What Does Living for God Actually Look Like?

Running on Empty | Day 18 

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To  act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” — Micah 6:8 (NIV) 

Good morning. If you have ever wished God would just hand you a short, clear answer  instead of a thousand scattered instructions, this morning’s verse is about as close as  Scripture gets to doing exactly that. 

Three Words, Not Thirty Rules 

We tend to overcomplicate this question. We picture spreadsheets of spiritual  disciplines, ten habits of highly effective believers, a checklist long enough to leave us  more exhausted than when we started. Part of that impulse is understandable. We want  to get it right. We want to know we are doing enough, being enough, showing up in a  way that actually counts. But underneath all of that striving is a quiet fear that ordinary  faithfulness is not quite sufficient, that God requires something grander from us than the  ordinary, unremarkable life most of us are actually living. Micah was written to people  asking the same question we are asking now, people wondering what God actually  wanted from them after years of going through religious motions that left them spiritually  hollow. The answer he gave them was not longer. It was shorter than anyone expected. 

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To  act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8, NIV) Three  things. Not thirty. Justice, mercy, and humility, lived out in whatever ordinary setting we  

find ourselves in today. This is not a verse about heroic religious achievement. It is a  verse about posture, about the shape our days take when they are actually oriented  toward God instead of around our own comfort or image. 

Acting justly means we deal honestly, even when a small dishonesty would be easier or  more convenient. It shows up in how we speak about a coworker who is not in the room,  how we handle a situation where we received more change than we were owed, how  we treat someone who cannot do anything for us in return. Loving mercy means we do not just tolerate kindness when it is required of us, we actually delight in extending it,  the way God has extended it to us far beyond what we deserved. We do not meter out  grace carefully based on how much the other person seems to have earned it. We pour  it out, because it was poured out on us first. And walking humbly means we stop  performing our faith for an audience and simply walk, day after ordinary day, aware of  whose presence we are actually walking in. Not striding ahead with confidence in our  own judgment. Not falling behind in self-pity. Walking. With God. In the ordinary. 

Justice and Mercy Have a Cost 

This is where the law in this verse carries real weight, and it should. “Therefore, I urge  you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living  sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship.” (Romans 12:1,  NIV) Worship was never meant to be confined to an hour on a Sunday morning. Paul  calls the whole of our bodies, our daily choices, our actual behavior, an act of worship. 

That is a high calling, and if we are honest, most of us fall short of it more often than we would like to admit. We grow weary in doing good. We let mercy run thin when it costs  us something. We let humility slip into either pride, which tells us we have earned a  pass on the ordinary obligations, or self-pity, which makes our own pain so large that we  have nothing left to give anyone else. Both keep the focus squarely on ourselves rather  than on God. 

Scripture does not pretend that staying faithful in the ordinary is easy. “Let us not  become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to  those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:9-10, NIV) Weariness in doing  good is named here as a real and expected struggle, not a sign of spiritual failure. The call is not to feel strong every day. The call is to not give up on the small, unglamorous,  justice and mercy shaped opportunities sitting directly in front of us, even on the days  we feel we have nothing left to give. There is a harvest coming. We may not see it from  where we are standing. But the one who promised it does not forget what was planted. 

And John strips away any excuse we might reach for to keep our faith private and  theoretical. “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in  truth.” (1 John 3:18, NIV) Living for God was never going to be only a matter of believing  the right things internally, keeping the correct theology tidy and undisturbed in our minds  while the world around us goes untouched by what we claim to believe. It shows up in  actions, in the justice and mercy and humility Micah named, lived out where other  people can actually see and receive them. Faith that stays entirely inside our own heads  is not the kind of faith Scripture describes. 

None of this is a performance we offer to earn God’s favor. It is a response already  made possible by the one who lived this verse out perfectly on our behalf. “For even the  Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for  many.” (Mark 10:45, NIV) Jesus Christ did not walk humbly in theory. He walked it all  the way to a cross, serving us when we had nothing to offer him in return, acting with  perfect justice while extending us the mercy we never earned and could never  manufacture on our own. Whatever justice, mercy, and humility we manage to live out  today are not the price we are paying for his approval. They are simply the overflow of  what he has already, freely, completely poured into us first. We live this way not to  become his people. We live this way because we already are. 

Prayer 

Father, I confess that I have wanted living for you to be either easier than this or more  impressive than this, and you have given me something else entirely: a short, costly,  daily call to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. Forgive me for the times I have  grown weary in doing good and let small inconveniences talk me out of mercy. Forgive  me for the moments I turned humility into self-absorption and lost sight of the needs  right in front of me. Renew my strength for the ordinary opportunities today will bring. 

Lord Jesus, thank you for walking this path perfectly when I could not, and for serving  me before I ever offered you anything in return. Let my actions today, however small  and unseen, reflect the justice and mercy you have already shown me. Keep me 

humble, aware that every step I take today is taken in your presence. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Three words, act justly, love mercy, walk humbly, are easier to remember than thirty  rules, and easier still when we remember they were modeled for us first by someone  who never once fell short of them on our behalf. Tomorrow we look at something that  might surprise you as one of the most powerful weapons against the exhaustion this  series has been naming. Stay with us. 

To God be the glory. 

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever. 

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