Hi, and welcome to the five-word prayers daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the

word prayers in our heart. I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me,

which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent. We're talking giving on the daily this week,

and yesterday I told you what I've learned, sort of learned anew this year about giving. I want to be better about giving of my time,

which is something I find pretty hard to give, to be honest, because I'm stretched already.

But I know that there are times I need to put my agenda aside for the needs of others.

So I need to learn that balance of not giving to the point of burnout and resting in a healthy no,

but also sacrificing too, because that is the true gift.

Today I want to talk about the best gift we can give God this year, next year, and honestly

every single day. I bet you already know what it is, but let's dive in anyway.

Here are several of my favorite verses in the Bible. May the words of my mouth and the meditation

of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer, Psalm 1914. The eyes of the Lord

search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him,

Second Chronicles 16.9. These verses speak about what God

wants the very most from us, the greatest gift we can ever give him, yes, that of our heart. But not

part of our heart, our whole heart, meaning we go all the way in with him. There's no halfway,

it's all or nothing. I've talked about the heart on the show before multiple times.

It is the single gift he wants from us. Does he want our service? Yes. Does he want our

morality? Our purity? Yes. Does he want us to be kind to each other? Of course. But what he

wants is one thing, our heart, handed over to him. And when

we do that, the service and purity and kindness will be a natural outflow because when Jesus

controls our heart, we do what he desires. So that's where our focus needs to be. I think one of the

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