Clean Heart, Pure Motives 7-2-07

Good morning, Lord Jesus. As the worship song says, "Change my heart, O God; make it ever true. Change my heart, O God; may I be like You." ... "For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts" (1 Thessalonians 2:3-4). I know I don't fully know my own heart. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9, NKJV). But You know it. And You are changing it. Though my heart was deceitful and wicked apart from You, You are creating in me a clean heart and renewing a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10). So I entrust my heart and my motives to You. Give me a clean heart and pure motives. Test them and conform them to Your nature and Your purposes. Free me from self-deceptive tactics -- whether conscious or not -- to seek the approval of man instead of the approval of God, to find my significance in how pleasing I feel I am to others instead of to You alone. Let the message of Your gospel I share with my life be Your gospel and not mine, delivered in Your way and not the ways of man, glorifying Your name and no other. This alone is the "eternal gospel" that will live forever in my heart and in the hearts of all who hear it and receive it (Revelation 14:6). This alone is the eternal gospel I've laid down my life to live and to share, by Your grace and for Your glory. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays To subscribe/unsubscribe, please send a note to me at Messiah Ministries -- MessiahMin@aol.com -- "Ministering the Healing Love of God ... Preparing the Way of the Lord." 2800 Tates Creek Rd; Lexington, KY 40502 www.messiah-ministries.org Daily Archives: www.morningbymorning.injesus.com