Micah 6:1-8
Have you of late, or have you ever taken time to reflect on
the saving acts of the Lord? That is the
indictment of the Lord to His people with a reminder of the many saving acts
from the time He brought them out of slavery from Egypt and sent Moses, Aaron,
and Miriam to lead them.
As a youth I made so many mistakes and I had a fear of God,
but it was based on a total misunderstanding of His person; believing that to
trust Him would take from me any chance to find success in this world. When I got married I was so full of self that
my beautiful wife was more of a thing than my bride, and much like God I was
sure she would find out that I did not know how to be the husband she rightfully
deserved. As I’ve shared before, God put
my barber and four other men into my life and arranged for me to see God living
in them, and to understand that God could change a man’s heart, that God loved
me, even when I did not love myself. It
was soon after my new birth in a hotel room in Victoria, Texas, that God
introduced me to Jack Archer who began to help me understand that God loved a
rascal like me, that God really loved me!
It seemed like everything was going great, a new baby girl,
boy was I scared, she was so little and the most beautiful little girl that had
ever walked on planet earth. We were in
a church and it seemed like for the first time in my life I was looked up to
and was working with teenagers and very happy.
Now Jack had spent a lot of time telling me about how much Jesus loved
me and the church we went to spent all its time trying to get me saved each and
every service, but no one told me I had a real enemy that wanted to steal my
joy, take away my testimony, and destroy my marriage, and that he was slick and
smooth and very good at what he did. It
was just a short time later, that God allowed a hurricane to destroy our home
and all that was in it and we learned together, the three of us, that God can
rebuild homes as well as marriages.
It is in looking back that I understand now that pride and an
arrogant spirit began to fill my mind and heart and before I knew what had
happening I was willing to lose my two most precious gifts, my wife and my
daughter, but God rescued me. I had been
with the 3M Company for twenty years, when I made a mistake and ask a vice
president of Exxon why he had switched from one electrical distributor to
another, and he took my question as if I was questioning his decision and went
and told 3M’s largest distributor that I did not think they were worthy of
Exxon’s business and that I did not believe they would deliver. I did not say any of those things, but the
distributor did not ask my boss or his boss but the president of 3M to fire me,
and God rescued me! He also showed me
how to humble myself and go to the Exxon vice president and ask for
forgiveness.
And often I, like the people of Micah’s time, have wondered,
what does the Lord require of me, is it more time reading an applying His
written word, or more time in church activity, or maybe it’s doing some great
act like feeding the poor and taking care of widows and orphans. All of the above is good, if your heart is
in the right place, but if it to earn God’s love then it is totally misguided;
for God so loves you and me that He gave His only Son to step out of heaven and
take the form of a baby and live among us for 33 years, telling us about the
Father’s love, and dying on a cross to pay our sin debt. The Holy Spirit spoke these words through the
lips of Micah; “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 ESV)
From the Back Porch,
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