What or who is pushing our buttons –
motivating, inspiring, urging us on?
That’s a pretty simple question, right? Why do we get up each morning, do our morning rituals, head off to work at home or away, then come home, sleep, and do it all again tomorrow. Even if we are looking for a job or direction for training/schooling, something or someone is moving us to action. Am I right?
Here are some possible life-motivators – of course the list is not all inclusive:
Survival
Financial success or simply keeping food on the table
Showing love to my family by working / planning
Pleasing God Who empowers me to live for Him
Self-love that means I do what I do to benefit myself
Living to impress others – bosses, that special guy or gal
To reach personal goals for success and achievement, etc….
OK, that’s enough. Of these or others what constitutes the very best and longest lasting motivation of all? Fear is my answer, but wait until you read the rest to pass judgment. We fear not being able to make enough, buy enough, keep enough, be prepared enough. We fear losing our relationships with the most important people in life, losing our health (enter Covid, cancer, etc), losing our job or position, …… Some fears are beneficial since I won’t run into traffic for fear of being hit, I will generally obey traffic laws because I don’t want a ticket or to be hurt or to hit someone else because of my bad choices. I won’t eat certain things, drink certain things, go certain places after dark, or be careless with a weapon. Why? Fear – healthy fear.
I want to suggest a better fear to become our motivation in life to do what we do. This fear is real but not negative or unpredictable. This fear is commanded, encouraged, misunderstood but available for free. I am not kidding. It is big, powerful, life altering, and full of promise. Ready? OK. The fear I suggest is the “fear of the Lord” also called the “fear of God”.
Well, why shouldn’t we fear Him? He is after all the creator, sustainer of life, the one who provides all resources to meet our needs…all of them, everything. Those are all good reasons to be afraid of Him, but the problem is that being filled with fright of Him is not what He wants or ever did. Looking through the Old and New Testaments, one can certainly see His mighty power on full display in creation, in delivering the children of Israel from captivities, in revealing to the prophets the future and then keeping it preserved in His Word, in delivering Israel into times of judgment, in punishment of the enemies of Israel, in providing a Savior to take away the sin of the world, in raising Jesus from the dead, in making a way for us to be forgiven and become a part of an eternal family through faith in Jesus Christ’s work for us, and on and on we could go!
So what does He want and how does He want us to be purely motivated? Ready? It is His love for us, and it is His kindness to us. Really! I am dead serious.
(Romans 2:4
Don’t you realize how patient he is being with you? Or don’t you care? Can’t you see that he has been waiting all this time without punishing you, to give you time to turn from your sin? His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance)
Some see God as just mean or uninvolved or uncaring. He is none of those things. Even in creation at the very beginning of man’s journey on earth, God loved Adam and graciously met needs by the things He put on earth to supply Adams physical needs. He and Adam had perfect fellowship and friendship, as they spent time together “in the cool of the day”. God didn’t need the cool, but he had Adam in mind, at least that is my thought. He knew Adam didn’t need to be alone and that a relationship with God Himself was not the only way to demonstrate His love for Adam, so God gave Eve to him, not as a slave to work under his rule or as a tyrant to rule over him, but as a co-regent – someone of equal value to God but who was to work under Adams authority and protection. God’s kindness in creation is evident. His love is real.
Adam was motivated by the goodness of God, the love of God, the provision of God, the power of God, the authority of God. I am sure he was in awe of the privileges and blessings and authority he was given from the hand of God Himself. Love based on God’s power and care motivated Adam to live, to obey, to submit, and to enjoy the blessings of obedience, submission, and a loving relationship with God Who authored it all.
You know what happened, don’t you? Adam had a choice to stay under that loving, powerful authority or try to become “god-free” and rule himself without the care and protection of God. He made a horrible choice. It wasn’t Eve’s fault. It was Adam’s. He knew how loved he was, how loving God was, how powerful God was; yet, he believed a lie and started a series of seriously consequential actions motivated by anything and everything except the God Who made Him.
You who have children know how this works. You love them, sacrifice for them, would give your life to protect them, but they don’t always appreciate it or willingly submit to your loving authority. You want them to have such reverence and know so deeply how much they are loved and can protect them from their own immature decision, but they don’t always respond in a loving, thankful way. But you see, neither did/do you. Neither did/do I. And yet, God loves.
Our holy God tells us that we are to be holy. In other words we are to be like Him, then He calls us out of our sin by grace through faith to enter His family. He doesn’t wait for us to become holy because we can’t and won’t; but He does give us the power to be transformed into His image. Our thoughts change to Christs, our choices conform to His, our emotions begin to be purified so that God’s love becomes the true motivation for all we do.
That, my friend, is living in the fear of the Lord – we know His power and His might to a certain degree, we know of His awesome actions in the past – ones we like to learn about and those we are’t too sure about, but now we know He loves us. He loves you. What He did in the past was from love for all His creation because we needed a Savior, not just an example. He preserved Israel all those centuries in order to bring in the Messiah through the lineage of David, as prophesied. He allowed His only begotten Son to die a horrible death for the horrible sin we have done/will do. Then He raised Jesus from the dead so the we could be brought into His loving family of light and be taken from the kingdom of darkness ruled by Satan – the murderer from the beginning and the father of lies.
So, why do you live? What pushes your buttons and keeps you moving forward? I don’t know, but I do know this: the only real, pure motivation is knowing how loved you are and living to give love back to the Father then give it away to those in your life whether they deserve it or not. I don’t deserve God’s love, but I am certainly glad He is real and all He promised is true. By His grace I will live for Him while I am here, knowing that I won’t do it perfectly – though I want to be holy as He is holy.