We need to let God work in our heart so that we have an authentic and genuine love and what we do is a genuine desire to serve. We give because we love God and we're so grateful to Him, we want to overflow with a serving spirit and there's no agenda - and that is what makes the works we do different, because inside them is no agenda. How many of you have had someone do something for you and after they did it you thought that was wonderful, thank you. That was really kind, that was really loving - and then before you know it there's a hook in it and there was always an agenda in it. Now the agenda comes out and they're pulling on you to do something? That just sucks. All the joy is taken out of the thing. You feel poisoned by the thing inside, manipulated by it and you hate it.
See now what he's saying is that the works we do, God will be honoured because there's something about them is really fresh. They come out of relationship with Jesus and there's a purity of love and serving involved in it. Now isn't that fantastic? Isn't that a great thing? So before we do anything on looking at what the works are that God calls you to do, this is the foundation to lay in your life. Number one, intimacy with God. Number two, let God work on the motivation, why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I doing it to be seen by men? It doesn't cut. That's what this guy Simon did. He did it to be seen by people, so if I'm doing it to be seen by men I'll only do it when the Pastor's around or a leader's around. I'll be sucking up and making sweet sounds and kind of things like that and trying to impress - but we're not to impress men. We're to impress God with a right heart and right attitude. We say Amen...
Congregation: Amen.
...and just close our eyes right now, just close... just for a moment I want to ask this question; is there anyone here who's never begun this fantastic journey of walking with Jesus Christ? You know the Bible tells, we're born into this life separated from God. Without the life of God, without a sense of destiny, struggling to try and find things to meet what can only be met by relationship with God. Jesus came into this world and paid the price for the power of sin to be broken, and for our lives to be free to come into relationship, but it does require something. It requires one, we recognise our condition that I'm walking apart from God. That's the condition of sin, that Jesus has made provision by dying on the cross and rising from the dead, and I'm willing to receive him into my life to give me a fresh start, and so I can become connected to Heaven and begin the journey walking with God and into my destiny.