Our motive must always be kept in check; lest we serve for “ruin” and “barrenness.”
(Micah 3:11-12) “Her heads judge for a bribe, Her priests teach for pay, And her prophets divine for money. Yet they lean on the Lord, and say, “Is not the Lord among us?
No harm can come upon us.” Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins, And the mountain of the temple Like the bare hills of the forest.”
His “Glory” must be our “supreme” motive, always!
For His Glory,
Pastor Al
MOTIVE
May our hearts pant after God alone. May He be the motive, our goal and our reason. When we seek His presence for projects, rather than for Himself; once the “project” is realized we soon forget His presence. David wandered along the wall of his palace after achieving all he desired and saw Bathsheba. When we are lifted high it often reveals what is truly in our hearts; after we have achieved what we want it’s easy to set God aside until the next “crisis.” God asked in the passage below, ***“…when you fasted and mourned was it for Me?”*Why do we cry out? Why do we mourn? Are we merely seeking His hand and not His heart? Brothers and sisters keep Him as your motive, goal and reason. The intimacy of His presence is our “portion,” our shield and high tower; an impenetrable fortress, against which satan has no defense. Stay close and you will stay strong!
For His Glory,
Pastor Al
Zechariah 7:4-14
4 Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying, 5 “Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests: ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me — for Me? 6 When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves? 7 Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous, and the South and the Lowland were inhabited?'”
8 Then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, 9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘Execute true justice,
Show mercy and compassion
Everyone to his brother.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless,
The alien or the poor.
Let none of you plan evil in his heart Against his brother.’
11 But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. 12 Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. 13 Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen,” says the Lord of hosts. 14 “But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”
