This passage has often been used to indicate how humankind should treat other humans, and about how God wants us to live and move in our lives. In the verses just prior to this one Micah is stating what God doesn’t want from us, burnt offerings or any of the material things of this earthly life, but God wants us to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.
When we attempt to walk humbly with our God, we are also attempting to strive for God’s kingdom in our lives in this present time. When we do this, we are trying to put God’s will first in our lives before anything else. As I have stated often, this is a very challenging concept for me that has to be learned over and over. As a fallible human being, I daily must turn my focus to walking with God.
When I was going to college part time and working in the steel mill full time, I was thrown out of school twice for having too low of a grade point average for the number of hours I was taking. At that time for me college work was challenging, and when I tried to take too many courses while working I didn’t do well. My focus was on my own time table and me trying to look good by over working myself and doing too much versus walking humbly with God and having my focus on God’s kingdom and a time frame that were actually better for my wellbeing.
After almost being thrown out a third and final time, I was very embarrassed and humbled by this and had to take a different approach if I wanted to continue. I had to step back and look at what I had done that hadn’t worked and try to do something new. Thus, over the next three quarters I only took one course each quarter in order to concentrate my efforts on that one course, in order to work my way off of probation. I was able to do that, and after that period I took a more reasonable number of classes and was able to obtain my bachelors’ degree.
Being humbled in this case helped to get my focus off of what I thought I wanted, versus walking with God toward God’s kingdom in my daily life. There may be times in your life when you have to humble yourself before the Lord as you strive to become a lifelong disciple of Jesus Christ, hopefully your spiritual practices will give you the courage and wisdom to do just that! Peace, Vernon T.
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