Rewards Not Punishment

UV 4276/10000 Rewards Not Punishment I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve. Jeremiah 17 v 10 The Lord God continually searches our hearts and minds not to punish us, to prove our guilt but to bless us, to reward us according to our thoughts, words, deeds, not just in heaven but here and now on earth. When God came to visit Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, the first couple hid themselves in fear and guilt at their disobedience and sin. But to this day, mankind does not realize we cannot ever hide ourselves from the searching eye of the Lord. Today, He visits our hearts and minds to try to discover something good in us. He sees even the secret things which no man, even the nearest and dearest in our lives, do not know. The Lord is excited when He finds something good in us and feels that His acts of creation and redemption in Christ were indeed worthwhile. He knows our flaws and weaknesses but the uni-verse says that He is examining us to find what is positive, uplifting, good, praiseworthy even as a parent looks for good qualities in his or her child. When we fail to fulfill that expectation, the absence of rewards is itself our punishment. Jeremiah praises God by saying that He is mighty in works and great in counsel in the context of His seeing the ways of mankind. It implies that when He sees something good or great, He does mighty things to reward us and when He sees some shortcomings, He counsels us patiently. The Lord guarantees that the righteous will eat the fruit of their word and work. But, as scripture says that there is no man who is truly righteous, it implies that the Lord rewards the children who are deemed righteous by faith in Him and His Son, the Redeemer Jesus when He sees the latter are also doing their diligent best to produce the fruit of righteousness in their lives. The roots of righteousness lie in our hearts ( our emotions) and our minds ( our thoughts, goals, ideas, values, self talk, God talk..). This is the reason the Lord searches the hearts and examines our minds through the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. He knows the motives behind our actions and the values that lie behind the motives and releases His grace and power to enable us to fulfill worthy goals and objectives we might have set for ourselves in alignment with His expressed word and will. He even partners with us in our work so that He helps us fill the inevitable gap between our goals and our achievement of those goals. Thereafter, after we achieve the goals, He enables us to enjoy the fruit of our labour.