What are we called to do as Christians?

He has told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?
                                                Micah 6:8

Do justice
Love kindness
Walk humbly

This past Sunday we talked about each of these things God requires.

The thing that stands out to me first is how it always starts with a verb.  DO justice.  We know God's way, we know how God intended things to be.  It's now time to DO things that are fair, right, and on God's standard.  There is a group that God repeats over and over and over again in His word.  God instructs us that they be treated with love, kindness, fairness, and justice.  That group is the widow, the fatherless, and the foreigner/sojourner.  How would you live this out?

The Hebrew word for kindness, can also be translated as the New Testament Greek word for mercy or grace.  Think of that phrase again.  LOVE mercy.  LOVE grace.  How do we LOVE those things?  I can appreciate when I see a kind deed being done.  When I see someone hold the door open for me and wife, but I don't know if I love them for doing it.  Do you appreciate that God sent His Son to die on a cross for your sins?  Or do you LOVE God for giving you grace and mercy?  Do you LOVE the grace and mercy that you don't deserve that has saved you from God's wrath?  How would you live this out?

We sometimes confuse humility with low self-esteem, or low self-image.  Humility is more about perspective than anything.  Being humble is seeing God as this infinitely powerful, infinitely all-knowing, and infinitely infinite, and realizing we are not.  God is perfect.  We are not.  God overcame sin.  We have not.  Do you start to see the pattern?  WALK humbly shows that we are to be moving.  A common lie is that you are incapable of doing things because you are not good enough.  God is good, you are bad, so you shouldn't get in the way of His work.  Just sit back and watch someone better do it.  Watch Billy Graham, or a pastor talk to people about Jesus because you aren't good enough.  We WALK with God.  We move with God.  We realize God is powerful and so we stay with Him.  We realize we can't do things on our own, so we stay with Him.  We WALK.  We don't stay.  How would you live this out?

Your assignment is to take these three phrases and translate them for our youth culture.  Do not change the meanings, but find ways that we can remember these points and talk about them easily.  

These three phrases will be our theme that this youth group will have forever.  This isn't a month theme, or even a yearly theme.  This is what God expects from EVERY believer.

How would you live this out?