Works in themselves
are not meritorious, but they do reveal heart.
If you are a hard worker but you don’t really have a heart
for what you are doing. Your works have
little merit in the eyes of God. You can
give everything you have to the poor, but if you have no love it profits you
nothing. God desires mercy not
sacrifice. Sacrifice only thinks about
what is lost and boasts about what is given up.
People love to pat themselves on the back when they give the poor bum on
the street a few dollars. What good is the gift if you only think of them as a
bum? Mercy gives no thought to what is lost; they think about the comfort they
bring to the recipient. God wants us to
Love the way He loved. God knows our
works; he also knows the reasons why we work. The Ephesian church was filled
with hard working servants who started with passion. They persevered in their work, but their
passion had waned. Works in pretense
only do not earn you any brownie points in Heaven. Works apart from heart really have no merit
in the eyes of God. Doing something in
pretense only really counts for nothing to one who sees your heart. God is totally focused on the heart of an
individual. Having heart apart from
works does have some merit in the eyes of God and people. David was blessed for wanting to build God a
temple He himself never built. In
contemporary vernacular, we would say it is the thought that counts. The same is also normally true with people.
People will always
see what you really value and love.
A person’s values are always known by what they love. We
call them values because they are things we love. The Bible says all men will know you are Christ’s
disciples by the love you have for one another.
All men will know you for what you really love. If you are religious but your heart is not
really in it, people will know it. How
can you convince someone to have passion for God, if you don’t have passion for
him yourself? If you don’t believe in
what you are sharing, how do you really convince someone else of it? This is why God threatens to take the
Ephesians lampstand from them if they don’t do their first work again. What is that first work? All truly great works begin with a
passion. How can you be a light to
someone if you first don’t have passion for what you are sharing? God promises to those who repent and overcome
will be allowed to eat from the tree of life.
All of our real living is done on the inside. Put your heart into the work you do for the
Lord and you will find it a tree of life.
You will find what living is really all about.
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