All for Jesus

      Recently God has been revealing to me and challenging my motivation in regards to reaching out to others, seeing people saved, and sharing Truth with people. For so long, my motivation has been because I love the people around me and do not want them to be hurt, broken, confused, etc. any longer. I want to see them living in the life and joy that is ours in Christ Jesus. I know it for myself and desperately want them to also know it.

      However, as my eyes have been opened through the Word, I’ve come to realize that this is not supposed to be our primary motivation. As shocking as this may be, love for people isn’t to be what drives us to reach out to them. It’s not supposed to be our motivation behind reaching out to people or helping them. Our motivation is always and forever to be the glory of God.

      An incredibly impactful sermon that we listened to during my Basic semester at Ellerslie is called Ten Shekels and a Shirt by Paris Reidhead. In a loud booming voice he declares, “Christianity says, ‘The end of all being is the glory of God.’ Humanism says, ‘The end of all being is the happiness of man.’ And one was born in hell, the deification of man. And the other was born in Heaven, the glorification of God!”

     An example of this would be when we tell others that Jesus Christ can and will forgive their sins. What is our motivation behind this most of the time? To see them saved so that they don’t have to go to hell? So that they can go to heaven? So that they don’t have to feel guilty anymore? However, the problem with this line of thinking is the subject of it. Notice who’s at the motivation and center of it? Them. Who should be at the motivation and center of it? Jesus.

I John 2: 12 blew me away as I’ve been studying through the passage. “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His Name’s sake” (italics mine).

     Don’t misunderstand – I still greatly believe that we should have an intense love for others that drives us to spill and spend ourselves in serving them. However, what our primary motivation and fuel behind doing so is that God would get the glory due His Name because He is worthy. When you don’t feel a love for someone or when they are wrongfully treating you, you are enabled by His grace to still serve them with complete abandon because your motivation is not that person, their happiness, or their well-being but that Jesus would receive glory out of your life, their life, and your interaction with them.

“Why should a person come to the cross? Why should a person embrace death with Christ? Why should a person be willing to go, in identification, down to the cross and into the tomb and up again? I'll tell you why! BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY WAY THAT GOD CAN GET GLORY OUT OF A HUMAN BEING!!!”

"Lord Jesus, I'm going to obey You, and love You, and serve You, and do what You want me to do, as long as I live even if I go to Hell at the end of the road, simply because YOU ARE WORTHY TO BE LOVED, AND OBEYED, AND SERVED, and I 'm not trying to make a deal with you!" Paris Reidhead