Give Thanks With Our Heart Posture...

If you're FEELING blessed,
If you KNOW you're blessed,
And want to give THANKS to the Lord,
Let's do it in a way that REALLY delights Him.

What does God care about?

God cares about the LITTLE things,
That GREATLY reflect our heart POSTURE.

"Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the HEART."

God is LESS delighted by impressive gifts or donations,
And MORE delighted by a heart POSTURE that reflects Jesus.
And Jesus is the King of kings who came to SERVE.

"Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many"

So what does this mean for us?

Here's a CHALLENGE for this Holiday season...

Let's thank God through our HEART posture,
SPECIFICALLY with how we treat people,
ESPECIALLY the ones we don't want to or have to.

"with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves"

Here are a couple examples...

1) Phone Customer Support.... from a foreign country.
This one can be really hard for me. It's easy for me to slip into a unfriendly tone when the customer support person on line is hard to hear, hard to understand, has a bad connection and is going around in circles and not solving my problem.

So the challenge is, can we be as sweet to them as if they were your favorite President's daughter?
Can you be patient with them even when they are taking twice as long?
Can the tone of your voice always be friendly and loving?
Can you PRAY for them?

I bet this would be a great way to give THANKS to God,
By loving on His other children that usually get hated on.

What say you?

2) Contractor or vendor
Another similar example are contractors or vendors. How kind are you to people that you are paying to do work for you? Especially when some contractors can be late, not showing up, not doing things the way you want and unprofessional.

Can you still reflect the heart of CHRIST while doing business with them?
Can you swallow your pride or bite your tongue when things don't go your way?
Can you slow down to think about "What would Jesus do?"
This doesn't mean you can't get things done right or on time, but it's about HOW you do it... and Jesus does things quite differently from us.

To God, these acts of OBEDIENCE and LOVE is the BEST gift we can give Him.

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice"

So in this holiday season,
When we are celebrating the birth of Jesus,
And exercising the spirit of LOVE,
Let's practice LOVING the people who are the LEAST thought of,
To give Jesus the GREATEST gift we can,
A heart POSTURE like His.

"Dear Heavenly Father,

Create in me a clean heart,
Help me POSTURE my heart to LOVE like You love,
Help me POSTURE my heart to WAIT like You wait,
Help me POSTURE my heart to SEE like You see.

Show me how I can DELIGHT You,
Show me how I can EXPRESS my thanks to You,
Show me how I can do the UNSEEN things that make You smile.

Help me to be more like YOU,
That I may see everyone through YOUR eyes,
That I may show everyone YOUR love,
That I may give everyone YOUR kindness.

Help me give THANKS to you with my heart POSTURE.

In Jesus name, Amen."

Cheers to a heart POSTURE that makes God smile!