THINK TOGETHER.
Do you know what a motive is?
READ TOGETHER
Proverbs 16:2. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit.
When we do things it's easy to think we are doing it for the right reasons. We convince ourselves that our choice is the correct one, or that we HAD to do it. But Solomon is telling his children that they need to be critical of themselves. We all need to understand that our motives (reasons for doing things) are never truly pure.
For example: I am a pastor which means I help people all the time and do things at church. I would love to say that I always help with a pure motive – love for others. But the truth is that my motives are mixed. Yes, I love people (good motivation), but I also do good things to look good to others (bad motivation).
What about you? Do you ever do things from a mixed motivation? When mom tells you to clean up your room do you do it from love and respect, or from fear of punishment? Or both? Do you do your homework because you want to honor God, or because you don't want to miss recess? Or maybe a bit of both?
Solomon says that the Lord weighs the spirit. God knows the spirit, the deepest part of us. And that's good news. When you have Jesus in your heart it is easy to have a mixed motivation. Why? Because you have Christ in you and you have sin in you at the same time. That's why we can trick ourselves into thinking that just because we are doing something good that our heart is right. But God knows that we can do the right thing with a wrong attitude.
This means that we need to let God show us our sinful hearts, our wrong motivations, and our bad attitudes. Why? So we can know that even when we are doing the right thing that we may still need to confess our bad or mixed motivations to Jesus and let him purify our hearts. Also, so that we can learn to trust in Jesus more and more, his love and grace for us, and then do things from a pure heart.
Because of Jesus we have both good and bad motivations inside of us.
With Jesus we can check our motivations with honesty and humility.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Practice answering the WHY question with each other, not just the WHAT question. What did you do (good or bad)? But also why did you do it?
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus, keep revealing my motivations to me so that I can learn to trust you. Amen.
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