Serving or Success Depends on Your Heart

Let’s get honest with ourselves for a moment…

If you are walking in the spirit, you are walking in a heart of serving.

If you are walking in the flesh you are striving for your own success.

Can you have both a life of serving and success?

In Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV) we find that, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it’?  As we go about our day and our work, we can often fall captive to our own motives, for doing, wanting or being something. Whether we are consciously or unconsciously aware of it, the Bible tells us that we all have a heart that is motivated by selfish desires. These are just a few examples that can motivate us to operate in our own fleshly desires,

• need to feel important

• entitlement

• anger, 

• jealousy, 

• pride

To digress for a moment, I am not saying that each individual person is not important, as we are all God’s children, and we are all important to Him. However, the need to feel important is twofold, firstly it can come from a need to feel worthy, and Jesus already gave us that gift with His work on the cross. Secondly, there’s an important distinction between the need to feel important over knowing that you are important, because of who you belong to – Our Heavenly Father. Therefore, we need to remember that when we feel unworthy, we should be looking to God to fill us through His word and promises and not the world. 

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart 

Hebrews 4:12, NIV

When God looks at our motives (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV), he looks at our heart and it is then He will pass judgement to us. ‘He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart’ (Corinthians 4:5, NIV). We cannot hide anything from our creator.

So then, the question we need to ask ourselves is: do we have a heart that glorifies and serves Him and His will for our lives, or do we have a heart that wants fleshly desire?

When we are saved or re-born in our spirit, our minds are being renewed in Christ, and we receive the Holy Spirit upon our lives. We are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus; it is a conviction within our spirit that, not only leads us to do Gods work, but to also live in a Christ-like manner. When we are walking in the Spirit, there is a sense of urgency to do Gods work. ‘Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:25).

As Christ followers we need to constantly be mindful of our motives. The Bible tells us ‘When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures’ (James 4:3, NIV). As followers of Christ, it is necessary to take an inventory of our motives in all aspects of our lives. Our motives should be for our Heavenly Father’s Glory. Proverbs 14:12, tells us that we may think we are on the right path, but that path often leads to death because of the motives in our hearts.

So how do we evaluate the motives of our heart? These are a just a few questions we can ask ourselves,

1. Why you are doing something? – for example, are you tithing because that is what you are told to do, or are you tithing because you know in your heart that you are helping more people come to know Jesus and it is a conviction/desire within you?

2. Would you still participate in something if you had no personal reward? 

3. Do you need the praise or promotion for helping others?

4. Will critics stop you from Gods plans for your life?

5. Would you stop doing something if God told you to stop or would you be obedient to where He is leading you?

Now that we understand a little more what it means by “motives of the heart,” can we have a life of both serving and success? My personal answer and my personal conviction to this question is “yes!” But your heart needs to be righteous, meaning the motives of our hearts need to be in right standing with God.

It is written in the Bible,

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 

1 Corinthians 15:58, NIV

In the above scripture the Lord tells us to give ourselves fully to the work of God, to serve, be His hands and feet. When we do this, it is a personal conviction of mine that God will prosper us in our lives, and I am not just speaking monetarily. God makes a promise to take care of you and I and all our needs. ‘And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8, NIV).

I want to encourage you today to seek the Lord, be in His word, examine the motives of your heart and seek the changes in yourself that will glorify God, then watch what God does in your life. Be Blessed!