“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to You, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

The Lord is so gracious to us. He is gracious, because He created us with freewill. With freewill, we have the option to love God or not to love God. He knew the risks that were involved with giving man that kind of power over his own soul, but out of love, He proceeded. The Lord wants us to love Him freely by choosing Him over the pleasures of this world. When people who don’t know our God try to figure Him out in their minds, they generally conclude that God is very legalistic and demanding, but—as you can see—God is neither. In fact, you can’t be more giving than God has been toward us. He gave us the option to choose life or death of our own accord. Life and death are the only two options in this life, and we have the power and liberty to decide which one we want to rule our hearts and lives.

But wait a minute! God didn’t just give us freewill and leave us to our own devices. He will not abandon us to suffer with the wrong decisions that we have made when we fall into sin. Long before He created the heavens and the earth, God had the plan of redemption in mind. That plan was the giving of His only begotten Son, Jesus, who is called the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world, as the price for our sin. So not only is God giving, but He loves. His liberty gave us the power to choose freely, but His love gives us the power to be forgiven once we choose sin and taste death. What an awesome God!

Our God is complete. He loves us freely, and He loves us through His forgiveness when we reject Him. Now that you’ve seen a deeper depth of the love that God has for you as His creation and as His child (If you are born again), how well do you honor His love in your heart? Are the meditations of your heart and the words of your mouth honoring the Lord? The Lord told Samuel (1 Samuel 16) that He looks at the heart of man and not upon the outward appearance. Jesus said in John 4 that the Father is seeking worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. All the Father asks of us is that we honor Him and His Word in our hearts. If we honor Him with our lips, but our hearts aren’t in agreement, then our worship is in vain. James tells us in his epistle, that if we bridle our tongues, we are perfect. If you struggle with honoring God in your heart and mouth and desire to change, then pray today’s Scripture daily until you begin to see the transformation take place in your heart.  —submitted by Asa, US