by Pastor Daniel

Introduction
Today, our focus has been on the Covid-19 situation in Malaysia and other parts of the world.  As we focus on it more and more, greater is the fear that binds our hearts.  As I thought of this month, reading news in other parts as well, I asked, “Father, how are you speaking to the church today?”

This month we celebrate Father’s Day and I look to the Father God.  When I was up that morning, I turned to scriptures as is the habit of mine in reading the devotion for the day and it led me to Micah 6:8
“He has told 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?”

I told myself – “strange a response, or strange to think of that when I am looking at our country’s situation.”
As I meditate, these two words came to me “Defocus – Refocus”.  If there is a message there, it is about knowing what God still requires of us – that we live our lives glorifying his name.
 
Defocus:
The message of defocussing is about turning our eyes to Jesus, not on the problems of this world first.  The more we focus on the problems, the lesser our faith grows and we wonder and we question many things.

We lose hope, we get tired, we fade in our zeal and passion for God.  Even as a pastor, I am a little frustrated toggling between different MCOs in our land.  There is now even a tinge whether we can resume a full physical service or not.  While we have online services, prayer meetings, and Care group meetings, I wonder how effective have they been and are the needs of the people of God being met?
These will go on and on until we learn to defocus from these things.  And find our focus again.
 
Refocus:
Then this next word was simply to hear from Father God.  “Father, what do you require me to do?”  Then came this verse that some of us are pretty familiar with.  There are three things spelled out here:

• To do justice
• To love kindness (mercy)
• To walk humbly with God

How are these relevant today?  Let us hear again and refocus.  The refocusing is about learning what God wants of us at such a time like this.

All these three elements do not take regard to the persons we relate to.  Should they be of a different race and religion, we still adopt these qualities.  To be fair with all men. This may be a little easier for us who knows the Lord.  Living in a world today filled with corruption and injustice, we get indignant when we see injustice.  That is a good feeling but translated that into our daily lives, are we fair to all men in our little and daily dealings?

To love kindness and mercy is more than pitying some poor souls.  It is about driving us into acts of kindness.  I thank God that FCC plays a little part in trying to alleviate the burden of the poor through the ministry of Hope Community Center.  Yes, we must do that and we can do more on an individual basis when we come across people in need. 

If we were to look at the world, they are suffering more, like Israel in the current situation, India in the uncontrollable state, and Myanmar in her suffering ordeal.  How do we love kindness?  That is what refocus is all about – it is while focusing on the troubles of the world, we focus on what we can do for them.

Walking humbly before God is our devotion to him.  To refocus on that is to place our trust in Him even though we don’t understand what is happening – trusting that God is still working out his purpose.  One of those purposes is about us carrying the torch of hope and bringing to people who are losing it.  Let us remember what Father God did when He made this requirement.  He sent his Son – He became a baby.
 
Conclusion
Oswald Chambers commenting on this verse:
Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow aspects of life are not ordained by God; they are ordained by Him equally as much as the profound.  We sometimes refuse to be shallow, not out of our deep devotion to God but because we wish to impress other people with the fact that we are not shallow.  This is a sure sign of spiritual pride.  We must be careful, for this is how contempt for others is produced in our lives.  And it causes us to be a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shallow than we are.  Beware of posing as a profound person - God became a baby.