Our Motives Matter

I visited a church this morning and the Pastor asked a Question in her message about motives. It is one that I have often thought about. She was speaking in the context of doing supernatural signs or moving in the manifestation gifts of the Spirit. My similar thought has been: Why do we want to do these things?

Is it so people will look at us? Is it to draw attention to us? Do we want folks to see how spiritual we are? I can assure you the answer to these improper motives is clearly NO! There are only two reasons that I can find Scripturally for moving in these manifestations:

1. That people may believe on Jesus.

2. To minister to and meet the Needs of the People.

Apart from these two, anything and everything else will have some element of pride in them, and we all know what that leads to.

Jesus was clear in John 14 that we should believe the He was in the Father, and that the Father was in Him, or else, we should just believe because of the works that He did. If His word wasn't enough for someone to believe, then what He manifested would verify what He said so folks might believe.

Repeatedly we find Gospel accounts where Jesus was moved with compassion and healed their sick. It had nothing to do with Him, it had everything to do with the compassion that moved Him.

One of the prayers that I regularly pray before going out to minister is: “Lord, meet the needs of the people!” That is really the crux of what we do and why we do it! So that people might believe and that they might have their needs met. Anything else is suspect and needs to be questioned. Face it folks, Our Motives Matter!