God wants your heart; do you want Him? At the end of the
day, that’s what matters. Why do you do what you do? As a born again believer,
you were given a new heart, a new nature. You were given a new ‘want to’. Allow
your new ‘want to’ to govern what you do under the leadership of the Holy
Spirit. Find underneath the pressure to perform righteousness what you really
want. Pause before acting and ask God to help you be honest with Him and with
yourself. Underneath the feelings of guilt and the religious pressure of duty
is a new ‘want to’. And the new ‘want to’ buried underneath in there, is what God
is after. He is not impressed by what we do under the pressures of guilt and
condemnation. He knows our heart and what motivates us. If we will remove the
‘have to’ we may realize that we ‘want to’, actually. The latter is what needs
to be our motivation. And the latter will be a sweet smelling offering to God
offered in faith and love. Understand that God has given you everything you
need for life and godliness, “as His divine power has given to
us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge
of Him who called us by glory and virtue.”
Let your new ‘want to’ be the motivation of your heart.
Trust the finished work of Christ; that you have truly been made new through
your faith in Jesus. When our heart is right—trusting Christ, increasing in
our love for God and for others and hungering for righteousness, there is no
place for condemnation and guilt to rule us. And this is made possible because we
first received the free gift of righteousness through faith in Jesus (see
Romans 5:17). We have been made righteous at the core through faith in the
finished work of Christ. Hebrews 10:14 (NKJV) says this, “For
by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.”
Saving faith in Jesus Christ our Savior is what makes us
righteous. Not only what we do is righteous, but we are righteous. Faith is a matter of the heart. Faith is in the
heart and originates with our heart. Romans 10:9-10 (NKJV) says it this way, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in
your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with
the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is
made unto salvation.” It is a righteousness which is of faith. Our new
nature within yearns for righteous living, righteous actions, righteous
reactions, and righteous desires. We have been made the righteousness of God in
Christ (see 2 Cor. 5:21). Let us allow ourselves to believe that and let us see
the difference between what we once considered righteous while under law and
what is really righteous now under grace. The former will appear superficial,
shallow and dull, the second rich, full and fruitful. To believe that we are
righteous through faith in Christ is to obey the Gospel. Not to believe that is
to disobey the Gospel; “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched
you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was
clearly portrayed among you as crucified?” (Galatians 3:1 NKJV) You need
to read the book of Galatians to see that they had gone back to trying to reach
perfection through dependence upon the flesh instead of through dependence upon
the Holy Spirit by faith. (Also see Galatians 3:3).
God is not interested in what we do for Him out of guilt, He
wants our heart! Do we want Him or not? Let us let our graced will rise up and
actively choose Him—“as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!” (see
Joshua 24:15). Do we trust Him or not? Do we love Him or not? Do we want to
live for Him or not? Do we want to serve Him or not? He isn’t interested in
anything we have to offer Him if it is not coming from a heart of faith in Him
and love for Him. He isn’t interested in us trying to perform in order to try
to earn His approval, what He is interested in is our very heart. What do we
really desire? What truly motivates us? Do we want Him? Everything flowing from
such ‘want to’ will be a sweet fragrance to Him. God loves a cheerful giver
(see 2 Cor. 9:7) and something tells me that this is not only true about money
offering, but about everything that we offer to God in faith.
Finally, let us be reinvigorated by the fact that even if we
may struggle to be willing at times, we can ask God to help our will and to
convince us as to cause us to become willing; “For it is God
who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” (Phil.
2:13 NKJV)
What God wants is our heart; He wants our love. Everything
else will naturally flow from there.
“I will give you a new
heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of
your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and
cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.”―Ezekiel
36:26-27 NKJV
“But
My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me
fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall
inherit it.”―Numbers 14:24 NKJV
Be encouraged dear one, there is hope! There is a way out.
