GOD JUDGES OUR "GOOD" INTENTIONS!

What's in the Heart?
We often say that God judges by what's in our hearts.

There is certainly truth in that. After all, King David was chosen by God because he was "a man after His own heart."

That is not the same as God judging us for our "good intentions."

David's heart was a heart that longed for God. David wrote:

As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.
Psalms 17:15

God was pleased with David because his heart was "God-centered" and God is pleased with us when our hearts are tender, humble and submissive toward Him! Apart from God David knew that he also had wickedness in his heart because he was fallen. This is also true of every person who was born into this world, aside from Jesus Christ who was born of the Father!

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
Psalms 51:5

This "fallenness" means that we all have a sin nature which taints everything we do and our perception of our own hearts. The Bible plainly teaches that the human heart is wicked by nature and deceptive:

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
Jeremiah 17:9

Our wicked hearts naturally deceive us into thinking that our intentions are good. We mistakenly assume that God will "give us a pass" because we mean well. Our understanding of what is "good" varies greatly. The company we keep, the culture we live in, how we were raised and our environment all create many false definitions of "good."

We may all create our own code of morals and ethics. Criminals have one code. Housewives have another. Our country is currently divided on many issues of right and wrong. Why? It is because we all deceived into thinking that our intentions are "good."

Good Intentions Fall Short!
I believe that God judges us not only in spite our good intentions - but because of them!

God is holy and created man according to His holy image. When God looks at man, he declares that they have "all sinned and fall short of the glory of God!" We may grade ourselves and others on the curve. We look at the best people in the world, realize that no one is perfect, and then judge ourselves to be somewhere in the spectrum between the best and the worst. Most of us think we will get at least a passing grade compared to the worst people on earth - perhaps at the 70% mark or greater.

But God does not grade on the curve! In fact, He sees that even the very best of us are utter and complete failures! If the very best best are failures in God's sight, where does that leave the rest of us?

He perhaps looks at our good intentions and says, "Is that what you consider good?" 

This is what makes us such sinners and failures in the sight of God - that what we consider as "good" is so distasteful to Him! Even our righteousness is filthy in the sight of God:

6 But we are all like an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
7 And there is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, and have consumed us because of our iniquities.
Isaiah 64:6-7 (emphasis added)

Our only hope is in God! God sent His only begotten Son Jesus to die for us. When He comes into the hearts of men and women, they are not merely forgiven or given a clean slate. He plants the seed of righteousness in our hearts and writes His laws on our hearts! Our dead spirits are made alive and we become partakers of His divine nature!

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