What is Actually Required of Me?

“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Mark 10:17

Jesus, what should I be doing with my life? What are you asking of me? What are you inviting me to? What do you demand of me? What is required of me?

I haven’t accomplished that spiritual goal. I haven’t mastered that one elusive virtue. I haven’t achieved that “status” of holiness. I don’t have it all together. I fall daily. I make mistakes. I’m not Catholic famous. I’m not going on mission trips or evangelizing the nations. I’m not serving at soup kitchens or volunteering weekly. I haven’t raised ten kids in the faith. I haven’t donated my entire life’s belongings to the poor. I’m not a religious. I haven’t started a ministry. I’m not part of a thriving small group. I’m not a leader at my Church. I don’t make consistent Holy hours or attend daily Mass. Insert your own high expectation of yourself here. 

So, I must be a failure. There is so much required of me, and I constantly fall short. When it comes to being a Christian, I am mediocre at best. 

Welcome to my internal dialogue. Sound familiar to you too?

When it comes to walking the Christian walk, we encounter a lot of “shoulds.” “In order to be a good Christian, I should be…” and fill in the blank. 

And most of these expectations are put on me by myself. I am my own worst critic, and also the one who demands the most out of myself. I am the one comparing myself to other women in the community and finding myself lacking. I am the one constantly questioning whether who I am and what I am doing is enough. I am the one who condemns, judges, questions, accuses, compares, doubts, and belittles myself. Well, the devil and I. 

But not God. In reality, what God demands of us, is relatively simple. 

I was reading through the Book of Micah and was reminded of this truth. 

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:6-8

What I love so dearly about this passage, is that Micah gives his day and age’s equivalent of the guilt trip we all still give ourselves. There is nothing new under the sun! We expect different things of ourselves in modern society, but the broken thought process remains the same from Micah’s time to ours. 

We feel the need to prove ourselves. We feel the need to come before the Lord with something impressive. Our version might sound more like, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of followers on my Christian social media page? Or with ten thousands hours served in ministry? Will the Lord be pleased with my accomplishments, with my externally validated and applauded behavior? Shall I give Him a perfectly curated vocation with seemingly no imperfections?”

If that is what’s required, Heaven help us all. If that is what’s required, I will constantly walk around disappointed in myself for not meeting an unmeetable expectation. 

But that isn’t what the Lord asks or requires of us. He has called certain of us to be in the public spotlight, to serve Him in grand and glorious and visible ways. He has called certain of us to specific roles of explicit ministry and service of Him. He has called certain of us to literally give away all we have and follow Him. 

But He has called all of us to follow Him by living like Him in our daily lives. And that’s not usually glorious or spectacular, but it is hard and holy. And Micah summarizes it so well: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. 

That’s it. That’s the requirement. It sounds simple, but it is not a low call. To live it out is actually extremely challenging, but that is the nature of the Christian walk. To live out of the identity as a Beloved Child is at face value simple, and yet will demand our whole will every day of our lives. It is not complicated, but it is challenging. It is child-like, but not for the weak of heart.

So what false expectations have you placed on yourself? And what is the Lord asking you to give up as a requirement of yourself? This is not settling for mediocrity. This is acknowledging that the Lord only wants our hearts. 

Just you is enough for Him. Is it enough for you?