Inward Motives

 Greetings to  you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     First Samuel 16:5 says, “ But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” 

     We hear a lot these days of some who use the method of profiling people in order to find a criminal.  If they fit various characteristics, then they are assumed to be a possible suspect in a crime.  In many ways, we do the same thing if we pull into a certain neighborhood, you lock the car doors for fear of being hijacked.  One time I was in Washington, D.C. and did not have enough money to ride the bus from the capitol to our base in Anacostia,D.C.  So, I walked the long trek to the base through a bad neighborhood in which a man came staggering out of a bar with a beer bottle in his hand who grabbed my arm and said he was going to kill me.  I was in uniform and he said he was a former marine and insisted that I take him to the guard at the gate, which I thought was a brilliant idea.  You can see I am still alive so it all turned out well.

     I am now wary of any man staggering out of a bar with any kind of object in his hand.  I am sure he is out to kill me based upon my past experiences.  I have stereotyped a lot of people as suspected trouble makers because of their looks, their dress, their manner of speech and so on.  God however, doesn’t look on those characteristics but on something else.  God looks on the heart.  In the above passage, Samuel is to pick out the one to be king over Israel  and goes past each likely looking candidate and God says “no” to each one of them.  Finally, the bring in the most unlikely one, a man that doesn’t look like he would make a good king, a sheep herder, young and strong who plays a harp.  We know of course that he is the guy that God wants and King David was anointed.  We all have intentions of trying to be good, but God knows everything about us and sees our heart and what our inward parts are saying which may not be the same as what we are saying with our mouth.  My friend, Pam Enoch, had a button once that said, “We can talk the walk, but can we walk the talk.”   The believer should not be saying with his or her life,”Do as I say, not as I do.”  Our lives need to be an example of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ both inward and outward.  Praise God today for His examination of our inner most being.  May we live the Word in our daily lives.