To Walk Humbly with your God

A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

Photo by Margot Cioccio

Micah 6:8 (NIV1984)  

He has showed you, 

O man, 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. 

I think we often over complicate things. What would it take for you to feel like your walk with the Lord was good enough. How much would you need to read your bible, or how much time would you need to spend in prayer? How many acts of kindness or how much self-sacrifice or good deeds would it take to put you in right standing with God?

The truth is that if you are approaching your relationship with the Lord on any of those levels you have missed the point of His free gift of grace. While I want to encourage you to spend more time with the Lord, more time in the word and in prayer. I want to be careful that your devotions do not become "works"by which you hope to win the Lords favor. Ephesians 2: ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.

While it is important to spend time with Jesus it should be more like when you fall in love with someone. You look forward to every opportunity to be together. When you are apart your mind is quick to wander to thoughts of the one you love. The Lord desire is a relationship of love not one of works. Our acts of service and devotion should be more from a place of thankfulness than one of constantly trying to earn Gods favor. Your salvation is a gift of God's love and grace. It is un-deserved, it can't be earned.

Mark 12:33 (NIV1984)

To love him with all you heart, 

with all your understanding and with all 

your strength, and to love your neighbor

as yourself is more important than 

all burnt offerings and sacrifices.

 Knowing that there is nothing you can do to cause God to love you any more or less should help to free you from the task master of religious obligation. When we walk humbly with our God. It is from a position of acceptance of the great gift of His mercy, grace and love that has been provided for us through the sacrifice of Jesus. He took the punishment that we deserve.  

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Help us to approach you from a position of humility and thankfulness. Help us to put to death once and for all the idea that we could ever do enough to earn your favor. We do not deserve your mercy, grace or love. Yet you have reached out to us with arms of love and have made a way for your justice to be satisfied through the price paid once and for all by Jesus. It is ours only to accept or to reject. If we choose to reject that gift of love, we are already perishing. Help us to more fully realize that you desire our love over sacrifice or religious duty.

Keep Traveling Steadily

Keep Traveling Steadily
A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

Psalms 37:34, Living Bible
“Don’t be impatient for the LORD to act!  
Keep traveling steadily along his pathway and 
in due season he will honor you with every blessing.”

Don’t be impatient for the LORD to act! There have been plenty of times where my impatience got the best of me and I have taken things in to my own hands, thinking I some how knew better than God. Those times generally ended in a mess or in consequences that I later regretted. There are often reasons why God makes us wait. Our motives may not be right, we may need to learn to trust him, other people or circumstances may not be in position yet. I think sometimes God uses that time to see if we really do want the thing we hope or desire. Will we hold on to hope or give way to depression and despair.

There are hopes and dreams that we should pursue but don’t out of fear and indecision, I’m not talking about those. We need to take faith and act on those - take the next step of faith and move forward. There is a balance in deciding if we are waiting because of fear and indecision or because God has really said for us to wait.  When God says to wait it requires faith, patience, humility and courage. One has to believe that God is working while we are attending to the other things that he has given us to do.   We have to learn to be in step with the Holy Spirit.  Its like crossing a busy street with a child. We wait for the light to change and then we cross. To go before the light changes puts us and others in danger.  To wait does not mean that I give up or stop believing that I will get to the other side of the street. A stop light in my path does not tell me to turn back or change directions.  It just means stop and wait till it is time to cross. It is in seasons of waiting that we have to look with eyes of faith rather than manipulative hands.  I don’t think when God calls us to wait that it means we just sit and do nothing, on the contrary there is usually plenty of things we can and should be doing. Sometimes our focus is on the future when it needs to be in the here and now.  I think sometimes God is waiting on us to trust him, to accept his timing and his plan.  Sometimes He waits for us to take a step of faith and then another,  rather than being consumed with doubt, unbelief, worry and fear. We need to determine if it is a matter of being impatient for God to act or if it is a matter of your own doubt and fear that causing God to wait for us to act.

Are you traveling steadily along the path God has laid out for you or are you stuck and wallowing in a mud pit of sin or worry and doubt that you need to climb out of and get back to traveling steadily.
In due season he will honor you with every blessing. In the Bible we read the stories of the trials of faith that others faced. We know the endings to those stories, but we don’t know the ending of our own story. There is a good kind of structural tension created when we look at where we are now and where we want to be objectively. That tension helps move us towards the desired end. I know my story like yours has it difficult days and there will be things I don’t do very well. I hope however that the over arching theme of my life will be that I followed Jesus  and that we walked together through both trials and blessings. That I pressed in to him and pressed on to over come the obstacles that I faced in my day to day journey with Him. I hope that will be true of you as well.
Prayer: 
Dear Lord, Help me to not be impatient. Help me to see where I need to wait and trust and where I need to act and take steps of faith. Help me to travel steadily along the path you have laid out for me and to enjoy the blessings and special graces that you offer me in this day.  I choose to walk in faith, trust, humility and courage, rather than in worry, doubt, unbelief and fear.