All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.  Proverbs 16:2

My heart is full of mixed motives that can get so twisted together, the sinful, selfish desires entangling even the best intentions and good deeds.  Praying through my various motivations when considering a course of action recently, I suddenly imagined laying them before Jesus on the threshing floor, asking him to sift through them, separating the wheat from the chaff.  No wonder God commanded David to build his altar on a threshing floor!

Lord, please winnow what I bring to you, keeping what is valuable and blowing away the rest.

On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” So David went up, as the Lord had commanded… “To buy your threshing floor, so I can build an altar to the Lord…”  2 Samuel 24