t pass out demands and requirements and say good luck.  Just like me this morning, He didn’t leave me to figure it out and hope that I get it right enough times.  The goal of His dispensing justice by grace through His Son was so that we could not walk humbly around Him or near Him or up to Him or even before Him, it was so that we could walk WITH Him.

It’s like a good marriage.  You make decisions together, with one another.  You consider the implications of your decisions on the other.  You live and work and operate and exist together, there are no longer two, you are one.  That’s the plan. As one unit, God and man, you live, you make decisions that touch every layer of you.  And the choices that you make rise to the surface of your circles and find their way into the lives of those around you.

What does God require of you?

God requires that I fully invest in this marriage.  That I trust that He has my best interest at heart.  That I buy in whole hog to the amazing reality that the God of the Universe moved Heaven and Earth because He wants to share life with me. He requires that this faith, this belief, this truth, this knowledge be allowed to shape every circle in me, that it touch every facet of my life and play itself out in every part of who I am.