Getting the day off to a healthy start is critical to getting the best out of your day. Most people start their day off on the wrong foot, so they spend the entire day trying to recover their sanity and peace.
For Christians, we can often struggle with being able to connect with God. In Psalm 100, the Bible teaches us how to engage God with the most effectiveness. It lays out the most effective way to spend time with God, but also to start your day off with the right mindsets.
Here are three things that help us engage God with the greatest level of effectiveness so that our days begin with a fresh and powerful perspective.
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
For the Lord is good;
His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.
Psalms 100:4-5 NKJV
1. Thanksgiving
“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving…”
Start off your interactions with God by being grateful. This is quite often the most skipped over practice in our relationship with God and others. We start the day off complaining, murmuring and grumbling. Out of that toxic place, we fall into anger, grumpiness, negativity and selfishness.
True gratitude is a rare commodity in a culture that has so much. The blessings on this nation have created bratty nation of entitle citizens. With so much given to us, we still focus on what we don’t have, what hasn’t happen and what does not seem to work.
Gratitude confronts our bad attitudes and where we have not cultivated a healthy perspective in life. God is not interested in giving us “cushy” lives. He is most caring about seeing us become overcomers in all things. A grateful heart is “must have” for an overcomer.
When we cultivate thanksgiving, we set the stage to engage God’s presence. He says we “enter his gates” by lifting up gratitude. Start your day off by listing out all that you are grateful for. It will set your heart in the right place and it will also drive out mindsets that are holding you down.
God lives in the thanksgiving of His people.
When we cultivate thanksgiving, we start off like God. No matter what comes in the day, you are ready to face it when you have thanksgiving. Because a grateful heart can never be defeated.
2. Praise Him
“into His courts with praise…”
Thanksgiving is a declaration of all that God is and all that He has done. Once we enter into His gates with thanksgiving, we move further into His presence by praising Him.
Praise is the verbal declaration of who God is in His greatness. We let the heavens know who God is and we proclaim His nature. The Scriptures tell us that God is enthroned in the praises of His people. (Psalm 22:3) He works and operates in a people who know how to praise Him.
You and were designed to praise God. Thanksgiving helps us get a better picture of who God is. Praise moves us to declare it with boldness and exuberance! Out o that place of praise, we gain a greater sense of God’s character and nature to work in our midst with power. The greatest thing about praise is the awareness we gain of how great and how big God is in all things!
3. Focus on His Goodness
“For the Lord is good…”
One of the greatest battles waging over our lives is over people truly knowing the goodness of God. In this day and age, we are bombarded with thoughts that seek to challenge and usurp the revelation of God’s goodness. Satan’s desire is to keep us from knowing God’s goodness. In addition, he wants to cause us to react to the evil satan has worked and blame it on God. “If God is so good….” “God how could you?”
We cannot relate to God in His infinite nature and abilities if we do not have a understanding that He is good. Without an understanding of His goodness, we will approach God with hesitance, wondering if He will pull through or even help us. Without an understanding of His goodness, we will blame tragedies on Him or think He causes all the evil in the world.
To start your day off with God on the right foot, seeing Him as a good God, not as what many portray Him to be; will welcome a greater work of His presence in your day and life.
Question: Which of the three do you need to be more aware of in your daily walk?