GOD KNOWS MY.....WAIT...

I'm fairly certain that most of us can finish the title of this post without hesitation. But for the sake of clarity it's "God knows my heart". If you're like me then you've often heard this phrase uttered while speaking with someone about the gospel, church or the bible. This appears to be the go to default response when a Christian is asked about such things as church attendance or how often they read their bible and even about some particular habits they may have. Let's examine this phrase and, more importantly, the reason for its use.
For starters, it's important to note that there is nothing particularly wrong the phrase. God does indeed know our hearts. In fact, even better than we do ourselves. But do we know it as well as we think?

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

According to Jeremiah 17:9, our hearts are deceitful or, as another translation has it, sick. This makes it clear to us that we can't possibly trust it with most matters. In fact, it goes on to say that only God can know it. Despite this fact, we are content to default to this thinking in our attempt to explain away disobedience. And that is what this post is actually about; our tendency to openly and freely claim that we are believers, but in practice and our personal lives one would be hard pressed to see evidence of that claim.
In case there is any confusion, I'm speaking of a concept known as "Lordship salvation". In short what this means is that when we accept Christ as our savior, the one who lived a sinless life and willingly gave that life up for us so that we would not suffer the just wrath for our sins, we must by necessity accept Him as Lord as well. Or in other words, we don't have the option of allowing Him to be our savior today and then wait another 5 or 10 years, when we feel we're ready, to allow Him to be the Lord of our lives too. This kind of thinking and mindset not only contradicts scripture but gives rise to such concepts as a "Carnal Christian", a person that may have professed faith in Christ but nevertheless goes on living the way they did while they were still in the world.
Again, scripture is replete with examples of this being impossible;

"You are my friends if you do what I command you." ~ John 15:14 (ESV)

"And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." ~ 1 John 2:3-6 (ESV)

Unfortunately, and despite this evidence, in this day and age we make it increasingly harder to live this out. Seemingly everything in our society is geared towards a noncommittal existence. From cell phone plans that no longer have you locked into a contract to rent to own merchandise that can be returned whenever it suits you on to the putting off of marriage until later ages, we are doing everything in our power to actually commit to less and less! By extension, the idea of committing ones life to glorifying God and actually changing our lives to reflect that, is a foreign concept. After all, God loves us just the way we are and knows our hearts, right?
But, whether we realize it or not, there are very real consequences that stem from this mentality. The most obvious is that we are not displaying the signs of true repentance and salvation and should, by right, question that. Christ saw fit to wholeheartedly commit himself to being obedient, even unto the cross, so we should at the very least be able to commit to changed lives that reflect our gratitude for that and glorify God. But another equally devastating effect is that it diminishes our testimony in the world and causes those that may want to come to Christ to be skeptical of the validity of our faith. The world expects us to be different and when they see the opposite and see us doing exactly as they do (and worse) they rightly call our bluff that there's any substance to what we claim to believe!
If we couple that with the popular perception that "we're all in it for the money" and that this is just a business and our product is Jesus, our effectiveness is watered down tremendously. And even if we
come correctly, they will turn a blind eye and deaf ear towards not merely us, but Christ himself!
This is something that we can no longer allow to go unaddressed, both in ourselves and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Yes, God knows our hearts...and he saved us from them!
Let us live as ambassadors and as if we have a priceless gift to share with the world on behalf of our King and Lord, because in reality...we do...