Motivation

 There is never a purposeful action without intentionality. Something always motivates and animates anything requiring exertion and effort. People just don’t put themselves out, tire themselves, and spend time and resources without a reason behind it.

There is always a why behind the what.

Because it wanted the other’s banana, chimpanzee A hit chimpanzee B with a rock and took the banana from him. The chimp would have left his contemporary alone if he hadn't wanted the banana.

The key is not going about the work of God joyless, emotionless, like some robot or automaton who just drudges through life, but going about it with the right motivation. When someone’s heart is not in something, you can tell.

People in ministry are either motivated by a calling on their lives, a vision God birthed in them, or by something other. That other is a big tent that covers countless possibilities and motivations. To be sure, money, fame, or control are all in lead positions, but there are other things just as corrosive that motivate men.

When motivated by a sincere love for God, the task itself is more important to you than the outcome or the results. God told you to do a thing, and you did it to the best of your ability, and the rest is up to Him. You don’t have to struggle, and you don’t have to fret. You don’t have to pull up pie charts and graphs, have projections, or estimate revenue. You rest easy, having done what He commanded you to do, knowing that He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it.

When motivated by self, ego, pride, or money, it’s all about the results. It becomes a results-oriented endeavor, where it’s not so much about obedience toward God and obeying a command but about building, growing, expanding, and increasing. It becomes about how many, how much, and how often rather than about faithful obedience to the plan and purpose of God for you and your life.

The telltale sign is whether you are the central focus of the entire enterprise or God is. If it’s all about a man, then it’s not about God. If it’s all about God, then it’s not about a man. Even the best of men are only men in the end.

After a seven-year hiatus, I was able to go back to my home country recently. Many things have changed, but some have remained the same, and as I always used to on prior visits, I went to see my grandfather’s grave in the village he was born in. It is an unremarkable grave with an unremarkable gravestone, my grandmother’s final resting place next to his, and not far from where he lies, his brothers who have also gone from this world.

Remarkable as his life was, it ended as all lives must, a mortal among mortals, sharing the same soil as those whom no one save their relatives had ever heard of. It’s a sobering perspective, to be sure. Still, one that keeps me grounded in the reality that it’s not about me, just as it wasn’t about him, and in the end, our faithfulness is measured by how faithful we were in that which He commanded us to do, not what we managed to accomplish on our own.

If the sail is taut, and the wind is blowing in the right direction, you don’t break out the paddles trying to row. You sit back and let the wind and the sails do the work. At least, I think that’s how it works, I’ve never been sailing, but I’ve seen clips of a sailing regatta or two. Your job isn’t to make the boat move; it’s to keep it headed in the right direction.

As long as the Word of God is your compass, you know you’re headed in the right direction. As long as you lean on it and trust it to guide you and show you the way, you know you’re homeward bound. In the end, that’s all that matters. Are you moving forward? Are you making progress and headed toward the place Jesus went to prepare for you? Is the prospect of seeing Him face to face and being welcomed into His kingdom exciting and exhilarating, or is it a reason for dread and apprehension?

Because you know where your final destination is and what awaits you, the storms that may come from time to time, the strong wind and the battering waves don’t bother you as much as they would others who don’t have a destination in mind. Even when we sorrow, we do not sorrow as others who have no hope. We do not grieve as the world grieves. It’s not that we are removed from the human emotions of heartache and pain and loss; it’s that we, the children of God, deal with them differently than the rest of the world does.

It’s one thing to mourn as though all was lost forever, never to be restored or reunited. Another to mourn with hope in your chest in the full knowledge that one day, you will hear “well done” and be welcomed into His presence, along with those faithful servants who went before you, likewise having received their reward.

What does any of this have to do with the importance of what motivates an individual to do the work of God? Everything. If you are motivated by anything other than the sincere desire to serve God, you may be seen as having succeeded at life, at having attained positions and possessions, but fleeting as they all are, one day, they will be no more. If your motivation is the love of God and the furthering of His kingdom, then what you will attain will not be temporal but rather eternal. You will receive what no man can take from you, from the hand of God Himself, who knows how to reward the faithful and obedient.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.