Recently I was blessed with a Kindle Reader (thank you so much to my friend) and am madly in love with it. I have been reading a book on there called The Prodigal God by Tim Keller. This book is basically a breakdown of the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15.
Keller drops gut-wrenching truths all the way through this read, but the one that has stuck with me the most is one that reads: “To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but…to truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right.” WOW!
The motivation behind our actions is a critical piece of Christianity. We can do all the right things, but for completely the wrong reasons. The Pharisees in the Bible were guys that had cornered the market for how to behave outwardly perfect, but inwardly Jesus described them as “whitewashed tombs,” i.e. dead inside.
I have been doing some serious motivation checking in my life lately. I shared this story on here before, but it’s a great example of this. I was sitting at my desk one day and a friend of mine came to mind and I began to pray for him. After a few minutes I decided I should give him a call. When he answered the phone he informed me that he had lost his job that morning and was pretty upset. Obviously, God had put him in my mind to be praying for him for this very reason.
After we got off the phone, my first thought was, “I can’t wait to tell _________ about this.” In that moment, the Holy Spirit checked me with the simple question of “why?” I didn’t want to share about this because of concern for my friend (though I was very concerned for him), but rather to make myself look like a spiritual hero. In that question of “why?” from God, so much was communicated to me about my motivations for ministry and for following Him.
If any of us (myself included) are in this for recognition, fame, power, prestige, or to impress others, just get out now and save us all the trouble.
How are your motivations today? Are they as pure as God would have them to be?
