“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12……………………
“Your motives are wrong,” the Spirit of God essentially told me one morning.
Ouch. How could I argue? He was totally right. He always is. He is God. He is Lord.
I had been writing someone I knew and was reviewing what I had written. In my estimate there was nothing wrong with what I had written. But though anyone reading my draft correspondence might have considered it perfectly fine, the Spirit of God showed me it was not. But why?
The Spirit of God shined His light in my heart and showed me the sin in my heart. My motive was wrong. See, the person I was writing had harshly judged me some time ago, made a hurtful false accusation against me, and lashed out detrimentally at me. The Lord showed me I was writing to the person defensively and anxiously, worried I might be attacked again with the person’s words. I was writing with a “fear of man” instead of a “fear of God.” I was more concerned with what the person thought of me than I was with loving and pleasing God and seeing if He wanted me to write in the first place and what words He wanted me to write if in fact it was His will to write at all. My motive was to prove myself. I was not filled with Christ’s love in my correspondence. My wrong motive was exactly why the Spirit of God had stopped me from finishing my correspondence and from sending what I had written. He led me to lay it aside until I knew what He wanted me to do, until my heart was right, until my motive was right, until I was filled with His love, and until I was ready to write the words He would give me.
God isn’t just concerned with our words and actions. He’s also concerned with our hearts. This includes our motives. He sees our hearts, and He sees our motives and intents. Our intentions. We need to ever seek Him to make sure we are in His will, filled with His Spirit, led by His Spirit, and living by faith in Him with love-filled hearts. When He shows us we are out of line, that we are off track with our motives, that are hearts are sin-filled instead of Holy Spirit-filled, we need to repent, be filed with His Spirit, and carry on with the right heart, the right motives, and for the glory of the Lord.
My dear friends reading this message, please check your motives and make sure your heart and motives are pleasing to the Lord!