This week we begin worship with:
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
The depth of God’s gaze is illustrated by David’s charge to Solomon:
“And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
The heart is deeper than simply a “willing mind”. With God it is not “the thought that counts”!
Paul experienced this:
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
But in Christ we are made new and He takes control.
2 Corinthians 5:14,17
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; . . . Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
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