Walk Humbly预览

Who we are

Six-month-old Fredia is as feisty as they come! Her mama struggles day in and day out to feed her. But the baby’s feistiness isn’t the problem. A cleft lip and palate are to blame. The infant girl dangerously kept losing weight. Then Fredia’s desperate mother came to the Africa Mercy for help.  Fredia was placed in the infant feeding program so she’d be strong enough for surgery. Nurse Brenda Sossou sums up the program in one sentence: “We take babies, and we fatten them up.”

And it worked! Fredia gained weight, and a free surgery repaired her lip and palate. Now she’ll have the strength to show off her feistiness. 

Love and compassion always make a difference. We come to understand pure love and compassion when we experience the love of God for ourselves. Knowing who God is and how much He loves us is essential. We saw in the passage from Isaiah yesterday an awe-inspiring description of God’s holiness—his glorious ‘set-apart-ness’. Yet in Ephesians, today, we read God ‘raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus’, because of ‘His great love for us.’ As Christians, we can be in awe of God’s holiness, and yet be united with Him—not because of our own efforts or actions, but because of God’s grace and mercy. We read, ‘It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so no one can boast’. 

Knowing we are God’s workmanship keeps us from thinking we are worthless (e.g. “I feel useless”) and it also prevents us from becoming ‘puffed up’ with pride (e.g. “I’m better than other people”). We are reminded that, ultimately, God has created us—we are His work of art. Some versions even translate this as the Church being God’s ‘masterpiece’. Being truly humble means doing what our Creator God has planned for us to, rather than proudly doing our own thing and going our own way. What a wonderful discovery—the maker of the Universe and the shaper of a billion stars, calls us, His Church, his crowning work of art! Not only that, God has ‘good works’ and a plan for your life today. He prepared a plan for you before you were even born! Now that’s something to celebrate and thank God for!

Micah 6:6-8 gives us a blueprint for being humble when we see who God really is. Rather than show outward signs of religion to impress others, we are urged to ‘walk humbly with your God’. We walk humbly because God is our awesome Creator, but we get to walk with God, because He loves us. That is a humbling thought!

Call to action – Spend some time thanking God for the plan He has for your life, and ask him to help you walk into his purposes for you—the ‘good works’ He prepared for you. Could God be calling you to a new ministry or Christian opportunity?