November 06, 2000

He that does the will of the Father will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.   What is the Father’s will?  Apparantly it’s not just doing good deeds in His name.  It’s not even prophesying and casting out devils in His name.  To many who do those things He will say, "I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity."

Doing the will of the Father isn’t doing all the mighty works just because you know the power in His Name.  But doing the will of the Father comes from knowing Him and Him knowing you.  When we know Him we’ll know what pleases Him.   What He likes and what He doesn’t like.  What is sin and what isn’t sin.  What is a proper motivation and what isn’t.

We can be doing the right things but with the wrong motivations.  The verse prior to these verses, verse 20 says, ‘ by their fruits ye shall know them.’  God looks at what we do from the perspective of our heart’s motivation.  He doesn’t look at the outward appearance-the end result.

Does He know us?  Or do we just know about Him and the power in His name?   There’s a fine line between:

Doing His works because you know Him and He knows you and the fruit of that intimate knowledge is manifesting His presence

or

Doing all those good and marvellous works because you know about Him and the power of His Name but yet you are still ‘working iniquity’.

His will is not just for us to do all these good things or Jesus never would have said these things.  As we know the Father’s heart and desire to please Him we will produce fruit that is pleasing to Him.  Our heart’s motive will be to please Him and do what He says for the right reasons.  Not to use Him and His power to please and exalt ourselves.