Resolution for Women: Mercy Me

How many times a day or week have you found yourself asking these questions:

• Lord what is it that You want me doing?
• What do you require of me today?
• What jobs in the church do You want me to serve in?
• What ministries can I be of help in?
• What church do I need to attend and be a part of?

And wait there is that BIG question that we always get around to asking……Lord what is Your WILL for my life?

As we learned in today’s lesson God’s answer to His will for us is found in Micah 6:8 .

“He has showed you, O man, 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” 

In this book of the old testament God used Micah to prophesy to the people who had fallen from Him.  Amongst the people, there was corruption, idolatry, violence and the belief that personal sacrifice satisfies divine justice.   Even with all that was going on with these people and the impending judgment for their wickedness, God was still reaching out for the “hearts” of His people.

This is the place He has always reached out to capture.   When someone or something can penetrate our hearts “it sticks” whether it is something good or bad it is in there solid, and in order for God to capture our heart we must allow Him to penetrate it and then we will know His will for us.

In this verse and in your life God has BIG PLANS for you…he said so, so why do we continually ask Him what His will is for us.   He has told us already….(act, love, walk)…these are clear visions from His Word of what He wants us doing right now today not in the future, He will take care of the future stuff when He is ready but for now lets do these things that His Word has described for us:

• Act justly – God is telling us to do what’s right, so in order to do this we must ask a few questions to ourselves  (Do I owe anything to anyone?   Do I tell the truth?   Have I treated others as they should be treated?   Do I have unconfessed sin in my life?   Am I living a moral life?

So after reading these few questions can we truly say we are acting justly or do we need to mend some things in our life before we can say “yes I do”.   Priscilla stated a woman’s primary interest is seeing justice done, seeking solutions that are fair, reasonable, objective and most importantly – are expressive of the love of Christ.

Maybe we should sit down and make a list of things we need to make right—then make them right—God can’t bless us further until we obey His convictions and change our life to live justly.

• Love mercy –   this means that we must have a hearty interest in doing things that bless and impact others lives.   We MUST seek other people’s needs above our own.  People have many needs as we all know but the first need we want to meet is their spiritual need “to know Christ as Savior” then we can help meet physical needs or material needs as God shows us.

Do we give of ourself to others only when it is convenient to us?  Do we live our day in such a way that we say I have to take care of me and my family before I can help someone else?    Do we keep mental records of what people deserve from us?  If this is our way of thinking then we haven’t learned what to “love mercy” really means.

Proverbs 31:20 shows us the perfect example of what we should be doing  to “love mercy” to others, it says “ she stretcheth our her hand to the poor; yea; she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.”

Being merciful and loving to others should be our way of life, no matter where we are or what we are doing in our life, that is His will for us.

• Walk humbly – to live in complete dependence upon our Holy Lord, He deserves the glory and honor.

We must admit that walking humbly doesn’t fit too well in our society today.  As we are all aware everything that goes on in our lives is “public” knowledge now.   We post a status on Facebook or Twitter to tell everyone what we are doing,   we post the latest pictures of our children/grandchildren/vacations,  our lives  are open for the whole world to see and know about us.   It’s  not  the old days where what happens at home stays at home, nope the world sees all and knows all because we are the ones telling them all.

We seem to care more about what others think, did they hit the “like” button on our FB status, than what God thinks about what we did in our day today and if what we did was something that brought glory to Him and not ourself.

How can we walk humbly with God, if we aren’t walking with God to begin with in our life? We can’t begin to serve others if our lives aren’t where they need to be yet.

We can’t learn these three aspects of what God’s will is for our life until we practice them each day.   (act, love, walk).  As we come to this last day of study for this week and at the point of signing the resolution  we must make ourself aware of what the Holy Spirit is compelling us to do concerning this lesson and how He wishes to use us.    Here are some ideas that came to my mind as I was studying of ways I can act, love and walk…

• Cook a meal for someone sick
• Make cards for people at a nursing home
• Mow someone’s grass
• Offer to babysit for someone
• Volunteer at a library to read to children
• Tutor children
• Write letters to first time college students who have left home to go off to school
• Clean up the trash in your city
• Stand at an intersection and give out bottles of water to people on a hot steamy day

These are just some things that God brought to my heart as I studied today’s lesson that I intend on acting upon.  My opportunity to know God’s will has been in front of my eyes for a long time, I’ve never needed to ask God what His will is for me,  it’s all around me, I just need to act on it and He will continue providing other things that His will is for me as I show my obedience to doing the ones He has already presented to me now.

This weeks chapter is entitled  “My Heart”, finding and knowing God’s will is really pretty simple.  It starts, and ends with our heart.

Let’s do God’s will and do it without any reservations, let’s keep our eyes and hearts open and resolve to be available!

Let’s Pray

Dear God, I thank you for showing and explaining to each of us that Your will is already planned out for each of us and that as we are obedient to act, love and walk you will show us specifically where to go and what to do.   In your name I pray, Amen.

 

Your Assignment:

Ask God to show you things He wants You to do in this next week in order to act, to love and to walk in His will, and more importantly when He speaks, OBEY and do it!

 

Now head on over to our Online Bible Study Group on Facebook to see what our Daily FUN Activity is. If you do not yet belong to our OBS Facebook group, and would like to, please send an email to:

GirlfriendsCoffeeHour@gmail.com

We’ll send you the details needed to get you into this group!

Don’t forget to stop by Craig’s blog to see what the guys are up to with The Resolution for Men.

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