Gospel motivation is EVERYTHING – yet I feel it’s so easy to rush through and miss it, or let it take the back seat and presume it is present.. or even pragmatize it away by reducing my responsibilities to mere actions alone. But to live and strive because I have been given a new spiritual life – and for no other “just b/c I ought to” reason – this is the only path to spiritual growth.. any other striving apart from faith-based and love-motivated decisions are external only and won’t produce any substantial lasting transformation.
I’ve realized that when I’m confronted with a task I don’t want to do but know I should (for example, when spending time praying for others seems more of a chore than a delight), my unbelief in is revealed. I know the reasoning behind it (in this instance, that God works when we pray), but disbelieve it, so I’m left with a moral argument of why to do it — “you must do this to be a good Christian”, or “God is upset with you if you don’t” — and I’ve lost the motive of love. I’ve lost the message of grace – that God is already pleased with me b/c of Christ, and favor is mine! Every morally motivated action reveals an area of unbelief in a Gospel motivated application to that area.
I think about how often I stop there and don’t move on – I either just shut the light and go to sleep, feeling guilty for not spending time in prayer, or I feebly mumble through a list of names out of compulsion .. or more like, self-imposed coercion. WHY? why do this to myself? It’s as if this agony is somehow easier than either 1) overcoming my laziness to remind myself of why I truly pray, or 2) facing my momentary doubts that God really is who He says He is.
But, knowing that I have accepted this Gospel as truth, and God as He says he is in Scripture, it’s gotta be worthwhile to bring this truth to bear in “critical moments” – to not waste them, and merely shut off the light again.
