Sunday morning when I walked into the High School trailer, I was slapped in the face with a horrible stench. I think a person died under the trailer... ok maybe its a cat or something. Whatever it is, it stinks. We had services all together in the Middle School trailer. Wednesday night we began a new series entitled, "Motive-8". No it's not 8 weeks long, it's 6, and will take us up to youth camp.
Wednesday night we introduced the series by talking about doing good things for the wrong reasons. James talked about this in his book, chapter two. The context is favoritism, but the principle applies. Is it wrong to offer someone a nice seat who comes to church? No, we should. But not if we're doing it for what we can get from them. James says why do you offer the rich man a good spot but not the poor man? He tells them that there are bad MOTIVES in their heart.
When we do good things with wrong motives... its wrong. Over the following weeks, we will be looking at motives that drive our decisions; motives such as fear & what people think of us. Motives are important and can be tricky. Its so easy to rationalize a wrong motive. Instead of rationalizing them we need to recognize them. Psalm 16:2 says that God weighs the motive of the heart. We can fool ourself and even others, but not God. There will be no rewards in heaven for good things, when they are done with selfish motives.
It's good to ask ourselves this question, especially of the good things we do...
"Why do I do what I do?"
(Wednesday night we had no recording capabilities, so there is no audio of the message.)
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