This week I asked my independent study students to rate how their work ethic was not only towards school, but also in employment, sports, or other personal pursuits. Have you thought about that? What is your motivation, your drive, your purpose in work, in recreation, in decisions, in relationships, in life? What challenges you? What inspires you to face the day? Business and life strategist, Tony Robbins, categorizes motivators as push or pull and pleasure or pain. Push motivators are obligations and responsibilities: you need money to pay rent or to buy food. Pull motivators are attractions or desires: you want to make a friend or to take a vacation. Pleasure and pain play a role because people go to great lengths to either avoid pain or to gain pleasure which they associate with fulfilling them.
A Transcendent Drive
As you contemplate what drives you, I challenge you to consider a greater purpose than self-fulfillment. If your motivation centers solely around you, then ironically the quality of your life will eventually suffer because you will become disillusioned and depressed. That is one reason why many people today are unwell socially, emotionally, and mentally. When faced with the disappointments, trials, and agony of life their value system and drive fall short of delivering on what their soul truly longs for and needs. They don’t understand how this can be since they have invested so intensely in what they assume would satisfy them. However, there is a disconnect between their view of reality and God’s actual reality. God loves you and created you for something beyond yourself. Therefore, your drive must include factors beyond yourself. Instead of focusing on serving or loving yourself, find your purpose in loving God and let his love, heal your brokenness, and overflow from you to love and serve others. Only through that process will you be fulfilled and become all of who you are meant to be in Jesus.
A Relational Drive
Some people will tune out now that I mentioned God or Jesus, but I hope you continue with me just a little longer. The Bible teaches you were made for relationship, first with God then with others (Genesis 1:26-27; Romans 5:8; Matthew 11:28-29; John 17:20-23). While ministering on earth before dying a sacrificial death and rising again to save all who believe in him, Jesus, who is God the Son, prayed to God the Father that people would understand this. He said, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Some people’s view of knowing God is the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20). This is understandable, because God gave the commands to Moses to teach the nation of Israel, who were in turn to teach all other nations, what it means to have God as their king. Unfortunately, over time Israel made legalistically obeying the letter of the law their motivation, causing them to miss joyful fellowship with God in the process. Don’t make that same mistake. Here are a few examples of what I mean. When God commanded, you must not make for yourself any idol or bow down or worship them, what he is also saying is instead make me first in your life above all. Find your greatest pleasure in me. When he commanded, you shall not murder, what he is also saying is instead you should be a giver of life as I am. When he commanded, you shall not give false witness against your neighbor, what he is also saying is instead you should proclaim what is true, right, good, and beautiful for those find their source in me. Don’t be motivated to perform for God or to gain blessing from God. Be motivated to just love him for who he is and because he dearly loves you.
A Drive Like Jesus Has
Jesus is God the Son who stepped down from heaven, took on flesh, and did this on earth. He lived out what your motivation in life should be. His drive was to bring glory to God by joyfully loving God the Father through trust and obedience and sacrificially loving others through laying down his life and rising again in victory over sin and death. Jesus taught that the greatest things you can do are to love God and to love others as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40). He commanded his followers to treat others the way they would want to be treated and to love one another with the same love he showed them (Luke 6:31; John 13:34). So instead of seeking to fulfill yourself, open yourself to letting God fill you with himself. You can start now by confessing any wrongdoing and then trusting and obeying Jesus. Nothing else is so worthwhile, tender, and beautiful as experiencing God’s love for you and passing it on to others as the Spirit of God enables. It won’t be easy, because for now you are still living in a fallen world of broken people, the majority of whom are driven to serve themselves before others (John 16:33). But you are not alone. God is with you and for you. Also he will provide other believers to support you. Join with them in reaching lost and broken people with God’s salvation in Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20).
A Passionate Drive
As a Father this week I was encouraged to see how my son and one of my daughters are growing in their passion for God and others. My son just returned from a mission trip where he and his youth group served to meet various needs of homeless people living in the heart of Los Angeles. My daughter is having to make some weighty decisions on continuing with difficult training and expensive schooling as she is finishing up her undergraduate degree. She mailed a touching note to my wife and I. In it she wrote, “Some parents want the American dream for their kids—health, prosperity, safety. But I know you both want Jesus’ dream for me—a life spent becoming like Him and giving up everything to show His love and bearing Him glory. This dream that you have for me is sweeter than wealth. Sweeter, even, than comfort and safety. It shows how much you love Jesus and how much you love me. I will follow Him to the ends of the earth and to the end of my life.”
Conclusion
Everyone is driven by something. What drives you? Make your primary motivation to love God and love others as Jesus has. Find your joy, peace, rest, and completeness in Jesus and his love (Matthew 11:28-30). Don’t let other motivators get in the way of that. Instead let all your other motivators be driven by this divine purpose. In carrying it out, rely on God and persevere even when it’s hard to do so. God will see you through. The apostle Paul encouraged believers along this line, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:31-35, 38-39).
Note: You might enjoy listening to a classic hymn that highlights how precious and worthwhile knowing Jesus is. It is titled, “My Jesus, I Love Thee” performed by 2nd Chapter of Acts.