Kelsey Boudin

Are we walking with God without a roadmap? Of course, the Bible is that roadmap, but even those who read Scripture and attend church regularly struggle with the question: “What does God really want from me?”

People have been scratching their heads asking this question since Creation itself.     

Is it to drag the family to church more often? To read the Bible more faithfully? To knock off those nasty habits? To convert a struggling coworker? Those are all fantastic things, but we’ll find those daily decisions come more easily if we stop trying to “measure” our own performance.

The prophet Micah wrestles with this question in Micah 6. God’s people ask, “What will make You happy, Lord? Burnt offerings? Sacrifices? Grander gestures of devotion?” 

God’s answer cuts through the noise and nonsense:

“No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what He requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8, NLT)

• Not impress Him
• Not perform for Him
• Not bargain with Him

Just three simple, life-shaping things: 

• Do justice
• Love mercy
• Walk humbly with God

Choose Him. Open our hearts for a relationship. Let him teach us and guide us. If we do that, all else falls into place. 

Jesus enters the chat in Matthew 5 with the Sermon on the Mount. He doesn’t begin with rules. He begins with people. The poor in spirit. The grieving. The meek. Those who hunger for fairness and righteousness in a cruel world. In other words, the ones who know they need God. The ones who don’t have it all together – as so many of us assuredly don’t – for reasons beyond our control or even of our own making. (And that’s OK! We must come as we are, but not stay as we are.) 

That’s both comforting and challenging. 

Comforting, because it means God isn’t waiting for us to clean ourselves up before He speaks to us. As one of our Tribe of Lions men’s microchurch members so aptly put it a few Mondays ago, “You don’t get clean before you take a shower.”

Challenging, because it means faith goes beyond belief alone — it’s something we are called to live everyday.

The apostle Paul goes a step further in 1 Corinthians 1. He reminds us that the message of the Cross looks foolish to the worldly. Weak. Defeated. Christ was executed in the most gruesome, torturous, and degrading of ways. But in dying, He conquered death. He also transformed a symbol of terror into one of hope. 

To those on the path to salvation, it’s the very power of God. God doesn’t choose people because they look strong or successful or spiritually impressive. He chooses what seems weak to show His strength.

That hits home in real life.

We live in a world that rewards being loud and winning. God is more interested in people who are humble, merciful, and faithful — even when no one is watching. People who care about fairness and compassion. People who don’t use faith as a weapon, but as a way of life.

So what does the Lord require of us today? Not bigger and flashier displays of faith (which may be disingenuous and performative, at best). Not spiritually curated lives that appear perfect on the outside (but may be morally decaying on the inside).

More likely:

• Doing the right thing when it costs us something
• Showing mercy when it would be easier to judge
• Walking with God instead of racing ahead of Him
• Trusting His wisdom when it doesn’t look impressive
• Choosing love over being “right”

That’s harder than it sounds. It’s much easier to measure church attendance than humility. It’s easier to debate theology than to forgive someone who hurt us. It’s easier to post Bible verses than to live them when life brings us to our knees.

But Scripture keeps pulling us back to the same place: faith that shows up in how we treat people and how we walk with God, not just what we claim to believe.

God isn’t asking for perfection. He’s asking for faithfulness.

He isn’t asking for spectacle. He’s asking for obedience.

He isn’t asking for performance. He’s asking for a relationship.

Turns out, what the Lord requires isn’t complicated. It’s just life-changing.