January 3, 2017

Motive: January 3, 2017

TODAY’S WORD FOR TUESDAY JANUARY 3, 2017.
MOTIVE

DEFINITION:

Intention; a determining impulse; the goal or object of a person’s action; something that causes a person to act in a certain way.




SCRIPTURE:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me. Psalm 139:23-24.




KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

Recently it was brought to our attention, several times, a situation where a person was overpowering in trying to help someone in need and the results were not positive.

It is very important to note that we encourage you, because the scripture encourages us, to be helpful to people in need. Most believers ignore the needy but God wants us to reach out to help the needy.

With that in mind let us share with you several words of caution.

Have you ever thought that you could be too helpful to someone? Have you really thought about your true motive when you reach out to help a person in need? Our helpfulness can actually make life more difficult for the person we are trying to help, especially if our motive is wrong.  Your response probably is that that is impossible. Let us explain what we think.

If you are bothersome to someone that you are helping by being too available to the point of being intrusive you could be hurting instead of helping your relationship with that person. Possibly you are smothering, manipulative or controlling when you try to help that person. What we do to help others should never stem from a desire, or even look like we want, to make ourselves look good or feel good.

If the help we are giving is driven by our own insecurities, we may be just trying to make ourselves look good and give ourselves a “pat on the back.”. This is why we need to take a real good look at our motive as to why we are helping someone. In Proverbs 21:2 it reads, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.”

We encourage you to look carefully at your reasons for helping someone before you act. Does your desire to help come from a pure heart? Our motives should always be to bring glory to God and not to ourselves.

We should always pray first, for God’s direction. In prayer we can ask God to show us any way we are hurting or hindering others. The scripture we have written above would be a good prayer for you to pray. God will answer your prayer if your heart is right before Him.

If you have a concern that you may be over stepping your welcome with someone, we suggest you ask God to help you show love to that person that “suffers long and is kind -- and is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil,” as it is written in I Corinthians 13:4-5.

Keep asking the Lord to help you to show love with pure motives and for the good of others and not yourself.

LEARNING:

Our memory verse for this week is found in Psalm 9:17.

The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations that forget God.


PRAYER:

Help me, Lord, to act and think today with proper motives. It is my prayer that You will reveal the sins in my life, that would affect my motives, so that I can help others with pure motives and with the love in my heart that only you can give.


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