What Is Your Motivation?
I am not one who is naturally motivated to exercise. I need to find my motivation to run. This motivation appears comes from an external source rather than from an internal motivation. For instance, if I am playing a sport that involves a team, a ball, or competition, then I am motivated to run. I am motivated by an internal motivation that refuses to let someone else win or let my teammates down. If I am being chased, I will cough up a lung before I am overtaken!
We all have different internal motivations, but some of us need something external to call it out. I understand that some people just cannot seem to find any motivation at all. What are your motivations that get you up in the morning, inspire you to do great things, or just get you to exercise?
We all know that the church is called to do good things. We know that the church is there to challenge, exhort, encourage, and convict one another. Conviction is something that can cause us to wallow in condemnation or motivate us to live according to principles of morality. Without conviction, there is no sense of ethic. Without conviction, there is no decision for good or bad. We should be a people of conviction – a people motivated to act upon our principles. The questions are then, “What are our convictions? Where do our convictions come from?”
As I stated earlier, it is the church’s job to challenge, exhort, encourage, and convict. We should regularly remind one another of our convictions and where they come from. The church should call out to our motivation and inspire us to run the race with perseverance and endurance – to not grow weary in doing good.
I believe that the church’s primary motivation is love. We should love the LORD our God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and we should love our neighbors as ourselves. Faith and hope are great motivators, but if they are not rooted in love for God and others, then they can be self-serving, self-righteous, or an exercise in pompous piety. Love is this: to sacrifice one’s own desires, wants, rights, privilege, and one’s very life for the sake of another. We cannot claim to love God and not give Him anything. We cannot claim to love our neighbor while expecting them to accommodate our wants and needs. Love is looking to the needs of others as more significant than our own – because that is how He loved us.
Love for our neighbor drives so many of the major decisions of our church. It is why we spent so much money restoring the trim and painting the outside of our building, and why we leveled the floor of our sanctuary. It is why we invest in creating access to the gospel among distant peoples. It is why we hired a youth minister and feed the students on our patio. Love is the core motivation for our existence as a church.
Even our love for our neighbors finds its motivation in our love for God. We could certainly love those around us from a self-aggrandizing motivation. However, the church is called to love one another, because He first loved us and gave Himself for us. Love is worship – it is just a question of what, or whom we are worshiping!
This brings me to our posture as a church community in this volatile season.
You may or may not be aware of the latest U.S. Supreme Court injunction. You are probably aware that our county is now labeled as “Red.” You may even know all the regulations that pertain to the “houses of worship” in Colorado Springs. However, what is your motivation for how you respond to these things? Is it your rights? Is it your desire to follow the law of the land?
I choose to believe that your motivation is love.
I want to remind us of Jesus’ words to the first disciples, “There is no greater love than to give up one’s life for his brother.” Love is simply defined as sacrifice. What are we willing to give up for our brothers and sisters? What is it that they need from us? Are we clinging to our rules or our rights at the expense of our neighbors? How can HarvestDowntown demonstrate to our neighbors that we care, that we love, and that our core motivation is love? How can we love one another more effectively?
We believe that it speaks volumes to our neighbors about how much we value our community of believers when we are willing to continue meeting in the midst of a pandemic. We believe that it speaks volumes to our neighbors when we are checking kids into HarvestKids by taking their temperatures. We believe that it speaks volumes when we walk across the street to talk to them about our motivation of love. And, we hope it speaks volumes to our neighbors when we honor the laws of the land to the best of our ability while still honoring our mandate to love one another.
If you are wondering how we are motivated by love in this season, we continue to operate at 25% capacity in our sanctuary, as we have for months. HarvestKids continues to function under the same guidelines as our schools. We continue to regularly replace the air in our sanctuary with outside air during our worship services. We continue to remind people to wear masks when they enter, move around the facility, or need to be within 1.5 meters of one another. We continue to space our seating to allow for physical distancing. I am sure that we could each find flaws in our choices as a church, but our motivation remains the same: Love for God and love for others – in that order.
