What Motivates Us?

What motivates us?

What’s the motivation behind the decisions you make? Money? Recognition? Check off the box? Feeling? What drives you? What pushes you to do the things you’ve got to do? This is a question that, you’d think, could be easily answered.  And I submit to you that it probably is easy for any one of us to admit what the motivations behind the decisions we make are.  The decisions we make on a daily basis have one of these motivating factors.  

Here’s where I take this into an ESPN 30 for 30...

What if I told you, there’s a motivating factor that should be behind every decision we make, yet every decision we make is not always motivated by this factor?  Well, He’s not even a factor, He’s a Him.  He’s Jesus. 

 Jesus has to be the be all, end all of our lives.  There’s no in-between.  Paul writes about it a number of times, but most specifically in his letter to the Philippians.  

In chapter 3, Paul begins to give a little bit of a biography on himself.  He was a DUDE in ancient Israel.  He calls himself a “Hebrew of Hebrews” in verse 5.  Essentially telling us, “if anybody has a reason to think they’ve got it all figured out, it’s me.” Then, he takes all that and turns it in verses 7 and 8...

       “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ...”

So what in the world?  This dude had it all and he gave it all away for some preacher? He was one of, if not the man, in Israel.  He had it made in the shade.  He had the world by the tail!  Yet, he walked away from it.  Considered it rubbish. Rubbish is a light word for what he called it.  The word he used in the Greek (skubala/skubalon/skybalon), meant refuse, waste, dung, or poop! Whatever!  The point is, everything aside from Christ is nothing.  

So what do I mean telling you that your job is nothing, your family is nothing, your pursuits are nothing? I mean that, it’s nothing y’all!  

Here’s the thing, nothing you have is worth anything without the Lord.  He MUST be your motivating factor!  There’s no substitute for Hum.  Your family doesn’t take that spot, your own life doesn’t, it’s Him and only Him! 

This relates to a conversation I had with my friend, Jacob, yesterday.  He mentioned the whole idea of our “priority list” being off.  We’ve all heard this before.  Jesus first, Family second...ya da ya da ya da. Right?  Jacob put it this way, “Jesus isn’t something we focus on and then move on from...Jesus is the focus IN it all.”  That’s a different thought to us, well those of us who are fully Americanized Christians.  The Jesus we serve, the real one, not the one we have made up in our brains and books and such, the real Jesus doesn’t want to be number one on our list, he wants to be THE list. 

Here’s how I see it.  Apart from Jesus, I don’t have the blessings in life that I have.  If you read back to some old posts, you’ll see that God’s timing brought Jenn and I together.  God’s timing brought us into the foster care system, which then brought us Mary-Faith.  Side-note: God’s timing has also brought us an amazing baby boy, we call him Bubba, you can too!  God’s timing brought me my job.  I could go on and on.  Why did all this happen to me? So that I could use it to spread the Gospel.  Each and every part of my life is a picture of God’s plan for me.  God’s plan for me and His plan for you is to further His kingdom.  That’s why we are here.  That’s why I am where I am.  To love on people.  To show them His love, love that doesn’t quit.  The circumstances of our lives serve the purpose of pointing us to Him.  In turn, we then, point others to Him. 

So what is our motivation?  The Glory of God. The furthering of the Kingdom.  Love.  That’s our motivation y’all.  Anything outside of that, is just a bunch of junk.