10 Minutes
God sees every motive. The underlying reason for anything. Self deception is the weight on the scale that injects heaviness to the deceitful heart of man. So much so until man can easily fool himself about his own motives. Man can pretend that he chooses certain actions for God or the benefit of others, when in reality he has selfish reasons. God is not fooled by our selfishness and is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”. Human beings can operate from a variety of motivations, often negative. Pride, anger, revenge, a sense of entitlement, or the desire for approval can all be catalysts for man’s actions. Any motivation that originates in man’s sinful flesh is not pleasing to God. God even evaluates the condition of men’s hearts when we give offerings to Him. Because men’s hearts are so deceitful, we should constantly evaluate our own motives and be willing to be honest with ourselves about why we are choosing a certain action. We can even teach from impure motives just to be seen as being righteous. The heart must be guarded. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. God is interested in our motives even more than our actions. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. God wants us to know that He sees what no one else sees. He knows why we do what we do and desires to reward those whose hearts are right toward Him. We can keep our motives pure by continually surrendering every part of our hearts to the control of the Holy Spirit. Surrender is a war term. Surrendering to God means we seek His way.
Our Lord is a wise and beneficent victor; He conquers us to bless us as we give Him our wholeself. If we give the outward appearance of obeying God but our hearts are hard, God knows. We are deceiving ourselves and others too. The only way we can operate from pure motives is when we “live in the Spirit”. We must ask God to search us, to try the heart. Selfishness is rooted in a sinful nature. What’s best for the all is to be the passion toward finding the truth. Know the “why” behind all things. When we do the right things for the right reasons that’s service. If we do the right things for the wrong reasons that’s selfishness. What if right values structured our motives rather than feelings. Would the acts done result in greater scrutiny. Would ulterior reasons be rejected. Would the bible take precedence over what you feel is right. When you think your ways are clean in your own eyes...consider corrective vision with what the word of God says. We should prayerfully consider our motives. Some day soon they will be there to bless us or curse us. And from them there will be no appeal, for the Judge knows. Believers will be called to account.
That’s powerful in that only God knows the whole truth and He knows the full report. We should never assume our motive. We boast too much of our confidence in our knowledge. We are finite and bound by unknown limitations. In fact, our knowledge is so limited we don’t even really know ourselves. We often lack clarity about the motivations behind even our best or worst actions. We can do good things for the Lord while still harboring sinful motives; we can do lesser things that do not honor the Lord while still harboring just motives. The foremost purpose of truth is to guide the relationship between believers. How does truth manifest itself in you? Do you give up on truth out of a selfish motive? Is your persevering slow to cast doubt? Do you grant the grace of hoping or do you bear contention immediately? Love is to motivate us to assume the best rather than the worst. Love motivates us to regard others with hope rather than suspicion. Love is more than just an ideal. It is a moving force. Love moves God. It is to be our faith in God that powers our motives. It is the “why” to our “reason”. All behavior gets its true virtue from its motive. How does God see us?
God sees every thought. He declares that we are seen for the Lord sees not as man sees. God sees every aspect of our minds. He looks to see our understanding.
Psalms 26:3; 14:2
Thoughts are the most private parts of our human experience. No one else can know our thoughts unless we communicate them, so we tend to imagine that anything we think is safe, as long as it stays in our minds. But there is One Person who always knows and sees what we are thinking; God knows everything about us. He sees the angry thoughts, lustful thoughts, vengeful ideas, secret greed, and hidden coveting. God also sees those secret longings, hopeful desires, and private dreams and He sees them much more vividly than we do. God does not want us to hide from Him. He wants us to know that He is always there for us. Thoughts are birthed in the mind. And the mind is the language of sensing; I felt God’s was telling me; I had a sense of Gods presence...I felt, I heard, I saw. You ever have an image formed in your mind through thought? Thought is the foundation of our reasoning to truth. For as a man thinketh in his heart so God sees. When God speaks things into being, His word is virtually the same as His thought. How clearly does Christ see the thought?
Matthew 21:23-27
The chief priests and the elders had no intention of submitting to the truth, they were trapped. If we say John’s baptism is “from heaven,” we will be shamed for not believing. So we can’t say that is true. If we say it’s “from man,” we will be mobbed, because they say he’s a prophet. So we can’t say that is true. So we will make up a truth. We will say, “We don’t know.” What bondage! They cannot own the truth because they are enslaved to the fear of shame and harm. And what a prostitution of the gift of thought! How seriously they thought! How carefully. Their minds were in full force. “If we say this...then that.” “But if we say that...then this.” “Ah, conclusion: we don’t know.” They thought they had escaped, not reasoning that they were dealing with the Son of God. They thought this was freedom. But God saw their process of thinking. The goal of bringing ourselves or others to a true and sin-conquering knowledge of God will never be reached by the instrument of logic alone. Jesus sent Paul on an impossible mission. He said to Paul, “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins”.
Acts 26:17-18
This is what happens when strongholds are destroyed, and arguments against the truth of God are overcome, and thoughts are taken captive for Christ. This is supernatural work. The eyes of the mind and heart do not open automatically to see the thought. Logic alone cannot bring it about. That’s why Paul said, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit”. This is the mind, the heart, the sequence of thought that God sees.
I Corinthians 12:3
How wonderfully like the mind of Christ we by faith can think. God gives us access to knowledge gained by exacting observation of careful thought. God sees our thoughts as we study the truth that we see in the bible by God’s grace that will be our life. In reasoning with God, we have lines of thoughts that God sees as patterns and relationships between faith and truth not because someone is telling us what to see, but because the Holy Spirit is telling us to look, look, look. What wonderful new elements of truth are revealed when God sees our thoughts. God, seeing our thoughts and having the Holy Spirit benefit our learning, teaches us to see the life we should live from God’s perspective. We all have free will to make choices. It is to our advantage to choose God’s way of thinking and doing...a godly perspective; so that we can experience the life and purpose of God in our personal life. We make decisions based on our thoughts and inclinations. God is not a manipulator of thoughts. His will, His desire for us as believers is to allow His word to determine the way we think. He is teaching us how to think like Him. He sees the renewing, the transforming of our minds to build us up in holiness, in faith, in love, in obedience. What an awesome blessing...the love of God toward us through His Word.
God is a Spirit. We are not in the form of God. But in truth, as God sees our thought, He sees His image. How so completely our God sees us!
Psalms 19:14
We ask that the holy affections offered up to God in these services for the glory of God in praise and the edification of others in prayer be acceptable in His sight. Some may say, oh, this is just so obvious. He’s God, of course He sees everything. But what is the significance of God seeing our thoughts. God is performing a sanctifying work in us. And that starts from the inside out. If God is going to change our attitudes and inclinations so that we conform more closely to Christ, He needs to see what needs to be changed. He sees our thoughts of pride, our fear, anger, and all the inclinations and potential decisions that are welling up from us. His Spirit guards our lips, so that an internal thought or emotion does not get expressed and causes harm to another. But God could not do this if He could not see the thought that was about to come out of our mouth. I smile because God could have changed that deep down in the heart, but for reasons of His own, He sanctifies us in various ways, and one of the ways is this: He saw that thought coming and for the good He kept it from the mouth.
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