{An Excerpt from DownshoreDrift.com, Pastor Alan's Blog}
Since last August, we have been going through a spiritual formation study on Wednesday nights at our church. We spent several months talking about loving God. Then, we explored what it meant to love people. Now, we are talking about how we do that "to the ends of the earth." We have taken a pretty different approach on each area and I have really grown through it. One of the books that we are using for this last movement is The Micah Mandate: Balancing the Christian Life by George Grant. He deals with Micah 6:8, which says: "But he has showed you, O Man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." His premise is that if we do those three things, then our lives will be in balance and we will be salt and light to the world. Jesus appealed to Micah's mandate in Matthew 23:23 when he said to the Pharisees, "But you have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy, and faithfulness."
Thom Wolf says that when interacting with the larger culture, we start with justice issues, we the show mercy to people that we connect with, and then we share our faith with them. He calls it "Weeds, Deeds, and Seeds." When we live in a culture that is ignorant or hostile to the gospel, we should seek to come alongside them and set right what has gone wrong by bringing the Kingdom of God. We should pull the weeds that have grown up around them (Justice). Then, we should do good deeds (Matt. 5:16) among them (Mercy). Finally, after their hearts have been made receptive, we should plant the seeds of faith through the gospel (Walking humbly with God). Of course, it does not have to necessarily go in this order, but caring about justice issues and doing good amongst unbelievers surely does open their hearts to ask, "Why are you doing this?" I experienced that directly as we went down to help right after Katrina. Dr. Wolf goes on to say that the Micah/Jesus Mandate is the same as what Paul is saying when he calls us to "faith, love, and hope." It's just that amongst believers, Paul starts with the heart and our relationship with God and works his way out to our effect on the world.
FAITH = Walking Humbly with God = Planting Seeds (faith comes from hearing the gospel)
LOVE = Mercy = Good Deeds (sacrificially laying our lives down for others)
HOPE = Justice = Pulling Weeds (our hope in in the salvation that is to be granted to us fully one day)
So, basically, the Christian life is a balance of all three of these components as they continue to mix and work in our lives. Unfortunately, we often get out of balance and focus more heavily on one area over the other. Throughout my life, I have seen this imbalance in Christians who were totally focused on trying to change America through politics and social action. I have always felt that wrong. On the other hand, I have met Christians who only wanted to pray and try and do 2 Chronicles 7:14 as though it was some magic formula to restore us to the 1950's. Also, wrong. George Grant says,
I was blessed to receive a signed copy of this book as an ordination gift from one of our elders. It has been quite a treat to read.
Posted by: ruby | August 10, 2010 at 02:11 AM