Author: Nathaniel Colt

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Read: Psalm 139:23–24

When you first get up in the morning and look in the mirror, you might be kind of surprised by what you see. Your hair might be all over the place, you may have smudges of drool on your chin, and maybe you still have a piece of broccoli in your teeth from dinner the night before. How crazy would it be to look in the mirror, see all of that, and then just walk out the door to start your day? Normally, you look in the mirror to check yourself and see what needs to be changed so that you can start your day clean and ready to go.

In the same way, we can honor God by allowing Him to look at our heart to do a spiritual mirror check every day. We can go to God and ask Him to examine our heart. He can let us know if there’s anything in our heart that doesn’t line up with His commands. And when our heart isn’t right with Him, we should go to Him and ask for help. He can get us on the right track. As He shows us things to work on, we shouldn’t just walk away and ignore them. Instead, we should obey His instructions, ask Him to purify our heart, and keep Him as the Leader of our life.

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Read: Psalm 19:7–14

Have you ever been in a car with a driver who was lost? There are several ways to fix that problem. You could use a cell phone to look up an address or directions. You could also stop and ask someone for help. One thing that usually doesn’t work is just to keep driving and hope that you end up at the right spot. Good instructions are the best way to get to the right place.

When it comes to our life, God has given us instructions that lead the direction He wants us to go. Those instructions usually come from the Bible and our prayer conversations with God. They also come in different forms. Sometimes God’s instructions are clear commands and laws, and other times they are general truths and wisdom. So, if you’re confused about where to go in life, listen for His instructions. They’re the best. Making the choices that follow His directions shows that we love Him and want to live for Him.

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Read: Mark 7:14–23

Would you wash the outside of a bowl and leave the inside dirty? If you looked from the outside, the bowl would look clean. But it wouldn’t actually be clean. Would you want to eat ice cream out of a bowl full of dried-up chili leftovers? Probably not.

Sometimes, we do all the right things to look like a good person on the outside, but our inside is different. That’s not at all what God wants. He wants our heart to be right. Why? Because what’s in our heart eventually spills out. If our heart wants to lie about things, eventually we’ll start telling lies. If our heart is full of meanness, we’ll start being mean to people. But if Jesus is in our heart, our life will look more and more like Him all the time.

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Read: Mark 7:1–13

The religious leaders in these verses were very concerned about making sure that their religious laws were followed. In fact, they were more concerned about following their man-made traditions perfectly than they were about the condition of their hearts. The way they were living showed that they didn’t have a heart close to God.

Sometimes in our life, it’s easy to get caught up in the actions of worshipping God. This can look like going to church regularly out of habit and not because we want to. It could also be saying memorized prayers before a meal rather than having a heartfelt conversation with God and thanking Him for what He’s done. The thing is though, God can see right through all that. We may be able to fool others, but God knows the condition of our true heart.

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Read: Luke 6:46–49

When building a house, the very first thing that is built is the foundation. Do you know why? It’s because a strong foundation makes the rest of the house strong and stable, so it will last for years to come. It would be worthless to have builders start working on building walls and a roof without a foundation being built first. If the house is built without a strong foundation, the house will be unstable and will collapse, or it will fall apart over time.

Our life as a follower of Jesus works in a similar way. Our life is strong and stable when we obey Jesus and His Word. Doing this must be the most important part of our life. When we obey Him in every situation, we show that we want His plans for our life. It shows that we’re willing to be sure that what He wants is also what we want. As we continue to put Him first, we can trust Him to help us take care of everything else going on in our life.

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Read: Psalm 27:4–8

Have you ever met someone that you really wanted to be friends with? What did you have to do to be friends with them? When you have a relationship with someone, you want to spend time with them. You want to get to know them more. You share your thoughts and feelings with them, and you care about theirs. You want to spend time doing things together and creating memories. And, when you’re not with them, you miss them. That’s what a real relationship is.

God wants to have a relationship every day with us. He doesn’t want an occasional visit from us every now and then. He wants us to spend consistent time with Him, to talk with Him, and to share our thoughts and feelings with Him. He wants to be involved in every part of our life. But we must choose to put Him first and make Him a priority.

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Read: Luke 10:38–42

Because Martha was so distracted with the busyness of life, she missed sitting and listening to Jesus and spending time with Him. The Savior of the world was sitting in her house. But she was more concerned about all the preparations. She had her priorities out of order. Martha was putting doing things for Jesus in front of having a close relationship with Jesus.

God doesn’t need us to be perfect to come to Him. He simply wants to be with us. Sometimes, we think that we need to be in the right place to be with God. We don’t have to have the perfect music playing or be sitting in the perfect seat in church to talk with God. We can talk with Him when we’re in bed or getting ready for the day. We can share with Him how we feel when something happens at school that we didn’t expect. We can feel His presence with us on the soccer field or as we’re sitting around the dinner table. Putting God first means making sure that there is always space for Him in our life. It means not crowding Him out because we think we’re too busy with other things.

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Read: Exodus 20:3–6

In many places, people choose to worship idols—an image or statue that represents a fake god. They believe that the fake gods that the idols represent will answer them and give them the things they need. But, these idols can never give them what the one true God can.

Even when a person knows there’s only one real God, it can be tempting to make something else be an idol in their life. This happens when we choose to put other things in the place where God should be. We do this by putting other things over God. We get so busy, and we treat those things like they’ll give us what we need. But, it’s only our relationship with God that can meet any need we have. God wants to be number one in our life. When we choose to put Him first, we are saying, “God, I love You more than anything else.”

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Read: Philippians 4:11–13; 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18

Imagine there’s a new pair of shoes you want, but you don’t have enough money to buy them. When you can’t have something, it can be easy to forget about all the things you do have. Sometimes, you start to grumble and complain. When you really have your heart set on doing something, you can become frustrated and ungrateful if things don’t happen the way you planned. But, it’s important for us to recognize that God is good. He shows His goodness to us, even when we may not be able to see it right away.

When we learn to be content no matter what we’re going through, we can have a heart of worship and gratitude in every situation. Even when God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we think He should, or He allows us to go through difficult times, He is still good. He is still worthy of all our thanks and praise. We must choose to be thankful whether we feel like it or not..

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Read: Psalm 103:1–5

Can you imagine how boring it would be if you were watching a sports game, and all the players were just walking around instead of really trying to play the game? If you were playing in this game, you would probably get benched by your coach for being lazy and not taking it seriously. Sports require all of your effort from the beginning to the end of the game.

This is the way that God wants us to live our life in worship to Him. Everything we do can be an act of worship if we do it to honor to Him. Even becoming the kind of person He wants us to be is worship. Who we are and what we do should show that we’re thankful to Him. We shouldn’t be lazy in our worship to Him or careless in how we live our life. We should let all that we are, with our whole heart and our whole life, express our gratitude and praise to Him.