By Glenn Miller

GOD’S WORD: “You know what is good, O Man, and what more does the Lord require of you than to act gently, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:8

Since the beginning of time humans have been searching for the truth about how they should live their lives. Scientists, sociologists, and theologians even cite that we are created or ordained from birth with this desire; this understanding that there must be a reason we were created. In that quest, societies have formed ethics, morals, laws, and belief systems. For those who follow Christ, we believe that we are to 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind, and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself…in addition to other things.

Personally, I like to refer to the words of Micah, as mentioned above. Additionally, that great American prophet, Will Rogers, said that living a proper life is to “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” Yet regardless of how we prescribe to the notion, the question about how we should live our lives has been (and always will be) something that drives our actions and our beliefs.

A few years ago, when coming across this verse in Micah, it made a profound impact on how I dealt with this question of piety. It made all those other things blowing inside my mind come together. I like to tell others that, to me, this verse reminds me that following God’s perfect will for my life is not rocket science.

It had such a result of peace that I felt compelled a few years later to have the verse emblazoned on my license plates. So, I drove all over Texas for a few years with “MICAH6” on my bumpers (Texas only allows 6 characters). During this time, I caught several people through my rear-view mirror and in parking lots staring and contemplating what it said and meant. One fella assumed I came from a long line of Micahs. Another thought it meant that “my car has six cylinders.” (I have no idea why anyone would brag about that!) But more times than not, when strangers were to ask me about my plates, a conversation would strike up about faith. Not all the time, because there were those who asked and, as soon as I told them, they ran away; I suppose in fear that I would hand them a tract or start preaching fire and brimstone to them right there in the parking lot of the supermarket.

Yet as I look back on this period, I realize that what it said on the outside of my car did not accurately convey how the driver on the inside lived his life. If I really believed I should “act gently,” then why did I keep getting upset at the most trivial things that disrupted my perceived control over my own universe? If I truly “loved mercy,” then why did I continue to pronounce judgment and desire my own sense of justice to be carried out so self-righteously? If I was “walking humbly with my God,” then why did I fail to submit to His leading and insist that I knew what was best for me better than He did? The answer, I believe, is that although I subscribed to Micah’s words academically, I did not subscribe to them experientially.

I tried then and I still continue to try to live my life in accordance to what I think God wants for me, but more often than not, I “fall short of the glory of God” and realize that no matter how hard I try, or even how well I live up to God’s desires, I am saved and loved unconditionally solely by God’s GRACE. It is not in how well I achieve perfection or how well I live my life, but by how much a DESIRE I have to follow God that pleases Him. It’s with that understanding that a few years back, I changed my license plate to “SBGNBP”, standing for “Saved by grace, not by perfection”. You can imagine how many conversations that’s sparked in parking lots, which leads me to share my testimony of how I once tried to earn my own righteousness.

And as far as salvation being dependent upon our “perfection score card?”  Well, we wouldn’t need grace then, would we?