Perfect toward Him

Perfect toward Him TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: …I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. Psalm 101:2, NKJV. TODAY'S WORD: This time of year, people often take time to reflect and set goals for the New Year. But have you ever set “perfection” as a goal on your list? Now, that may seem a little strange or unobtainable to many; but really, in God’s eyes, perfection isn’t about performance. In fact, it isn’t about behavior at all. What God is looking for is a heart that is perfect toward Him. Scripture says that man looks on the outside, but God looks at the heart. That means He is more pleased with someone who has a heart toward Him who may mess up than He is with someone doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons. The condition of your heart is extremely important to God. When you have a right heart, you are humble before Him. You seek His ways. You get up each day with a desire to please Him. You submit every area of your life to Him, and you are willing to make adjustments and receive correction so you can grow and come up higher. As you prepare for the coming year, make knowing Him your number one priority. Yield yourself to Him and let Him shape your character. Serve Him with all your might and let your heat be perfect toward Him! PRAYER FOR TODAY: Father in heaven, thank You for all of Your blessings in my life. I declare today that You are good and thank You for Your mercy. I set my heart and mind on You and ask that You have Your way in me. Help me to love You perfectly and keep me close to You in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Working Together, We Can Accomplish More

by Rick Warren

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

God put us on Earth to do a certain work that only we can do. Ephesians says that God made us to do good works and that he planned in advance what we would spend our lives doing. However, he didn’t plan for us to do that work alone. We need people to work with us.  

You know the feeling you get when you do too much work on your own. You get exhausted and burned out. Why? Because you’re trying to do your work alone, while God never meant for it to be that way.

God tells us in Ecclesiastes 4:9 that “two people are better than one, because they get more done by working together” (NCV). When you work as a team, you get so much more done. Plus, having good teammates alongside you is a whole lot more fun and less tiring!

Picture this: Each of us is like a snowflake. On our own, we can’t make a big difference. However, when one fragile snowflake sticks with a lot of other snowflakes, they can stop traffic. Like snowflakes, we can make a big difference if we work together, each one of us doing only our small part.

Did you know that when we work together here on Earth, we’re actually practicing for eternity? In Heaven, we will all have to work, but each of us will have just a small piece of work, so we’ll never get overloaded or tired. Though no one will carry a heavy burden as each one of us does our small part, all the work will still get done.

As you walk through life, remember that you’re not supposed to do everything on your own. You need other people to walk alongside you, but you also need other people to work alongside you. As you share the burden of your work with fellow Christians, you’ll find that you actually accomplish more for the glory of God.

Talk It Over

• Have you been trying to accomplish too much work on your own? What has been the effect?
• How does/should the Church exemplify working together to accomplish more for the glory of God?
• How can you get people to help you in the work God wants you to do? Who can you help?