Moments of Joy

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars. 2 Chronicles 16:9

Last night my husband and I sat down to evaluate the state of our life: marriage, family, child training, etc... We do this in anticipation of the new year coming and see what has happened over the past year. We decided this year we would start by deciding what we value. Then we will define the value, find a verse to see what God says and set our goals accordingly. This process came from a lady at our church who taught a wonderful class on decision making about a month ago.

Here is an example of what we are doing:

Value: children
Definition: descendant; offspring; gift of the Lord
Verses: Psalm 127:3 Behold, children are a gift of the Lord.
3 John 1:4 I have no greater joy then to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
Goals: treat our children as precious gifts, handling them with much care and wisdom
training them in the righteousness of the Lord
sharing the gospel consistently with them
seeking the Lord's wisdom for the bend of each child, since they are a gift from Him

Now, that I have started with this I realize this can be another post all it's own. :) More on this as we develop this process~

For the heart of this post, I want to share this thought...

As we sat there talking and looking up scripture, I was struck by the fact that at that very moment, God was having to witness someone, somewhere cheating on a spouse, aborting a baby, stealing, practicing immorality, the list of actions with evil intent goes on and on.

But, here we were~imperfect and inadequate~taking time out to see what God says about what our lives should look like. And I thought, WOW! How precious is it to God to look into our lives and see us being faithful. How much joy does this moment bring Him? I thought to myself, He must be able to just take a deep breath and say, "Thank you my child for doing what matters most." Doing what matters most to God brings great joy to His heart.

I am not special or great because I took that moment out to go to God's word. This is what I should be doing with my time. How many times during the day, amidst all the junk He is having to witness, am I bringing Him joy? In those moments is He pleased with what He sees me doing?

OH! I pray that I will find myself working hard to make the heart of my Heavenly Father happy. I want to be one of His children that causes Him to smile, because I am doing what matters most to Him.