13^th-14^th February

Weekend Edition

“What can we bring to the Lord? Should we bring Him burnt offerings? Should we bow down before God Most High with offerings of yearling calves? . . . . No, O people, The Lord has told you what is good, and that is what He requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Micah 6:6,8

What does God really want from you? Does He want your religious acts of worship that mean nothing more than to check your daily list of duties off, so that you can feel good about your ‘Christian’ life? Or does He want you to give up everything you enjoy and love, and be filled with sorrow and sadness at your un-worthiness before His Holy throne? The answer, an emphatic NO! What God wants is YOU… He wants to have a relationship with YOU. So much so, that He did give His only Son, Jesus Christ, to make that possible when Jesus died for our sins (see Micah 6:7b).

Religious acts of worship and sacrifices do nothing more than to appease our man made list of rules and regulations. When Jesus was alive on this earth, He fought tirelessly to correct the Pharisees’ way of thinking, to change their thinking from doing to done, from religion to relationship. Yet we too so easily fall into the same trap. Our intentions may be right, yet we feel by doing, we can earn God’s favour and love, just like the Israelites in Micah’s time and the Pharisees in Jesus’ time. Yet we don’t have to do things for God’s love. He already loves us. We just need to accept it. It is from that knowledge that we can walk in humility before God in JOY; we love what God loves, which is mercy and justice, and we do what is right, not out of duty but out of relationship.