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What’s Inside Your Heart?
How do we size up other people? What do we do to get ahead in this world? Many times, we judge by the way we dress, talk, carry ourselves. Do we have the right accent? Did we come from an exclusive school? People look at the model of our cellphone, the brand on our bags and T-shirts. Is it a designer label? Is the real thing or imitation? They check out the kind of car we drive and where we park it for the night--in an exclusive neighborhood, in a classy condominium?
We live in a world of sham and show, sell and tell. Keeping up can be tiresome, time-consuming and expensive. And what we project can be far from what we really are inside.
Maybe that is why Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into our world without fanfare and in such humble circumstances. He shared his nursery with goats, sheep and donkeys. He grew up in a tiny town called Nazareth, definitely the wrong address to choose in Israel. One apostle was quoted as saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” His father, Joseph, was a working-class Jew, a carpenter, and he too was trained as a laborer. Several of His closest friends were uneducated fishermen with rough, calloused hands.
Christ’s true Kingdom is glorious, beyond anything we can imagine. But perhaps he came so humbly to show the world what it had become: boastful, shallow, materialistic, hypocritical.
He also came to give us the real thing--true wealth, prestige, power and influence as children of the living God. What we really are will only be revealed when He comes again.
When Jesus returns as King of Kings to Israel, he won’t judge us by how high up in our career we managed to get, how famous or popular we have become, or how we multiplied our money into millions. He is going to check out if we truly loved God and one another. So let’s focus our lives on that. Let’s not waste time looking good on the outside, buying things for show, winning the applause of men. As the Lord says in 1 Samuel 16:7, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Be blest with a heart that is faithful and full of God’s love!
How do we size up other people? What do we do to get ahead in this world? Many times, we judge by the way we dress, talk, carry ourselves. Do we have the right accent? Did we come from an exclusive school? People look at the model of our cellphone, the brand on our bags and T-shirts. Is it a designer label? Is the real thing or imitation? They check out the kind of car we drive and where we park it for the night--in an exclusive neighborhood, in a classy condominium?
We live in a world of sham and show, sell and tell. Keeping up can be tiresome, time-consuming and expensive. And what we project can be far from what we really are inside.
Maybe that is why Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into our world without fanfare and in such humble circumstances. He shared his nursery with goats, sheep and donkeys. He grew up in a tiny town called Nazareth, definitely the wrong address to choose in Israel. One apostle was quoted as saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” His father, Joseph, was a working-class Jew, a carpenter, and he too was trained as a laborer. Several of His closest friends were uneducated fishermen with rough, calloused hands.
Christ’s true Kingdom is glorious, beyond anything we can imagine. But perhaps he came so humbly to show the world what it had become: boastful, shallow, materialistic, hypocritical.
He also came to give us the real thing--true wealth, prestige, power and influence as children of the living God. What we really are will only be revealed when He comes again.
When Jesus returns as King of Kings to Israel, he won’t judge us by how high up in our career we managed to get, how famous or popular we have become, or how we multiplied our money into millions. He is going to check out if we truly loved God and one another. So let’s focus our lives on that. Let’s not waste time looking good on the outside, buying things for show, winning the applause of men. As the Lord says in 1 Samuel 16:7, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Be blest with a heart that is faithful and full of God’s love!
Scripture
About this Plan
Engage in a personal reflection and conversation with God as you read through His words. Join Peter Kairuz (host of The 700 Club Asia) and together let us examine our hearts today.
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We would like to thank CBN Asia and Peter Kairuz for providing this devotional. For more information, please visit: http://www.cbnasia.org/peterkairuz
