It’s Too Hard
Rather listen to this blog? Listen to “It’s Too Hard”
Confession time in the interest of full disclosure: I am a TV/movie addict. I love watching TV shows and movies almost as much as I love reading. Life fascinates me, and any medium that allows me to examine life - I am sold! One of my favorite movies is A League of Their Own. There are so many nuggets of wisdom, especially, for me, the line where Dottie Hinson is leaving right before the World Series, and Jimmy Dugan confronts her. She tells him, “It just got too hard.” His answer? “It’s supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great!”
Christianity is hard. It’s hard to live by faith when so many geographies of life are scary. It’s hard to be a sheep among wolves and to be as shrewd as snakes but innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16). It’s hard to preach the gospel to a deaf world. It’s hard to testify that we are Christians when others who claim the same name do not behave as Jesus did. It’s hard, but what did we expect? While watching a reality TV show (I said this was confession time!), I picked up this gem: The person being interviewed said, “I don’t know why he said I threw him under the bus - I gave him the bus schedule!” Well, Jesus gave us the bus schedule! He said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Being a Christian is hard - Jesus told us it would be. So how do we, as humans and not God incarnate, do this? How do we run the race to the finish line in a way that our trophy will be our Savior saying to us, “Well done good and faithful servant,” (Matthew 25:21)? Actually, it’s not that hard…
Micah 6:8 - “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.”
We are required (stipulated as necessary to be done, made, or provided) to do three things:
Act justly
Love mercy
Walk humbly with [our] God
To Act Justly
Justly is an adverb, which means it describes how an action is done. To act justly means to act, or behave, according to what is morally right or fair. We have the whole Bible filled with examples of behavior that is morally right or fair, and even examples of behavior that is not. But, if you need a simplified list to get you started - you will find the 10 commandments in Exodus 20:3-17.
Essentially, they are:
You’ll have no other gods before God
No idols (anything worshiped above God)
Do not misuse the name of God
Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy
Honor your parents
Do not murder
Do not commit adultery
Do not steal
Do not lie
Do not covet (want what someone else has in the sense that you will take it from them)
If this list is still too long, Jesus summed it up into just two commandments in Matthew 22: 37 and 39, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
To Love Mercy
The word mercy is a noun, which means it is used to identify the subject. The subject is what the whole sentence is about, and everything in the sentence revolves around it. In the same way, the subject of our relationships with people is mercy. Mercy means compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. To love mercy is to have compassion on people, especially those who wrong or hurt us, in the same way Christ has shown mercy to us.
This can be hard if we focus on what was done TO us by another human rather than what was done FOR us by Jesus on the cross. We can’t do this alone - we have to ask for the power of the Holy Spirit to help us, and we do this through prayer. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:44, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” When we claim the blood of Jesus, our sins are forgiven, and to refuse to extend that same mercy to others is, in a way, putting ourselves above God. That is the epitome of foolishness! Who am I to refuse to do for others, who are sinners just like me, what God has done for them? If Jesus, who was crucified for their sins (including what they’ve done to me) as well as for mine can be merciful, then I can.
Walk Humbly With [Our] God
The word humbly is another adverb. Humbly means reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission. It is too easy for us to forget the magnitude and power of God, especially in our current age of technology. We can get information quickly and simply by typing a question into Google. We can get anything we need delivered right to our doorstep in a matter of days with Amazon, FedEx, and UPS. We can take digital pictures and immediately delete the ones we don’t like or didn’t come out right. We can send a text message rather than have a lengthy telephone conversation, and for that matter, we can talk to people anywhere without worrying about a landline or change for a payphone. It seems everything in our world is easy, which makes walking humbly with God harder - unless we remember that our God spoke existence INTO EXISTENCE! Time, which dictates and controls our entire lives from birth to death, does not exist for God. He is I AM - a statement of perpetual being. How can we NOT be humbled by that? To walk humbly with God is to acknowledge his power, authority, and holiness in the manner of Psalm 105:1, “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done.”
Being a follower of Christ is hard, but it’s not hard to follow Christ. It’s just three things: Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Jesus said we’d have trouble in this world, but He also sent us the Holy Spirit to help and be with us – He’s always just a prayer away. This race is hard, but crossing the finish line and the victory that is our prize is what makes it great!
AMEN
