Choosing God's authority (2): our motivation

When our motivation is GOD and just not OUR self improvement the whole plot changes. Its no longer a drive to become a better version of yourself, which will eventually drain everything from you. You don't go to God to make yourself better for this world, to be more successful or more likeable. You go to God for who God is. In this you find a drive to become God’s version of yourself because you believe God is good and knows all things. It happened several times that even going to God was about making MYSELF better, more likeable, more agreeable. Go to God again and again and again until going to him is for him, not for you. 

This automatically means you are striving for the best version of yourself that can ever exist, and you know as soon as you reach this truth that at this moment God has worked a perfect work in you; all your quirks, all your weaknesses and failures, he knows them and he knows you. Every dark corner you hide from the world, he knows it. And he loves all of it. He will never give up on you. His love reaches those parts you think no one can reach and it shines light there till all the darkness flees, all the guilt and lies and pain just cower and eventually disappear before the might that is our God.

BUT the unchangeable fact is that it is not about us. He made us in his image, to look like him. He made us to obey him and experience the fullness of his love. He made us to look like him. It's not about us, it's about him. Your perspective has to change from a ME-world to a God-world. Your drive changes from self-love, which runs out and is easily wearied, to a love of God, that is given FROM God and has an eternal source that never ever shuts you out.

This can only work if you can see that this whole story, from creation to revelations is NOT about YOU. It's about one main character- GOD, and his love. This whole thing we're involved in, it's HIS love story. We’re waves tossed in the ocean, flowers quickly fading. We come and go and our lives matter immensely to him but this world is not about us. It’s about him. HE created us so he could be LOVE to us. We are side characters and he is the lead. So we choose. We choose to bow to his authority, his instruction. We choose to persevere through all our weaknesses and our failures, knowing he is giving us the strength. 

Remember the end scene of The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, where Aragorn leads the tiniest army you ever saw to the black gates of Mordor and with all their strength and courage they rush forward, even the tiny little hobbits with their tiny little swords against the giant terrors that were in Mordor, the innumerable army of the enemy who seems to overwhelm us again and again. 

It feels as though we fight with toothpicks or a feather against metal and leather, but we know our God has already won the battle, its already over.

 I was trying so hard to be “better,” to become this person that I wanted to be or I thought I should be. It was draining because it was impossible to maintain. This didn’t come from purely lacking the willpower to resist temptation, but rather an accumulation of a constantly moving target of what is good for me, what I want, what society says I should be and who the circumstances of life are making me. It was so HARD to do anything right for any decent amount of time. But then you just look up, you stop looking around you and you just look up and you know who died for you, who conquered death for you. Jesus. That name itself holds power. That cross held the power to break death, what feels like the most powerful force in this world. If it can break death it can definitely break anything that is tying you down, that is shackling you.

As Christian says to Ignorant in The Pilgrims Progress,

"You are ignorant of the true effects of saving faith in the righteousness of Christ. It will bow and win over the heart to God in Christ; to love his name, his word, ways and people and not as your ignorantly imagined."

For me, the true effect of saving faith was knowing that there is NOTHING in this world more worth pursuing than the cause of Christ.

Know that you are here to do God's work, fight in his army and be a door for HIS love to walk through. It's not about you. At all. The sooner you know that the better. The sooner you let go of everything to do with YOU, the sooner you will gain everything to do with you. Anything you let go of is another invitation to let God in, until he is ALL you are. It becomes such that existence itself becomes about God, every breath, every task, every suffering becomes about GOD and his glory. Not you.

Think of yourself less, and of God more. This way you'll see less of your failures and more of his perfection, less of your weaknesses and more of his strength, less of your brokenness and more of his love. In this world, you still have failures, weaknesses and brokenness, but your focus shifts. And when you start to see God, you will understand what all this is for. That gives you the strength to carry on. That gives you the courage. That gives you the perserverance and the motivation. That gives you the pure intent, the integrity and the compassion that you were never able to have. That gives you your soul, as you surely lose your whole world.

- evieroo