Isaiah 64:6-8 (NLT)
We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind. Yet no one calls on your name or pleads with you for mercy. Therefore, you have turned away from us and turned us over to our sins. And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand.
The continuing saga of my selfish motives-
“My first spontaneous thought is to call Major, confess my unpardonable discretion, and avoid any further involvement with the street ministry. If I wasn't to be transparently sincere, I want to be as far away as possible, so as to no longer contaminate it with my greed and pride. But just as Jesus touched my eyes and allowed the scales to drop from them like rain, His words, spoken by a man after my own heart, caress me with forgiveness and hope. “There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”
Wave after wave of the Savior’s love pummels the shores of my heart. Like the devastating combination of wind, rain, and waves interwoven in a hurricane, so is His love for me. It left me strong, clean, acceptable. My innocuous thoughts retreat beneath the onslaught of grace and a peace settles in, not the momentary lapse of violence like the eye of the storm, but a peace experienced when the storm has dispensed its load and moved on. The stillness, the clarity, the survival, the gratitude. Upon further prodding by the Holy Spirit, I forgive myself for condemning the same and I’m counseled not to relinquish the ministry. Rather, to take upon myself the attitude of Christ that the letter to the Philippians instructs: “Though He was God …did not think equality with God as something to cling to…giving up divine privileges…taking the humble position of a servant…humbled Himself to obedience and death.”
Instantly, my heart lifts and I passionately, fervently, desperately desire a heart like that. Despite my past, my shortcomings, my character flaws, I want to love the Lord with all my heart, mind, and soul. I want to love others with the same urgency with which I love myself. I want to reach out to the lost and hurting not out of a necessity of personal validation but because they’re simply lost and hurting. And because I have a testimony of how I was once like that, lost and hurting, but now have a story of hope and healing, not through any hollow thing I have done, but because of Jesus Christ.
This revelation, of the obstructive dam that prevented the undeterred flow of living water in my life, is life changing to say the least. Unbeknownst to me, it’s the cause of my unfulfilling spiritual walk at the time. Admittedly, I’m going through the motions, faking it until I make it, saying all the religiously correct answers. But this realization, should I have to create a list of top “Jesus Experiences” is easily a “Top 5.” It’s as if after being born again and crawling and stumbling spiritually, I’m now able to get a firm footing and really begin to walk. Not only this, my perceptions are also transforming and growing into spiritual maturity. I see God for who He is, the Eternal Entity of love. One who shows the way by leading, helping not hurting, lighting our path through the darkness. And I also see how ministry, particularly the street ministry of Arms of Mercy, isn’t only revealing my depravity but is enlightening my soul to the eternal significance of genuine, impassioned, agape love. From now on, I know I won’t see the people on the streets as someone to pity or use for my own self aggrandizement or to be the poster child for the least of these. I will truly see them through the eyes of Jesus Christ.”
As you can read, my motives were distorted until I realized that ministry, that church in general, that EVERYTHING is NOT about ME! It's all about Jesus. Question, and do away with, any motive not about Him. Ask God to transform your motives to agape love.
Shout His love to the top of your lungs! Then live it out!
