What's My Motivation?

...says any actor when he struggles to know how to present his character, through both the verbal and non-verbal cues. Herein, even the second-rate touring company no-name can be bounding ahead of the highly-touted religious leader, for he's closer to Solomon's thinking when that master of wisdom spoke of the ways that seem right to a man, but that the Lord nevertheless is a judge of the heart. Consider Mary and Zacharias. Both were told of miraculous conceptions looming on their horizons. Zacharias asks, "Whereby shall I know this?" Mary asks, "How shall this be?" The responses to the heavenly pronouncement look similar in content, but must have been quite different in tone, for Zacharias was told in no uncertain terms who was talking to him (I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God!) and was told he'd be struck dumb during the time the announcement was being fulfilled "because thou believest not," said God's messenger;whereas Mary was simply given the answer to her question regarding how this miracle could be accomplished, I presume because this information would serve to stabilize her faith.

Another example? Andy Stanley in the book, Visioneering, addresses the story of the spies sent into Canaan, both those sent by Moses and those sent by Joshua. Andy says, "The primary difference between the first group and the second group of spies was not what they saw. It was how they interpreted what they saw...The spies Moses sent interpreted the data from the standpoint of Israel's military potential and strength...Joshua's spies on the other hand, interpreted the data differently...They were looking for confirmation, evidence that this was the right time to advance the vision." Whose spies are we when we are sent to investigate a situation? Do we calculate with the revealed vision in mind or only with attention to the strength of our enemy? If I speak with the tongues of men and angels...what is my motivation?

My husband, in reading my last blog entry, said, "You should be ready to answer why you posted that if anyone should read it and ask."

He's right. Reading over old entries, the theme becomes apparent that I do occasionally get on a rant about organized religion in general when it blindly goes the way of the Galatian church. I notice this same idea I wrote about showing up in a recent entry in my Oswald Chambers devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. On August 4, he says, "The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship." How many of us connect the "atmosphere" in a house of God to that relationship, ranking it above any bearing that church's publicized works might have on the place's atmosphere? We look backward at what is already finished through the lens that shows relationship with God as the motivation for good works, but how do we look forward? In terms of vision-casting, faith without works may be dead, but works without the launchpad of faith are just distracting.

So why do manias about so-called purity creep like weeds into places where people's hearts are genuinely sprouting with the love of God and are really receiving a call up into His purposes? Why do people lose touch with verses like..."to the pure, all things are pure," and so they try to construct a complicated meaning behind that simple verse about Divine Sovereignty. Are they not unwittingly being like those spies sent by Moses when they complicate such a verse? And then there's this one: "all things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any." Why do people throw all their attention and meditation on the parts of this passage that seem to justify restricted activity but fail to give wonder and reflection to the amazing point of freedom made in the first half of each compound statement? In fact, in terms of grammar, we treat these sentences as if Paul constructed them differently. We see them not as two independent clauses of equal weight, but rather as one subordinate clause we should rush through on our way to the significance of what follows it. But do these two ideas really sit unequally on the balance like that?

Why do we forget that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things...period. We read that verse with an afterward in our minds: ...while God shows us how to fix the problem that's causing us to have to "love" under such a strain in the first place, as we assume we are on our way to an easier love directed toward a perfected recipient.

Who can really "believe all things" (both good and bad means all) about someone and maintain love? Only Christ. But, He can impart that love to us. Why do we seem to be more receptive to that love-transmission from Him when we're obscure in the public eye? I think Paul addresses that at the end of Galatians.
Gal. 6 starts:
1 Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, 5 for each one should carry his own load.

I notice so often we forget how to "restore" someone, and only want to invest time/energy/reputation to the degree that we "recommend" things; and what we call making him "carry his own load" is really just a mask for asking him to carry our condemnation. Why? I spoke of making the work of prophets more difficult in my last entry. Paul in his wisdom cut directly to the answer to why. If we all walked in verses 3-5, the prophets could give freely the evidence of signs and wonders straight from Your hand, O God. But we step in and become amateur providences. Again, why? I think that with leadership may come the tendency to lose touch with divine providence. Just what do we believe God imparted to us? Just how do we define authority over both an other's mistakes and successes?
7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Who really believes it? Who doesn't step in and try to "help" God fulfill this law of sowing and reaping? Not that I condemn those leaders! I'm one of them. I, too, have a garden and understand intimately the "image" that garden puts out in the neighborhood. Who wants to be a gardener brazenly allowing all who pass by to see a weed-infested bed? And what gardener could look like anything but a fool if he says to those passers: "Ah, but you should see the harvest I pull out of there!" So in the end, we're sucked into what Paul says to the Galatians next:
12 Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised (made clear of weeds.) The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ (avoidance of public ridicule caused by our following the recommendations of the actual Land-owner and our Boss.) 13 Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh (having the motivation of a desire to boast in the loveliness of the garden we've been hired to manage, and justifying that boast because we still call it The Boss's garden. But haven't we actually taken it for our own if we do this? Paul seems to think so.)

And we are all prone to this! We're just unique from each other in the things we call weeds. That's what makes it so amazing to consider the parable our Lord Jesus used to speak of the nature of His Father's "style" of leadership:

The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares
24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' 28 He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?' 29 But he said, 'No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn."'"