The book of 2 Chronicles 25:2 tells us about a king called Amaziah who did right in God sight but not with a perfect heart.He was a man who did all the right things he was expected to do in relation to worshipping God but he did all he did with the wrong motives. (I wrote a blog post earlier about motives which you can see here (http://herstheword.blogspot.com/2013/10/we-all-have-agenda-whats-yours.html). Technically that means that everything he did not meet with God's standard. If Paul were the one referring to him, he would have said that his works were put on a scale, burnt and all that was left was ashes.
Jesus took the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses and distilled them into two new and distinct commandments which said love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and love other people as yourself. We understand that the central story of the Bible is all about God's love for and search for mankind and about how we are to receive his love and share it with others but at times we seem to forget that. I was struck by this this thought recently while going through some of the chapters of the book of Corinthians. As an aside, most times as Christians, we take a verse of Scripture in isolation that corresponds with our feelings and we ignore the the rest of the verses. At times, we need to read more than one verse or the whole chapter to be able to get the meaning of the verse.
Church historians and theologians tell us that the books of the Bible were only recently divided into chapters for easy understanding. I was reading 1 Corinthians 14 and I found out that if I wanted to fully understand it, I needed to read Chapter 13. Then I found out that Chapter 12 was also needed as well. In a nutshell, what Paul was saying in those chapters of the Bible is that not only is love the most important thing, your motive for doing anything must be love. Therefore it's not enough to believe that something is a calling or that it's your purpose in life. You must be motivated by a love for God and a love for people.
Therefore it's not enough to want to be a pastor because you believe you have a pastoral calling. You must be motivated by love. It's not enough to join the volunteer workforce in your church because there are not enough workers or because you want to give something back to your spiritual feeding place. You must be motivated by love. It's not enough to desire to speak in tongues or prophesy, your desire must be backed by and propelled by love. If your desire is not as a result of love then the motive is fuelled by a selfish desire for self aggrandisement or duty. God is not looking for people bound by duty. He is looking for those moved by love.
The Bible tells us that our works will be tried by fire. I believe that when our works will be tried, it is not the quality of the work we do that will be judged but the heart with which we do it. When our works are tried by fire, I honestly believe that what will determine whether our works survive will be determined whether or not our hearts were moved by love or a sense of religion or duty. The Bible tells us that love is the evidence of being perfect, of being mature. We should grow up and leave duty and thoughts of the praise of men behind and focus on love. I believe therein lies our salvation. Doing anything else, like Amaziah, we might find out too late that we didn't walk before God with a perfect heart. Today when the world celebrates a love that is different from that which God says, we need to let them know that there's something more.
JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.
Jesus took the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses and distilled them into two new and distinct commandments which said love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and love other people as yourself. We understand that the central story of the Bible is all about God's love for and search for mankind and about how we are to receive his love and share it with others but at times we seem to forget that. I was struck by this this thought recently while going through some of the chapters of the book of Corinthians. As an aside, most times as Christians, we take a verse of Scripture in isolation that corresponds with our feelings and we ignore the the rest of the verses. At times, we need to read more than one verse or the whole chapter to be able to get the meaning of the verse.
Church historians and theologians tell us that the books of the Bible were only recently divided into chapters for easy understanding. I was reading 1 Corinthians 14 and I found out that if I wanted to fully understand it, I needed to read Chapter 13. Then I found out that Chapter 12 was also needed as well. In a nutshell, what Paul was saying in those chapters of the Bible is that not only is love the most important thing, your motive for doing anything must be love. Therefore it's not enough to believe that something is a calling or that it's your purpose in life. You must be motivated by a love for God and a love for people.
Therefore it's not enough to want to be a pastor because you believe you have a pastoral calling. You must be motivated by love. It's not enough to join the volunteer workforce in your church because there are not enough workers or because you want to give something back to your spiritual feeding place. You must be motivated by love. It's not enough to desire to speak in tongues or prophesy, your desire must be backed by and propelled by love. If your desire is not as a result of love then the motive is fuelled by a selfish desire for self aggrandisement or duty. God is not looking for people bound by duty. He is looking for those moved by love.
The Bible tells us that our works will be tried by fire. I believe that when our works will be tried, it is not the quality of the work we do that will be judged but the heart with which we do it. When our works are tried by fire, I honestly believe that what will determine whether our works survive will be determined whether or not our hearts were moved by love or a sense of religion or duty. The Bible tells us that love is the evidence of being perfect, of being mature. We should grow up and leave duty and thoughts of the praise of men behind and focus on love. I believe therein lies our salvation. Doing anything else, like Amaziah, we might find out too late that we didn't walk before God with a perfect heart. Today when the world celebrates a love that is different from that which God says, we need to let them know that there's something more.
JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.
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