Memory Monday

Yesterday - in his sermon - my Sr. Pastor, Dr. Larry D. Robertson, mentioned that in 2010 he wants to spend more time in the Word. He was talking about knowing God's will and how you must spend time int eh Word to know what God's will is. He then shared some great scriptures that talk about what God's will is.

This got me to thinking about two different things.

1. I thought of one of my favorite verses that talks about what God requires (which I think would qualify as His will).

Micah 6:8.
He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God

I'll do a little mini sermon about it in a moment. I also like it because it has been set to music at least two times that I can think of. John Ness Beck's setting is sooooo beautiful! Here's a youtube video of the ending of it done very well. I found a couple others that had the entire song but they really weren't very good.


Anyway...
2. the other thing I thought of is how every year I tell myself that I want to be more intentional in my scripture memory and then I thought how it would be easier if others were memorizing scripture with me so I thought of "Memory Mondays."

For the next year (keep me to this) I'm going to post a verse or two that I am going to work on memorizing that week. I want to challenge you all to join me. It will be easy the first month, but I figure by June when we have 20+ verses memorized it may be a little harder to remember all of them. Leave a comment here or on facebook that you are memorizing with me.

The first verse will be Micah 6:8

Micah 6:8. He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God (NASB) New American Standard Bible

These three things that God requires in this verse are legs of a stool. You must have all three equally for it to stand well.
If you "do justice" but don't love kindness and don't walk humbly with God you very easily become a tyrant.
If you "love kindness" (translated "mercy" in many translations) but don't do justice you won't hold anyone accountable for their actions and the world will become like "Lord of the Flies" or like the time of the judges in the Old Testament where everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
If you don't "walk humbly" with God then you become proud and holier-than-thou and aren't much help to anyone.

The verses before this the prophet asks the question of what he can bring before the Lord - burnt offerings, thousands of rams, an oil offering, would even his first-born be enough to pay the Lord? Micah 6:8 is the response. This is what God requires.

Micah 6:8. He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God

Will you memorize this verse with me? and more importantly, will you try to live this way? I guess that's another sermon...