“I know the Lord will bless me now,” Micah said, “because I have a Levite serving as my priest.”
Judges 17:13 NLT

There was a song by Gloria Gaynor which had a really bad attitude in the words. The title was “I am what I am” and it was a statement of total selfishness, self-interest and arrogance. It is, however, a fairly good descriptor of general attitudes today, and a clear statement of what I once was.

Micah sounds as if he was like that. What he said in this verse isn’t so much a statement of faith, but more a statement of his rights: because he had done something then he will get something else.

A line in the song says ‘Your life is a sham till you can shout out loud, I am what I am.’

Our lives are a sham until we realise just what we are – not the sanitised, looking in the mirror, not as bad as the guy over there version of what we are, though, the real version, the truth. The truth is that I’m not a very nice person deep down and I never was before I became a follower of Christ. Even now, the nasty me comes out, the sinner, the angry man. And the thing is that just going to church on a Sunday doesn’t change it – that’s just the same as Micah getting a priest to come and live with him. My life would be a sham if I thought that.

I am what I am, but I can be different, because Jesus, the I AM, can make the difference, not by living with me, but by living in me and through me. 

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