God sees our heart..not our outward appearance

Today is a long day for me..but God did a lot of amazing things. I was so lazy to go to church this morning because I catched a cold..but once again, God reminded me through my mother that it's so important to go to church. Then I went to church with my lovely husband. I got a lot of things from today's sermon. The priest discussed about Mark 11:12-26. He said that God sees our heart...not our outward apperance. Mark told about 2 important things: Jesus cleared the temple and the withered fig tree. For the first thing, Jesus was so angry when he entered the temple area and he looked at those who were buying and selling there (11:15). From the story, we know that a lot of tradesmen in the temple courts would help a lot of people in preparing their offerings for God..but, that's not the right way. What kind of offerings that is great in God's eyes? We should not just give our material offerings, but also our heart offerings for His glory. We can give a lot of money, we can use a beautiful dress in church, we can bring a lot of expensive things for God, but that are not enough. God wants our heart, He sees deep down on our motivation in worshiping Him. Do we come to church as a daily activity or our heart is longing to Him?. We need to contemplate those questions in our heart^^.

The second things, Jesus said about having faith in God (11:22). If we have already purifed our heart and motivation, we could have big faith in Him. We know that He holds our live & He knows the best things for ous...so we can depend on Him without any doubt. It's so easy to be talked, but we must train ourself to do it in our daily life...having faith in God! We know that our life is getting difficult each day, but we should face it by having faith in God. We do not know about our future, but we surely know that God will lead us to our future. Every trial and difficulty will help us to improve our character to be more like our God.

God demands our faith to be fruitful in life. Like the fig tree of today's sermon, it did bear fruit when Jesus was hungry. It remains us that God may ask the fruit of our Christianity and our faith anytime. When it is said that the fig tree didn't bear fruit because it's not the right season, Jesus cursed the fig tree and it then whitered. Our faith may whitered if our faith is not fruitful. We cannot say to God to come next year or next month to see our fruitful faith. God wants it now not in right "season" like the fig tree.

Today's sermon reminded me again about my motivation and my faith. I hope that this sermon also can remind all of you who read it. God bless...