Real Hope: Aligning Our Heart With God'sExemplo

Health Check

You’ve planned your trip, you’ve checked the map, you hop in your car, turn the key and nothing happens. It’s not a good feeling. Time for roadside assistance. To prevent this, you look after your car and you keep it serviced.

But have you ever thought about the condition of your heart? If your heart isn’t aligned with God’s heart, you aren’t going anywhere.

The apostle Paul reminds us that God is working within us, giving us what we need to work with Him, to please Him, and to achieve His wonderful purposes in our life. To know what God wants, we must seek Him.

After the end of a busy year, it’s worthwhile to check your spiritual health. Are you going God’s way? Or did things slip a bit as the year wore on? Spend some time realigning with God. Open your Bible and start once again to live richly in His Word. Blow the dust off your journal, pray, put on some worship music, and rejoice in God and what He has planned for you. Give thanks in all things.

Jot down your goals for this new year, and pray into them, committing them to God. As Leonard Ravenhill writes, ‘Prayer is not an argument with God to persuade Him to move things our way, but an exercise by which we are enabled by His Spirit to move ourselves His way.’

It’s never too late to bring things back into line. Look to God with an open heart and He will do the rest.

Written by CHRIS PARFOOT