Thursday Reading: Micah 6:6-8
Key Verse: Micah 6:8
8 He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does Jehovah require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?
Devotion:
The more that we try to find things that we can do to please God, the more we should come to realise that there is nothing physical that we can achieve that will please Him; instead He is after one thing and one thing alone – our love. If we are given a set of rules that we should obey or a set of instructions to follow, we will always seem to find a different way of interpreting things so that we can do as little as possible to achieve the goal we have been set.
God is the one who has created us and the universe we live in. He is the one who gave us a perfect place to live within and asked only one thing – that we show our love to Him by obeying simple rules. What have we done in return? Have we not changed the rules so that we can live our lives in the manner we see fit rather than how God wants us to live? Have we not changed the meaning of His Word so that we like it? Have we not made our own rules to follow that sound like His rules so we can be happy...? Well, the sad truth is that no matter how hard we try to do things our own ways; we will never achieve the same goal as God has set for us.
Man, over time, has tried just about everything possible to try and make himself happy whilst not having to follow God’s simple rule – love ME! Is it little wonder that the first of the Ten Commandments tells us to love Him? So how are we supposed to show our love for Him? Well, we could just say that we love Him but that is not going to get very far... When we really do love someone we show it in many more ways than just telling them we love them. We listen to what they want, we are honest with them, we trust them, we help them, we support them, and we make our lives with them as transparent as possible so that we see each other for what we are. If we think something is wrong, we need to start with ourselves to make sure we are still right. God loves us for what we are not for what we think we are. Let’s be honest and love Him openly.
Points to Ponder:
Do you show your love or hide it?
Are you open with God or trying to hide things?
