A dear friend of ours is desperately ill. Before he was hospitalized, he had sort of run away, hidden from everyone; left our church, although he didn't leave God. Jeff asked him why he was leaving. He said, "I do all of the right things for all of the wrong reasons".
It makes me wonder ... what is MY motive?
I don't like searching my heart. In fact, I dread it. I always end up finding a bunch of garbage that I thought I had shoved down deep enough so it would never be seen. Jealousy, envy, dissatisfaction, discontentment ... do I do things to feed my own ego, to make me feel better about myself, to make YOU think better of me? Is my motive to make myself feel better or to ease the struggle for someone else? Is my motive to lighten my burden or to help carry someone else's? Is my motive to benefit myself or to benefit others?
Whenever the Lord prompts my heart to take a good look at my motives, I end up in this crazy circle of questions with few good answers. If my motive IS selfish, does that mean I drop the "good" activity and leave others shorthanded to fend for themselves? Well, no, that would be just as selfish as doing the activity for my own satisfaction.
Wouldn't it?
See what I mean? *Sigh*
One of my favorite books is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. In it, there's a chapter where Screwtape encourages his nephew, an apprentice demon named Wormwood, to make his patient (the Christian) proud of the fact that he has become humble. This chapter always makes me laugh out loud because well ... is it nervous laughter because I fall into this trap time and time again myself?
"I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable once the man is aware he has them, but this is especially true with humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble", and almost immediately pride -- pride at his own humility -- will appear. If he awakens to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt -- and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don't try this for too long, for fear you awaken his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed."
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Psalm 139:23
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