SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 ~ FROM A PASTOR'S HEART

SEPTEMBER 25 DEVOTIONAL BIBLE READING: Philippians 2:14-16

It is so easy for us to fall in the trap of assuming that our actions are all that the Lord wants from us. So we do what we know is right, yet our hearts are not right. We do it, but we complain and murmur about having to do it. We perform the task, but we are upset that we have to do it in the first place. Then we look around and begin judging and being angry at our brothers and sisters, because they are not doing the same thing we are doing...they're not as committed as we are. We have fallen in to the worldly way of thinking that it does not matter how I feel about something, or what I say about it, just as long as the job gets done.

The Lord is not looking for a people who just perform, but their hearts are not right with Him. He always begins with the heart when it comes to us...and He has called us to have a right heart when it comes to Him. God cares about our heart condition, because it is out of the heart that flows who we truly are. We can do the right thing with the wrong heart...but God has called us to do the right thing with the right heart. I remember years ago in a church I pastored, there was a man who was trying to get a group to go and witness to another religious group whose theology was clearly unbiblical. This guy would go to where these people met and stand on the sidewalk and yell at them about how wrong they were. One of the men in our church, who this other man asked to go with him had a question for the first man. He simply asked him, "Do you love them?" This was a question for the heart, it wasn't merely about going and telling others how wrong they were...it was a matter of a right heart. Our Lord cares about what we do...that's true...but He cares more about a right heart as we do what we do. You see, it is out of a right heart that the true work of Christ comes.

Please share your thoughts.