March 24

Judges 17:13 And Micah said, "Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest."

There are three types of people in our world.
-Non-religious people... those who do not know or love God.
-Religious people... those who follow a set of rules so they feel good. They obey to get love.
-Lovers of God... those who have a personal love relationship with God. They love God, then obey him.

Micah was a religious person. He was living by a set of moral rules and superstitions he invented himself. His feeling was, if I can just do the right things then I will make God happy and he will love me. In this case it is entirely delusional thinking. Micah builds himself a shrine, puts forbidden idols in it and then hires a homeless priest to preside over it, all of this to earn God’s love and his favor. His entire plan is flawed from the start. All of these actions were clearly prohibited by God. In the end Micah is worshiping himself and his view of God. Religious people are the most difficult people to reach with the truth, because they experience a false comfort from their religious activity.

The greatest danger to the American church today is that we are religious. We obey God to earn his love. We believe if we just jump through these certain religious activities God will be good to us.

Here are 9 questions to test if you have fallen into the Micah syndrome:

1. Did you read today’s passage because you love God, or because of the Friday accountability?
2. If you didn’t read one day, do you expect that God is going to put you into a traffic jam or give you a runny nose?
3. Do you live by faith in the promises of God, or do you live by a code of religious conduct?
5. Why do you obey God? To earn God’s love or because of God’s love.
6. Do you obey to get things from God, or to get God?
7. Do you think of yourself as a good person, or do you get your identity from what God thinks of you?
8. Do your prayers have a lot of “give me’s?”
9. When circumstances go wrong do you think you are being punished for your sin?

Is it possible you have put more trust in your religious activity than in God himself? Don’t repeat the folly of Micah.