See yourself by searching your heart

Many people respond to criticism by saying something like: “God knows my heart,” ostensibly referring to the fact that God takes our motives into account when judging us.¹ The problem is that the motives of those who say this are just as bad as the outward acts they attempt to excuse by saying it. The next time someone says, “God knows my heart,” you should reply: “He does...but do you?”²

It is easy to presume that your heart is good, even when your outward acts are not.³ It is easy to come up with explanations that are sufficient to fool yourself or others into believing that you have good motives,⁴ but God can’t be fooled.⁵ What do you desire? By how much do you desire it? Why do you desire it?

Should you be so anxious to be judged by God for the intents of your heart? Can you boldly say, as David did:

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139)

The hearts of all people desire evil by default: “...for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth....” (Genesis 8:21) It is not just possible, but common, for people to desire differently than what they believe is right. It is only through active and continual submission to improvement that man’s heart bends to desire what is right:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)

Too many Christians erroneously believe that God automatically forgives the faults of those who say that they like him. Forgiveness doesn’t come through liking Jesus, but through being like him. Liking Jesus is not the same as loving him. You can say you like Jesus and still not obey him, but only those who obey him can claim to love him:

If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15)

Those who do not obey Jesus love whatever they do instead more than they love him.⁶ Those who actually love God desire to please him more than anything else.⁷