What attracts God?  When does God experience delight?  Who moves his heart?

While the answers to these questions can be many and varied, one certainly attracts God’s immediate attention by approaching him with a humble and contrite heart.  Spiritual pride, intellectual arrogance, religious performance, legalistic obedience—none of these attracts or moves God.  However, when we approach him with a humble and contrite heart, God will rise and take notice.

Psalm 51

16 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;

You do not delight in burnt offering.

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,

A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.

Psalm 34

18 The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart,

And saves such as have a contrite spirit.

Isaiah 57

15 For thus says the High and Lofty One

Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

“I dwell in the high and holy place,

With him who has a contrite and humble spirit,

To revive the spirit of the humble,

And to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Isaiah 66

2b But on this one will I look:

On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,

And who trembles at My word.

God made us to be wholly, completely and utterly dependent upon him, not independent, self-sufficient and self-absorbed.  So what do we we?

• We put no confidence in our own righteousness.
• We trust not in our own ability.
• We honestly confess our sins shortcomings to him, letting him cover them with Jesus’ blood and his grace.
• We lay down our perceived right to be right.
• We hand over our justifications for being bitter and unforgiving.
• We surrender our personal agenda to his agenda.
• We desire to become less while he becomes greater in us.
• We acknowledge our absolute dependence upon him.
• We no longer live to make our own names great, but we live to make his name great!

Let’s attract God’s presence today!

(And tomorrow, and the next day….)

James 4

10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Bible quotes were all taken from the New King James Version, copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson Publishers on Gateway.com.