True Professions

'd like to start off this morning by asking you to consider a question: ‘How do you know someone is a
Christian? How can you tell if someone is a follower of Christ'? Or conversely, how can you tell that
someone isn't a follower of Jesus? In some cases we may think it is easy to tell, by a person's lifestyle or
because we've gotten to know what drives them, what motivates them (either in the positive or
negative). The answer of course in other cases is that it is impossible to tell. We cannot see the reality
of a person's heart. We can try to study the person's actions, or words or any number of outward things
that we hope to reveal where there heart is but the reality is there is no sure way to tell a person's
motives. We may see them demonstrating what looks like love to their neighbor, but we have no clue
whether their real motivation is to glorify God or to glorify themselves.