(heart) > sacrifice

This is such a reassuring fact to think on, God desires our heart more than our sacrifice. He desires our praise and our faithfulness to Him, than just doing for the sake of doing. Yes, we need to 'DO', we need to actively obey, but he wants you to actively obey out of your heart, not just because 'that's what you're suppose to do'. He wants your heart, because He is trully, madly, deeply in love with you.

Here's some scripture, I found that once you start reading them you want more and more! :) (note the highlighted words, that's what God wants from you more than 'sacrifice'.)

"I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. This will please the LORD more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs." ~Psalm 69:30-31 (the words of David)

"I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. 'If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me." ~Psalm 50:9-15 (the words of God expressed through David)

"But Samuel replied: 'Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams'." ~1 Samuel 15:22 (The wise prophet who grew up training as a priest, referring to Solomon who had rebelled against God)

"In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart." ~Psalm 40:6-8 (words of David)

"For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings." ~Hosea 6:6 (words of the prophet Hosea who was depicting God through his own life as God being like a faithful husband to a unfaithful wife. God desires to be faithful to us!)

"And when the Pharisess saw this, they said to his discriples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' But when he heard it, he said 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." ~Matthew 9:11-13 (Jesus responding to the hypocritical 'priests' of that time, who were judging Jesus for interacting with and showing mercy to sinners.)

"O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." ~Psalms 51:15-17 (a beautiful scripture by David reassuring himself and others that God desires our heart more than 'just doing'.)