It is impossible to deceive the One from whom we are expecting to receive.
Grace and peace to you all, people of God, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
By the grace of God, I'm here to share with you a message from the living Word of God,
the Word that takes us into a genuine relationship with God.
And when I say genuine, I mean a relationship without deception,
a relationship without pretense,
a relationship without makeup.
And, in fact, I would like to begin this message today by talking about
the makeup culture of today.
I know everyone here knows what makeup is.
I'm referring to those cosmetic products we mainly put on our face
to enhance or modify our physical appearance.
There are countless videos we can find on the internet
about how makeup can change, transform someone's appearance.
To many, makeup is an art to beautify
the face and even a way to strengthen someone's self-esteem.
But unfortunately for many, many others,
makeup is used to hide, to disguise, their true nature.
For you to better understand what I'm talking about, I would like us to watch
a short video about the power of makeup.
So in this video, we are looking at a makeup artist that took a stone,
an ordinary stone, and she's doing a full makeup session for it.
And we can see how she's applying so many cosmetic products to a stone.
And we can see she's putting the foundation now, concealer.
She really means it! And she's now putting on the powder,
and now she's going to do the eyebrows and she's going to put the eyelashes.
Wow, it is very interesting to see what the artist is doing.
Even she drew a nose.
And now she's going to put some lipstick to do the lips.
And then, voila! An ordinary object
has been transformed into a beautiful face by the power of makeup.
However, people of God, the power of makeup can be dangerous because it shows us
a completely false image of what the person,
in this case, the object, really looks like.
Makeup can hide reality from us.
And the problem is that many people today
are taking this makeup culture beyond the physical.
Before I go on, I want to make it clear that by no means am I against makeup.
In fact, today I have used some makeup to enhance my own facial features.
And this message today is not to determine whether makeup is good or not.
But what I want to call your attention to is to beware of this makeup culture that
many have fallen into even as children of God.
People want to live by appearance and not by truth.
There is a culture of falsehood.
There is a culture in which we are no longer sincere,
in which we are no longer genuine.
And many people try to ‘makeup’ their heart
by deceiving others, deceiving themselves, and behaving as if they can deceive God.
But the true motives of the heart cannot be disguised before Him.
This brings me to the title of this message,
“You Cannot ‘Makeup’ Your Heart.”
So I want you, wherever you are, to say it out loud,
“You cannot ‘makeup’ your heart.”
And now say it to yourself,
“I cannot ‘makeup’ my heart.”
Throughout the Bible, the importance of our motives
behind our actions is emphasised to us.
In Jeremiah 17:10, the Bible says that God examines our hearts
to know our motives, to see if they are pure or corrupt.
In 1 Chronicles 28:9, the Bible says that it is He, God, who searches the heart.
And God is the One that judges the unseen,
the secret things, as Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 says.
Our motives are as important as our actions.
People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
That's what the Bible says in 1 Samuel 16:7.
Brethren, with our lips we profess to be Christian, but are we such in heart?
Many of us consider ourselves Christians because we go to church,
because we carry the Bible under our arm, because we greet others, “God bless you,”
because we kneel down to pray or we worship aloud.
But are you such in heart?
Do you really mean it?
God values our intentions, our motives, because He's seeking true worshipers.
God is looking for sincere followers.
John 4:23 says this.
And as Prophet TB Joshua often taught us, true Christianity lies in the heart.
I know that every one of you connected here today, you have a prayer request.
You are seeking God's intervention in your life.
But I want you to ask yourself,
what is the motive behind that prayer request?
I'm not asking you what your prayer request is.
I'm asking you, what is the motive behind it?
Because it is impossible to deceive
the One from whom we are expecting to receive.
Let me give you some examples about insincerity and sincerity.
I mean, examples of wrong motives and right motives
that we can find in the Bible for us to reflect on
some of the signs that will help us to identify
in which category our own prayer requests, our own actions, fall into.
And I would like to start first by reading 1 Samuel 8.
We are going to read verses four and five and then we will be
jumping into some verses in the same chapter.
And the Bible says, “Then all the elders of Israel gathered together
and came to Samuel at Ramah,
and said to him, ‘Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways.
Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.’”
And now let's jump to verse seven.
“And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Heed the voice of the people
in all that they say to you;
for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me,
that I should not reign over them.’”
And then now let us jump to verses 19 and 20.
“Nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel;
and they said, ‘No, but we will have a king over us.
that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us
and go out before us and fight our battles.’”
Here, people of God, we read about when the people of Israel asked Samuel
the prophet, who was also judging Israel at that time, to anoint a king for them.
As we see, though the reasons of their petition seemed to be legitimate -
Samuel was very old, and his sons did not follow his ways -
their petition was born out of comparison.
In verse five and verse 20,
they said, “Make us a king, so we may be like all the nations.”
The people of Israel compared themselves with others
and desired to be like them.
Their petition was ‘makeup’ by first saying something that seemed true and justifiable.
People of God, know that when your motives are born out of comparison,
your prayers, your actions, are not sincere before the Lord.
As Christians, we need to be careful to avoid the trap of comparison.
When our prayers or actions are born out of comparison, it is because
our heart is more focused on man's opinion than God's opinion.
Petitions out of comparison come from a heart
that is more interested in pleasing men than pleasing God.
As you are there right now, asking God for that blessing, for that breakthrough,
in whatever area of your life,
it is important, people of God, that you examine yourself,
that you examine your motives.
Is the motivation of that prayer request because you are comparing yourself
with others, because you are desiring in the carnal, in the flesh,
to be like others or to have what others have?
And are you allowing this comparison to direct your prayers?
People of God, let us check ourselves.
Let us check where our prayers and actions are coming from.
Many of you, as you continue reading this story, you may say,
‘But God finally granted their petition as He anointed Saul as the king!’
Yes, people of God.
But the Bible also says that God was not pleased
and that God gave them a clear warning of what would happen to them if they had a king.
The Bible says that they would become his servants.
Other Bible versions say that they would become the king's slaves.
People of God, let us not become slaves
of the very thing we are asking God to give us because of wrong motives.
Another example of insincerity can be taken
from the life of King Saul and his act of worship that displeased God.
We can find it in 1 Samuel 15.
After having spared the life of the King of Amalek, Israel's enemy at that time,
King Saul received a rebuke from Prophet Samuel.
But Saul justified himself by saying that he kept alive
the best of the cattle to offer them as a sacrifice to the Lord.
And apparently, Saul acknowledged his sin,
Saul acknowledged his mistake, but his vain words of repentance
were nothing more than ‘makeup’ to hide the true intentions,
the true motives of his heart: pride and self-sufficiency.
He only wanted to maintain his fame, his reputation.
King Saul did not mean to worship the Lord from his heart.
Offering sacrifices, worshiping the Lord, were acts of righteousness, but King Saul
was rejected by God because of the wrong motives in his heart.
Let us reflect on these examples.
Let us come to God in sincerity of heart.
And I know that no one here
connected to this service today wants to be
like the type of people Jesus spoke about in Mark 7:6,
when He said, “These people honour Me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from Me.”
And people of God,
you may also say that these examples are extreme cases of insincerity.
Maybe you may think that we all know that King Saul had a wicked heart.
And we may also say that at that time the people of Israel were wicked,
they were not sincere.
But in the light of this message, I want to share with you
something that happened to me in my first year of marriage
so we can all see how easily we can fall into insincerity
if we don't constantly check our motives.
For those who don't know, by the amazing grace of God,
I am married to a wonderful, loving, caring, but most importantly God-fearing man,
a man of faith. I'm married to Brother Chris.
And one day we were at home
and the time to do one of the activities that I enjoy more, cooking, came.
So I went to the kitchen. I opened the fridge.
We had chicken and beef, so I needed to decide what to cook that day.
So I said to myself,
“Oh, well, I don't have much time.
Perhaps cooking chicken will be faster and I feel like eating chicken. But still,
let me ask Chris what he would prefer.”
So I went to see him and I asked him in a very charming way,
“Mi amor, what would you like for lunch: chicken or beef?”
So he replied and said, “Oh, thank you. I would like to eat beef today.”
So immediately, without thinking, I said to him, “Oh, you know what?
I'm going to cook chicken. It is faster. I prefer chicken.”
So Brother Chris corrected me and said, “Why did you even ask my opinion
if you already concluded what you wanted to cook?”
People of God, in fact,
at that moment, I realised that the motive behind my question was not sincere.
Normally, he enjoys my food whatever I cook.
He never demands from me a specific type of food.
But when it came to this question, I’d already made up my mind
concerning what I wanted to cook that day.
And this showed that I was not ready to hear something different to what I wanted.
And my question was provoking because
it was ‘makeup’ with a fake consideration
to include my husband’s opinion in a very simple decision,
when my true motive was already to cook chicken.
People of God, this can happen between God and us.
This can happen in our relationship with God.
Sometimes, when we approach God and when we make our petitions,
they are not sincere because we have placed our own will above His will.
Sometimes we make our petitions to God with nice words and smooth speech,
but we are not prepared to hear something different to what we really want.
And I ask you again, what is the motive behind your prayer request,
behind your petition, behind your action?
Because, no matter how clever you are, you cannot ‘makeup’ your heart.
And I want to ask this sincere question to every one of you:
How sincere are your prayers?
Now, I would like to highlight some examples in the Bible of sincere prayer
so we can be inspired by them.
When we come to God, we don't need to be perfect to approach God.
We only need to be sincere.
In 1 Samuel 1, we read the story about Hannah, Prophet Samuel's mother.
She made a vow to the Lord when she asked Him for a child.
Hannah's petition was for God to release her from
the distress and the affliction of having a closed womb.
And perhaps her petition was influenced by the provocation of the second wife
of Elkanah, Hannah's husband.
But the true motive behind Hannah's petition was to glorify God,
because it doesn't make sense in the natural, from a human point of view,
to ask for something that later on she will give away.
Hannah’s petition was motivated by her desire to glorify God.
Her motives were not to glorify herself
or to pretend that she was better than her rival.
She wanted to honour God.
Her petition was not ‘makeup’ with empty confessions and tears.
Her petition was not ‘makeup’ by sentimentalism and drama.
Hannah meant what she prayed and God saw her heart and blessed her.
And the test of time, people of God,
showed the genuineness of that prayer, because when the time came,
Hannah gave her child to God’s service.
How can I know if my prayer is sincere?
When the motive of that prayer is to glorify the Lord,
when the motive of my prayer is to do His will,
when what I'm asking for is to bring me closer to God,
when what I'm asking for is for the salvation of my soul.
Brethren, the right motives are critical
for us to have a good relationship with the Father.
And that's why I want you to go with me in the Bible, to Psalm 145,
and we are going to read verse 18 and 19.
The Bible says, “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him,
to all who call upon Him in truth.
He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
He also will hear their cry and save them.”
This is very clear.
The Lord is near to those who call upon Him in truth,
in sincerity, with transparent motives.
And, “He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him.”
Because when we fear God, people of God, we only want to do His will.
Can you see how important is sincerity when we approach God?
I want to conclude with another great example of sincerity from
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the prayer
in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26 from verse 36 to 46.
The Bible says that Jesus Christ was sorrowful
even to death, and He prayed three times to the Father,
saying, ‘Father, if it is possible, pass this cup from Me.
Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.’
What a sincere prayer.
Jesus Christ let the Father know that He was in agony, that He was sorrowful.
But immediately, He asked the Father to remove the suffering from Him,
He revealed His motive: ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.’
Jesus’ motives were to fulfill God’s will.
His motivation was to honour God, to glorify Him, to do His will
and fulfill the plan for our salvation.
He did not hide His feelings to the Father,
yet He did not allow those feelings to direct His prayers.
And the Bible says in Luke 22:43, that God sent an angel to strengthen Him.
This means that when we are sincere to God, when we have the right motives,
even if it is not the will of God to give us what we are asking for,
He will not leave us, He will not forsake us.
He will strengthen us whatever life brings.
So my brothers and sisters, we cannot ‘makeup’ our hearts.
No matter how many layers of foundation, concealer,
powder, lipstick we use to disguise our motives, our true motives,
God sees the heart.
Today, you are here to receive a touch from God, not from men.
So don't waste time pretending.
No makeup can move your Maker
to release something that you are not ready to receive.
So, people of God, check your motives and be sincere
right here, right now before the Lord and leave aside every wrong motive.
Leave aside every comparison, pride, selfish intention
and focus on glorifying the Lord and submitting to His will for your life
in Jesus’ name.
And finally, I just want to leave you with this Bible verse.
So please, go quickly to 1 John 5:14-15.
“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us.
And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask,
we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
May the Lord bless the seed of His Word in our hearts, in Jesus’ name.