Feeding the hungry, giving warm clothing for the needy, providing a place to stay and a bed for the homeless. Those are good things to do but there is a way we can turn those good things into bad things.
In this episode of Now Is the Time I talk about why impure motivations in ministry are so dangerous.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:16 — 28.6MB) | Embed
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Prayer
- Pray for Christina and the kids as they start the school year, we now have 5 kids in our home-school.
- Pray for our outreach to disabled refugees from the war zone, we have now started a mid-week Bible study with them as well as Sunday services.
- Pray for our new online Bible course coming up in just a couple of weeks we have about 15 students from 7 different countries.
- Learn how you can support these ministries here.
In the News
Last week we made a trip to Moldova with the whole family for 4 days of team planning and ministry training. You can watch some of our trip here.
The Problem of Impure Motivations in Ministry
Impure motivations in ministry is not a new. It’s a basic human problem that seems to thrive in well established religious institutions and is often promoted by our church traditions.
Jesus confronted this problem head on in Matthew chapter 6
Mat 6:1-4(1) Take care not to do your merciful deeds before men in order to be seen by them. But if not, you have no reward from your Father in Heaven.(2) Therefore, when you do merciful deeds, do not trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be glorified by men. Truly I say to you, They have their reward.(3) But you doing merciful deeds, do not let your left know what your right hand does,(4) so that your merciful deeds may be in secret. And your Father seeing in secret Himself will repay you in the open.
Jesus is clear and he is to the point! Which reward do you want, a few vacuous words of praise that will make you feel good about yourself for the next half an hour, or do you want an eternal reward from your Heavenly Father?
The Destructive Results of Impure Motivation
Here are 6 negative results from impure motivations in ministry.
1. We steal what is rightly God’s, we are taking his glory (Isaiah 42:8)2. We trad an eternal joy with a temporary feeling of self-glory.3. We kill our own spiritual growth.4. We numb ourselves to God’s greatness.5. We often rob the person we are ministering to by focusing the attention on ourselves.6. We start making choices based on our selfish motivations instead of on what’s best for others and will bring God glory.
How to Get Your Motivations Right
Having right motivations really means getting your heart right, it means pursuing God, it means making God your greatest desire, it means allowing the Holy Spirit to do the painful work of weeding out your selfishness.
- Pure motivations start with repentance and the forgiveness and heart change that only Jesus can give.
- Pure motivations come from a pure heart.
- Pure motivations come from a heart that daily picks it’s self up and sets it’s self back in line with God’s Word, puts Jesus before them and says, “THAT’S WHO I’M GOING TO SERVE TODAY!”
- Pure motivations comes from a heart that is so enthralled with God’s majesty and so humbled by God’s holiness that it’s greatest desire is to please Him and serve Him and see others do the same.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:16 — 28.6MB) | Embed
