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What is your motivation for doing the things you do? Is it duty? Is it "musts" and "shoulds?" Or is it the living out of desires that God has placed in you? What are your motivations, dreams and desires? What are your gifts and callings? Do these things all work together?
This week Kap and Joel talk about their own motivations for doing the things they do in life, including this very podcast, and talk about you living from the dreams and desires that God has implanted in you.
i am convinced that God has no motivation in loving; He just is love; loving is simply an expression of His character and nature. painters and poets and writers all exude what they are; God simply exudes love because it is what He is
ReplyDeletesimilarly, i am convinced that we should have no motivation in loving; The Spirit gave birth to our spirit; we are reborn; we are like Him...and He lives inside of us. i believe that the love is there, and that it requires no motivation.
thoughts?
Hi Lance,
ReplyDeleteI get where you're coming from, and from a particular point of view, I agree that love has no motive. Love is love. We are partakers of the divine nature, and that nature is love.
But yet I fully recognize the 'human' aspect of our existence, in that while we are fully and completely one spirit with God, and He has perfected us forever (spiritually speaking), etc, etc, we still have the ability to not walk as who we truly are, and to walk with other motives.
Paul gives exhortations all over the place for Christians to live out who they are. For example, I think he is talking about motives in cases such as these:
Phil 2:3
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
2 Cor 9:7
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.
So my thought is that all of this stuff isn't "automatic," but rather it's stuff that we can choose to consciously walk in or not walk in.
Another reason for this series of podcasts about motivation is that many Christians walk with a "must" or "should" motivation. In other words, I'm "supposed" to do the things that I do, out of duty and obligation. That is, feeling that God 'requires' it of me, or that I will somehow score points with Him if I do it. We want to challenge that type of thinking.
let me address what you said by taking a look at 2 Cor 9:7.
ReplyDeleteit says we should 'give as we purpose in our heart'. i believe that our true heart truly, already purposes to give...because our heart is reborn. ...our heart has become love, and love gives.
surely, 'God loves a cheerful giver'. and, surely, God would love an Old Covenant cheerful giver...if one had but existed.
but because God saw no Old Covenant cheerful givers, God actually changed our heart, our core with the New Covenant; He made us like Him and placed His agape love inside of us. now, we already 'purpose giving in our heart, not grudgingly or of necessity'.
now, you're right:
it's not automatic. in our minds, we may not purpose giving, or we may do so grudgingly or of necessity...but our New Covenant *hearts* are totally different.
so, the question remains of how to make our minds agree with our hearts. i dunno, but i believe our minds catch up to our hearts as the vestiges of our unbelief-about-what-happened-in-our-hearts are given up.
so, when you say that you would like people to 'consciously walk in it', i fully agree. we may disagree on *how* to get people to that place. in my opinion, it come when they realize that they have no motivation, that they just want to love because they have been made love.
thoughts?