In Part 1, I reported a blackout period when I could not write at all. I desperately needed to know where I should go with Streamside. I waited and prayed for two months.
Then God spoke. What he told me was what he has whispered to me before:
“… what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8b, NASB)
So here I was with grandiose ideas about how to lead the church of Jesus to the perfect unity he prayed for and he tells me to just be quiet and humble.
Then, in the quiet of the pre-dawn hours, I began to wonder how this Old Testament prophecy might apply to Jesus’s New Testament prayer for unity, since the Old foretells the New.
Now while I am OK with biblical Greek, I am still a doofus with Hebrew, so I looked up an interlinear Bible to at least get a flavor for translation of the actual words in Micah, which went something like this:
“your God with to walk And humbly covenant loyalty and to love justly.”
Ah, but Hebrew reads from right to left, so the literal translation would be something like:
“..to love justly, covenant loyalty, and walk humbly with your God.”
Clearly, I need to walk more quietly and more humbly with God. That means: Stop! Look! Listen!
But I was stunned to see that the Hebrew seems closer to the actual teaching of Jesus, because it invokes literally what Jesus commanded – that we love each other as much as he loves us, even to the point of death! Strong words – in doing justice and acting justly, we must love justly.
Even more surprising, we are to “covenant loyalty” as we love mercy and kindness. A covenant is a bond, a binding commitment. And loyalty sounds a great deal like unity to me.
What was God telling me about Streamside and loving justly and a binding commitment to loyalty?
The powerful answer comes next in Part 3. It has completely changed me!
Then God spoke. What he told me was what he has whispered to me before:
“… what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8b, NASB)
So here I was with grandiose ideas about how to lead the church of Jesus to the perfect unity he prayed for and he tells me to just be quiet and humble.
Then, in the quiet of the pre-dawn hours, I began to wonder how this Old Testament prophecy might apply to Jesus’s New Testament prayer for unity, since the Old foretells the New.
Now while I am OK with biblical Greek, I am still a doofus with Hebrew, so I looked up an interlinear Bible to at least get a flavor for translation of the actual words in Micah, which went something like this:
“your God with to walk And humbly covenant loyalty and to love justly.”
Ah, but Hebrew reads from right to left, so the literal translation would be something like:
“..to love justly, covenant loyalty, and walk humbly with your God.”
Clearly, I need to walk more quietly and more humbly with God. That means: Stop! Look! Listen!
But I was stunned to see that the Hebrew seems closer to the actual teaching of Jesus, because it invokes literally what Jesus commanded – that we love each other as much as he loves us, even to the point of death! Strong words – in doing justice and acting justly, we must love justly.
Even more surprising, we are to “covenant loyalty” as we love mercy and kindness. A covenant is a bond, a binding commitment. And loyalty sounds a great deal like unity to me.
What was God telling me about Streamside and loving justly and a binding commitment to loyalty?
The powerful answer comes next in Part 3. It has completely changed me!
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