Great post Thomas! We all need to be in a constant state of examining ourselves in this matter. Our heart can be so easily led astray and in this world we fight every day to resist falling down into the pleasures, distractions, and busyness of life and misplacing the priority of God’s will with other things. Obedience is important: true! That is the mark that Jesus is the Lord of your life: if you choose to follow him. But, as you point out, following Jesus is not strictly about doing what is right but doing it with a transformed heart; a heart that desires to please their Savior and be his disciple. I believe that if we served and worshipped in our churches and fellowships with this attitude and disposition of heart many people would not feel so presumptuous about their church being the right church and another church being the wrong church and then segregating themselves completely as though the other church was not part of GOD’S CHURCH.

You said, “A right heart leads right actions but right actions don’t always mean a right heart. God is concerned with our heart, so maybe that’s where we should start.” If we don’t have our heart right before God, who do we think we are fooling? God? How naïve are we to think that if we just “show up for work and do our job,” metaphorically speaking, that God is satisfied with that. It is not enough to just do the right work. God wants us to do it with the right motive and incentive—love from a pure heart; love for the Father, love for the Savior, and love for the church. I think if we all had “Crazy Love” for God our Father and for Jesus our Lord, such love would revolutionize the church and would change the way we look at each other. So many divisions in the church are a matter of pride (sure some doctrinal issues exist), but Paul did not kick people out of church because they disagreed. He went to great lengths attempting to unify everyone on the truth of the gospel.

Regarding having the right heart before God, I think about the costly lesson that David learned through some of the most wicked sin by a believer that I think I have read in Scripture (2 Sam 11-12). Apparently, it took David deceiving and murdering someone (Uriah) and then sleeping with his wife (Bathsheba) to realize how grievous his error was and what God wanted him to see about his life.

This passage addresses only one aspect of the heart, though. We should learn from David’s mistake that we should have a “broken spirit” and “a broken and contrite heart.” What this means is that we should embrace a spirit of humility with a dismantled and shattered heart that is willing to be rebuilt by the Lord of mercy and grace. David had come to understand that in God’s eyes, what God wanted was for David to look to Him and Him alone for forgiveness and cleansing, not to any actions he would do, like burnt offerings and sacrifices. Of course God commanded His people to offer sacrifices to Him, but those sacrifices were meant to represent His people’s inner heart toward and reliance on Him. It was not the outward action that was significant but the inner disposition that God desired.

What is important to God is the “Heart-To” attitude not the “Have-To.” ~JW