Thankfulness is Key

So, here I am one hour before we need to leave for church - posting my notes from last week. What a slacker I am! lol. I processed these a little bit with my Sat. morning Bible study group but I need to transfer them from my chicken scratch handwriting to a blog where it's more "readable".

Here we go... Heart treasures cannot be stored in the heart because the heart is where the Holy of Holies lives. It's comparable to the temple of the Old Testament. the Holy of Holies was where only the Lord was present, the Arc of the Covenant. There could be NOTHING else in the Holy of Holies.

But, present life - our heart IS that temple. Well, the heart is where we store things we hope for someday. We can store treasures in our heart that are only good for this world. For example, a single person may hope to get married someday. That is a treasure they are holding in their heart. A person may hope for a better job, a family, a vacation - anything. Those things aren't BAD things but when they take up residence in the heart they become idols - then there is mixture and God will not work in our hearts until we allow him to remove the other treasures. He is a jealous God. There is only room for Him in there. Even my spouse and my kids HAVE to be second to God. When He consumes my whole heart - I will actually love my spouse and my kids, and anyone else WAY better. I will love them freely because I'm not holding them "hostage" so to speak in my heart. I love them unconditionally with God's love, not my own selfish love.

Look back at my week...where have I made investments? They can be financial, time, with people...where I make my investments will show me where my treasure is. I can find who may be "sharing" residence in my heart with the Lord.

This next part was KEY for me - it hit me between the eyes. When I am NOT thankful and I want God to serve my needs, I make God an idol who serves me. WOW. That totally sucks. I put myself in the place of God where I make decisions about what I think is best for me and my life and when God doesn't do what I want, I am unhappy and angry. I make my own plans and expect or hope that God will just come around and bless what I want - instead of aligning myself with HIM and asking Him what His plans are for my life. I think I have lived selfishly like that a LOT and wondered why God never blessed my plans. Makes total sense now.

When I AM thankful, I put God where He belongs - as GOD and I live in the moment and trust God with my future. I liked that a lot - especially since that is the title of my blog and what I am hoping to achieve, daily...not always there yet, but getting there. I can grieve the loss of my hopes but trust God that he has MUCH better things in mind for me than I could EVER hope for.

Where are my eyes? Are they focused on ME and MY situation or are they focused on WHO God is?

When our phyiscal heart is sick, by the time symptoms occur it is almost too late. Heart attacks can come on quickly and bring sudden death. Usually a person can't actually FEEL the vessels being clogged. Same exact way with our spiritual heart. We actually have to go to the heart doctor - the Great Physician and have him do some work - go in with a scope and shine light on those dark places. See if there are any vessels that are clogged or blocked off - and He may need to do open heart surgery to repair them.

Some of the signs we may have a heart condition that may lead to sudden death are - if we only intake spiritually but don't exercise - aka - we sit and listen with our ears and our mind but our heart is not changed. We don't pour out what we learn - we don't bear fruit. We become "obese" spiritually. Full of so much knowledge but never really living it.

We only partake in the blessings, but are sedentary in the trials.

We "binge" and "purge".

There is so much more Jody had in hand-written notes on comparison to the physical heart and the spiritual heart. She is having someone type it out for us. There was so much more than this, but this is all I had room to write on the side margin of my notes. Hopefully, she will have those other notes for us today.

Okay, off to dry my hair!