God Knows My Heart
God Knows My Heart
“But, O Lord of hosts, You who test the righteous, And see the mind and heart, Let me see Your vengeance on them; For I have pleaded my cause before You.”
Jeremiah 20:12
It’s been three and a half years since I turned my life over to Jesus Christ as my savior. It’s been, one-thousand, one-hundred and ninety-eight days to be exact.
To a lot of people that isn’t a long time at all. To anyone going through anything of any significance, it’s a really long time.
To put it in perspective, If you’ve worked at a job for just over three years, three years isn’t a long time. If you have been cancer-free, it’s a very long time.
In three years, a tree can grow six feet. In three years, a child can grow a foot. In 2015, approximately 144 million people were born and 55 million people died. A lot can happen in three years.
During this time, I have been running after God with all my might. I have pursued Him with every intention of humbling myself in submission. I have fallen, tripped and stumbled. I have gotten back up, felt sorry for myself and repeated the process many times. I’ve watched the growth of good friends and family in their pursuit of the Lord. I’ve watched as other Christians have surrounded our family with love and support. I’ve also watched as many Christians have disappointed us in their counsel, behavior and actions.
We are not perfect. As humans, we fail and fall short all the time. We have great successes, and we also have great failures. Our role, as we live in our gift of life, is to bring honor to God and to glorify Him. There is nothing else, if we fall short in this. We are to move further from sin as we grow closer to Him.
Over the past several years I’ve heard Christians use the phrase, “God knows my heart”. Usually this was used when someone said something, that called into question, the status of a persons heart during a certain situation. Over forty plus years, I wouldn’t want anyone but God to know what was in my heart. And I wouldn’t want anyone else knowing my heart either.
It always struck me how people would point to something no one else could know, reference God and confess something, no one else could check. Their self-proclamation that God knows that their heart is pure, above everyone else’s heart, seemed a little self-righteous. Sure God knows our hearts, He also knows our minds, our emotions, our will and our strengths and weaknesses.
Jesus told the Pharisees about their hearts in Luke 16:15, He was talking about their double-mindedness. He was talking about how they preached one thing to the people and lived completely different lives where money was at the center.
The Pharisees liked to justify themselves before men - but God truly did know their hearts. They were pious and self-righteous and He called it an abomination to God.
“And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
Luke 16:15
It’s hard for us to verify something only God knows. When someone tells us that “God knows our hearts”, what are they trying to convince us of? Of course, God knows our hearts. And would we really want everyone else knowing our hearts as well? I wouldn’t in certain situations I’ve been in.
When I was younger, whenever you told your friends something important, they would say, “do you swear?”. As if swearing by something, made the lie your were telling, a truth. Swearing to, or on something, no more makes something true and saying God knows your heart, doesn’t make your heart genuine, pure or good - it just makes it uncheckable.
God does know our hearts. And as Jesus was teaching in Luke, our words and actions can be deceptively different from our thoughts and our heart. We can righteously profess purity, do good deeds and genuinely care for nothing, all at the same time. And if God knows all of this, we are in trouble. If we talk and walk without God, people will see it. If we work so hard for others to believe something that just isn’t there - it will be noticed. A dead tree bears no fruit.
Jesus wants our hearts to be pure. He wants our minds to stay focused on Him. He wants our actions, our faith, our words and our hearts to be filled with Him. As we turn our lives over to Him we become new creatures. Our minds are renewed. We begin a process of separating ourselves from the world. We choose a narrow path over a wide one.
We can’t change our hearts. Our hearts are changed by our relationship with God. We can work and study and fight to do good all day long. Without the help of God, without staying focused on Him, we will always fail. We have to turn to Him. We have to submit our will for His. We have to look to God.
Our hearts will change because we are letting the good work of God work in our hearts and minds. This is the love of God that lives in us. It can’t be checked or verified. It can’t be certified. It can only be seen by what we do and what we say. A persons heart is truly matched by their words and actions. Not just because we say so.
In the example of the Pharisees, they were lovers of money, and Jesus pointed this out. They wanted everyone else to believe they were godly and righteous men, and they were not. Their deeds and their actions matched their hearts. Just because they told everyone who they were, didn’t make them who they truly were. Jesus told the truth.
We should make certain that our hearts match our actions, our thoughts and our words. We will answer one day for all of this. There will be no deception. No manipulation. Nothing but judgement and truth. We will be stripped of every lie, sin and bad intention. We will be humbled before God.
Being who God wants us to be, means letting go of who we want to be. We can’t be both. We have to live to love God, above and before everything else. It’s the only way to let the change of who we really are, take place. It’s the only way for our hearts to be purified with the love that God has for us.
Like David, we should be asking God to search our hearts for wickedness. We should be asking God to reveal our hearts to us. And we should be turning to God to fill our hearts with His love.
““Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.”
Matthew 6:1-4
“But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.”
Matthew 23:5
““Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Matthew 23:27-28
“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
Luke 6:45