Motivation - Why Do We Do the Things We Do?

I read something on a discussion list today, and someone was talking about weight loss. This woman said she struggled with losing weight until she came to the point where she wanted to lose the weight so that she would be living when she has grandchildren. I've heard others say that same thing before, and today it made me think. What should our motivation be for the things that we do?

I've written about this once before, in talking about what our aim in life should be. It's so easy to forget that the reason we do anything is to glorify God.

Col 3:17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

1Co 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

My posts have been on this topic lately because it's what I've been meditating on lately. I hope they will cause others to ask themselves what drives them, or what motivates them to do the things they do.

A few days ago, I was explaining something about sin to my children. I made a Y, and in the middle of that Y, I put a circle that stood for their decisions, or choices. On the left side, I put GOD, and on the right side, I put SELF. I explained that every day we make choices, and with each choice we have to make, we choose whether we're going worship God with our choice, or worship ourselves. We have sinful habits in our lives that we need to break, that we need to put off, and replace them with biblical ways of doing whatever bad habit we have. It's easy to sin, it seems so natural to our flesh, but each time, it gets harder and harder because the way of a trangressor is hard.

Pro 13:15 Good understanding giveth favor: but the way of transgressors is hard.

On the other hand, if we choose to obey God in our choices, it's hard at first, but it gets easier and easier each time we do. It will never be easy, but it will get easier.

Mat 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Mat 11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

I will leave you with this though, something that I've heard a pastor say. Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, and keep you longer than you wanted to stay.

Some thoughts

I finished chapter two this morning from the book, Idols of the Heart, by Elyse Fitzpatrick. I am reading slowly so that I can grasp the truths and retain them. I've already addressed a little of what the chapter was about in an earlier post here.

The next chapter will be focusing on the Ten Commandments. I've read a little bit of the first chapter, and like the previous two chapters, it looks like another good chapter.

Rom 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

The above verse tells us that everything written in the Scriptures, all of the stories, good and bad, were written so that we would learn from them, as well as to encourage us, and give us hope. The Bible isn't a boring Book, as I have heard some people say. According to Hebrews 4:12, it is living, and active, and sharper than a two-edged sword:

Heb 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

That, my friends, is powerful.

The Scriptures also say this:

2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

2Ti 3:17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

What is it that we are feeding ourselves with today? Are we feeding ourselves with the very words of God?

Mat 4:4 But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

Take a look at some verses from Psalm 119:

Psa 119:9 Beth. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

Psa 119:11 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

Psa 119:15 I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

Psa 119:16 I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.

Psa 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Those are just a few verses that show the importance of reading, and studying the Scriptures. What importance do you place on reading, and studying the Scriptures? At the end of the day, what have you filled your mind with? The television, or the computer, or some other form of entertainment? Or, like Martha has your focus been on your work, and have been so busy you forgot to read the Scriptures?

Let us be people of the Book, the Holy Bible, that is able to make us wise unto salvation.

2Ti 3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it

2Ti 3:15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

EXCITING NEWS!

Our son was here a little while ago with some exciting news!

MY HUSBAND AND I ARE GOING TO BE GRANDPARENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

Security in Christ

Last night, I posted something about Peter, and his pride. What a surprise I had this afternoon when I pulled out Oswald Chamber's devotional, "My Utmost for His Highest." Now, this is not a devotional I regularly use, I haven't picked it up in over two weeks because I prefer Spurgeon. Prior to that, it had probably been more than a year since I had last read it. The date the marker was at was January 5th, but I went ahead and read it anyway, even though today is the 23rd . The title of it was "The Afterward of the Life of Power," which you can read here. He was talking about Peter, and used John 13:36 as his passage to expound on. This is when Jesus tells Peter to follow Him.

Here is a little of what Oswald Chambers had to say:

"Between these times Peter had denied Jesus with oaths and curses, he had come to the end of himself and all his self-sufficiency, there was not one strand of himself he would ever rely upon again, and in his destitution he was in a fit condition to receive an impartation from the risen Lord."

I liked what he had to say in the first line of the last paragraph:

"All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out."

That sentence is a reminder that we have no power in and of ourselves to do anything. The only power we have is Christ working through us. We can't even be born again without the power of the Holy Spirit drawing us, and God's giving us a new heart, enabling us to receive Him. Salvation is all of God, and it is Jesus who is not only the Author, but the Finisher of our faith. Knowing that we are kept by the power of God, and not by we ourselves, and walking in that truth is freeing. One who has previously believed they could lose their salvation, and then has understood the truth, can relax, and breathe a big sigh of relief once they have grasped that wonderful truth that they have been justified by faith through what Jesus Christ DID, and not what they themselves can do. What wonderful peace there is in knowing that, and living it out.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Pride

Yesterday morning during my quiet time I read this in Matthew:

Matthew 26:33 Peter answered him, "Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away."

Matthew 26:34 Jesus said to him, "Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times."

Matthew 26:35 Peter said to him, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!" And all the disciples said the same. "

This passage was one that was discussed in the Idols of the Heart book that I am studying. I thought about it as it relates to the pride of man.

What caught my attention was Peter's pride, his boasting in himself, by saying that He would never fall away from Christ, nor deny Him. With those three "I" statements, he was depending on himself, his own good works.

When God regenerates a person's heart, and saves them, He gives them ETERNAL life. When a person is born again, they can never become unborn. Many professing believers today have the belief that they can lose their salvation. Yet Jesus tells us this in John 10:

John 10:25 Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me,

John 10:26 but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock.

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

John 10:28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

John 10:29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

What they fail to grasp is that they don't stand before God based on their own good works, their own merits, but on what Christ DID. Our pride wants to believe that we can merit salvation by the things we do, but we cannot. I believe the Bible is quite clear on that. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. All of our righteousness is as filthy rags:

Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

We stand before God clothed in the righteousness of Christ. It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

If we could do anything to merit salvation, to keep ourselves saved, Christ would have died in vain. I thank the Lord that He is the Author and the Finisher of my faith, and that I am kept by the power of God.

Hebrews 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

1Peter 1:5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

A Change, Pleasing God

I've decided to change the name of my blog, and will be keeping this title permanently. Although I really liked , 1 Corinthians 10:31, after meditating on 2 Corinthians 5:9 this past week, it has made an even greater impact on me, so I changed the title.

This morning as I was meditating on that verse in 2 Corinthians 5: 9, I began asking myself what does it mean to be pleasing to Him? Am I to please Him when I feel like it, or when I want to? Am I to please Him in some things, or in all things? Do I live part of my life for Christ, or all of my life for Him?

Let's look at this verse in Matthew 3:

Mat 3:16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him;

Mat 3:17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

Because our example is Jesus, and we are to be like Him, that means our aim in life should be to please God in all things. That means in our relationships at home, with our neighbors, with strangers, our aim in life should be to please Him at all times. What I envisioned in my mind this morning was a runner, with one goal in mind - to win the race. These verses from Hebrews 12 came to my mind:

Heb 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

Heb 12:2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

What is our goal in life? What are we aiming for? Are we aiming to please Jesus? Is Jesus making a difference in our marriages, in our parenting? How about in the work place, or our neighborhoods? Here is a big one - is our walk with the Lord making a difference when we are driving, and someone pulls out in front of us?

What we profess with our mouths as Christians should be backed up by a life that shows we are His. Today let's make it our goal to be pleasing to Him.

Victories in our walk with the Lord

There are days when certain sins we struggle with seem so hard to overcome. Some of the things we may struggle with are anger, gossip, worry, and fear. These sins can become a habit in our lives. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:1 to put off those sins that so easily entangle us. We don't just stop becoming angry, or stop gossipping, or stop doing those others things that the Bible calls sin. Instead, we replace those bad habits, the bad behavior, with right behavior. This is called the Put Off/Put On principle found in Ephesians 4:17-32. For instance, if we struggle with the sin of lying, we don't just stop lying, but rather replace it with speaking the truth. If our struggle is with anger, we replace that anger with kindness, and patience.

For many years I have struggled with trying to please God rather than man. I would avoid conflict just to appease someone because I didn't want anyone to think badly of me. I wasn't aware that it was an issue of sin in my life until today. While doing the Idols of the Heart bible study, I was confronted by what my life was characterized by. Was I pleasing man or was I pleasing God. The story was about Eli and his sons found in 1 Samuel 2. Eli was more interested in pleasing his sons, than he was with pleasing God. In the Idols of the Heart book, Elyse Fitpatrick says this:

"Honoring God means that the Lord's pleasure and glory come first. It means giving respect and deference to Him and to esteeming Him above the thoughts of those we love. It means that we are willing to suffer disrespect and even persecution in order to respect Him. We can detect the worship of false gods in our hearts when we honor anything above God."

I read that this morning, and had an opportunity to implement it this afternoon when I had to make an unpopular decision. He gave me the grace, and the strength to do what was pleasing to Him. God gets all of the credit because He gave me the power to do the right thing. I don't boast in myself, my boast is in the Lord. It is encouraging to see those victories when they come.

Although it was painful to see my sin, it was also freeing at the same time. To know what I am battling against gives me hope, and gives me the opportunity to work on pleasing the Lord, rather than pleasing man.

Idols

I began a bible study on January, 1, 2007 from the book, Idols of the Heart, by Elyse Fitzpatrick, which can be bought here.

In Exodus 20:3, God commands us to have no other god's before Him. What comes to your mind when you hear the word idols? In the Introduction, Elyse has this to say about our view of what we believe idols to be:

"Idols are something outside of us; they're something foreign, something you take pictures of in far-off temples, something you wonder at."

Previously, what came to my mind were things like statues, those things that pagans bowed down to. As Elyse said, something that was outside of myself. Though it's true that those things are idols, idolatry goes beyond that. An idol is anything that we love more than we do God Himself, something that we say, like Rachel did in Genesis 30:1-3, "Give me children, or I shall die!" After examining my own heart, I do see idols that dwell there, things that I believe I have to have in order to make my life complete. In believing that, I err because my life is complete because of Jesus. I read this in Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional this morning:

"All you need to make you blessed, to be supremely blessed, is to be with Christ."

We are commanded in Matthew 22:37 to love the Lord with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our mind. This is a good verse to meditate on today, to ask ourselves what are we putting above the Lord? What is it that we feel we have to have in order to make our lives complete?

In reality, what we believe we must have in order to make our lives complete, or to be happy, is the opposite of what actually will make our lives happy, or complete. When we have been saved by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, our lives are complete, because He is our life. And when our sins have been forgiven, and we are saved from the wrath of God, we can rejoice.

Being Spirit Filled

Our pastor was out of town today due to the death of his wife's sister, so we had another pastor come to preach. His text was on being Spirit filled, and the passage was on Ephesians 5:18-29.

He stressed how important it was that we have an intimate walk with the Lord daily. One way to do that is to saturate ourselves with the Word of God. Psalm 119 is an excellent Psalm to saturate ourselves with, and an excellent Psalm to memorize verses from. If we saturate ourselves with the Word of God, it will overflow into our families, our churches, our workplaces, and into every part of our lives.

What we fill our lives with will be what flows out of us, out of our hearts. Luke 6:45 tells us that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Rather than filling our minds with television shows, movies, and other things, we need to be filling, and saturating ourselves with Scripture, and with the Lord. We need to take to heart Romans 12:1-2, which tells us not to conform ourselves to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind.

We need that intimacy, and closeness with the Lord every day. Imagine what would happen if we spent the same amount of time with our families that we do with the Lord. Would we be able to say that we have a close, intimate relationship with them?

I hope you take the time to think about your relationship with the Lord, and evaluate how intimate you are with Him. Is He number one in your life?

Trials in Life

How do we handle trials when they come into our lives? Do we have an unwavering trust in God, that He will work all things together for His glory and our good? Or do we become easily discouraged, depressed, and overwhelmed? I must admit that I fall into the latter category more often than I'd like to admit.

Romans 8:28-29 has been an encouragement to me in recent weeks.

Rom 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Rom 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Verse 28 tells us that all things work together for our good. God has a purpose for all that He does in our lives, and He works all things in a way to achieve that purpose. The verse talks specifically to a certain group of people, and those people are those whom He has called. We can cling to that promise, knowing that our lives are in His hands. The purpose of our trials, as this verse tells us, is to conform us into the image of his Son.

The trials in our lives should cause us to constantly cry out to God in prayer, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Heb 4:14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Heb 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Heb 4:16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

May we never forget that all that God does is for His glory and our good.