Not Afraid To Say, “No”

This morning in my bible study we talked about Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart for it’s the wellspring of life.” and the question, “What are you doing to guard your heart?” came up. There really wasn’t much of an answer from the group so the question changed to, “What’s preventing you from watching what goes in your heart?”
My answer is FEAR. For some reason there are many times in my life I fear saying, “NO” to loved ones, friends, coworkers, parents, teens, church members, everyone…but for some reason I don’t have always have that fear with God.
Friends are going to invite us to go out to dinner, advertisements are going to persuade us to buy their product, family members are going to insist we do this and that with our money…and in our hearts we may be thinking, “That might not be the wisest use of our money.” but we ignore our heart.
And then God wants us to just give Him the first 10% of what we have because He wants to give back to us more than what that 10% of our money can do but we still say, “NO”…why?
Why are we sometimes more afraid to say “NO” to a friend then we are to the being who created the Universe? It just doesn’t make sense.
Why does it have to be a surrender, why can’t we just be eager?
When we give to God, when we follow His plan for life, when we remain in Christ He gives us His joy so that our joy can be complete (John 15), but there is a thief who doesn’t want us to have that (John 10:10), there are voices that make us doubt Him. Well, here is a voice to think otherwise, For nothing is impossible with God. – Luke 1:37