Part 2
When we hear the New Testament with willing open hearts, the gospel will penetrate our very lives and break them open, energizing our eyes, our ears, our hands, our legs, every part of us. And when we allow the gospel to energize us, we become vessels in the Lord's hands, pouring out our prayers, finances, reputation, lifestyle, and ultimately, our very lives. Do we have to be somebody to hear the call of God and make a difference? In my own life, I've seen time and again how God uses nobodies.
Sometimes I feel insecure. At other times, I feel overwhelmed with all that I know needs to be done. Again and again, I struggle and fail.
Where do I go when this happens? To the cross. How many times? Many times a day, if needed. The cross is the place where I can go and say, Lord, I'm yours, along with all my weaknesses, but your grace alone is what I need to serve you.
Perhaps you feel you are useless to the Lord, that you're not good enough, or that you have already wasted your life. But you are still in His hand. Don't you know that every day with Jesus is a new beginning? The Lord never condemns you or says, sorry, you didn't make it.
His mercies, He tells us, are new every morning. Whether you have lost seven days or 70 years, the Lord says to you, return to me with all your heart. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.
The Lord does not ask you to be a success or a superstar. In fact, if you truly desire to be a revolutionary, here is the second principle. Give your weaknesses to God so He can use you.
All He requires is a weak, broken-hearted child who will surrender at the foot of the cross. Look at Gideon's life. The army of the Midianites had invaded Israel and were plundering everything in sight.
We are told that, it's right there in Judges chapter 6, verse 6, Midian impoverished the Israelites. Gideon was threshing his wheat in a wine press to hide it from the army when an angel suddenly appeared to him. Did the angel say, you scared rat, you good-for-nothing runaway? No, he told Gideon, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior.
Gideon probably thought, who's he talking to? It couldn't be me. Doesn't he see I'm hiding from the Midianites? He must know I'm scared to death. But even though that was the way Gideon saw himself, in God he was strong.
How? Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit. The other day I saw a painting that brought tears to my eyes. It was a nighttime scene with a little boy asleep in his bed.
He was clutching his teddy bear as he slept peacefully. And there beside the bed was his father, kneeling and praying for him. As I looked at that picture, I thought of the many times I have knelt beside my son's bed and prayed, Oh God, let him live for you.
God is calling all of us to live for him, to pour ourselves out for others. Become a revolutionary. And here's the third principle.
Live your life with the same heartfelt urgency the father in the picture felt for his son. Do you have a family member who does not know Jesus? Begin to pray for him or her. Commit yourself to fast.
Pray for your children, your co-workers, your community, for the world. Half the world has never heard the name of Jesus. Eighty thousand people are plunging daily into hell.
We must change the course of our generation. And we can do it. How? A few more dollars? Money will help, of course, but before you even think about giving more money, your heart must be broken for the lost.
Are you tired of fooling with the world, living just like everybody else? Do you want to hear the call and be a revolutionary for the Lord? Come before the presence of the Lord and tell him you are ready to stop playing games. No more pretend Christianity. You mean business.
Commit yourself to living for, not just knowing about, another kingdom, God's kingdom. Tell him you're no longer satisfied with knowing all the answers. Now you want to make some serious decisions for your life, starting today by his grace.
This is a new day for you to begin making changes in those areas of your life that you have not yet surrendered to the Lord. And I can assure you, his grace is sufficient. Stop being satisfied with your own little society.
Take time to learn to pray. Commit your life daily for the sake of his kingdom. Begin to invest your life in a lost and dying world.
If you want to be a world revolutionary, if you want to live for another kingdom, then your service for the Lord can never be just a few hours of work every day. It must be your life. Tens of thousands of workers must be sent to the harvest fields.
And senders are needed to pray for and support them. Broadcasts need to be aired to the unreached nations. Millions of Bibles need to be distributed.
What is missing? People willing to pray, to stand behind those who have gone to the mission field, even to go themselves. God is not looking for strong, rich, confident people. He is looking for those willing to live according to what they know, committed to a heavenly kingdom, who come to him with their inadequacies and weaknesses, ready to be filled with his power, and live with heartfelt urgency to change the world.
He is looking for you. That leads us to the ultimate secret that enables us to hear and respond to the call of God. Chapter 4 A Living Sacrifice The girl was barely 14 years old when her parents sent her and her older sister to a Christian youth camp for two weeks.
There she realized her need for Jesus and committed her life to him. A few days later, she knew the Lord was calling her to serve him in missions. When she went home, she devoured the word of God each day.
She spent much time in prayer. Jesus was real to her. She knew that her parents, who enjoyed a respectable status in the community and many of the good things in life, planned for her and her sister to enter finishing school to learn the cultural graces that would accompany their debut into society.
Later they would attend the university and receive the best education available, and eventually they would marry well-to-do men from good families and make their parents proud. Now, however, this girl's life had changed. Everything she did was based on one question.
Does this fall in line with my calling from the Lord? So when the time came for her to enroll in finishing school, she spoke to her parents. I belong to Jesus, she told them, and I've given my life to be a missionary someday. I can't go to this school.
She could tell her parents were confused. And as her relationship with Jesus grew deeper, her life became even more puzzling to them. Why are you acting so differently, they asked.
We can't understand you anymore. Look at your sister. She is acting normally.
Her older sister had a new boyfriend every week, while she had made a decision before the Lord never to date in order to find a husband. Since he knew every hair on her head, he would surely provide a husband for her when she was old enough. She felt no need to go out and shop around, but she hardly knew how to explain her new devotion.
Meanwhile, she continued to develop her walk with Jesus. She learned to love him more deeply as time went by. She spent hours in her room reading her Bible and praying, much of it for missions.
By the time she was 17 or 18, she had read more than a hundred books on various cultural groups and missions. One day she took a small coin from a foreign country and bored a hole into it. Then she put it onto a leather string and tied it around her neck.
Now, she said to herself, every time I look into the mirror or feel the coin around my neck, it will remind me that I am set apart by the Lord 24 hours a day. I am not my own. I must live to reach the lost.
The girl chose to go to nursing school, which she felt would give her an advantage on the mission field. As her graduation day neared, her parents and friends approached her. Now that you're finally through with your studies, they said, you should take at least a small vacation and earn a little money before you leave for the mission field, don't you think? I've waited so long to be able to serve the Lord, she responded.
How can I delay any longer? The very day she graduated, her bags were packed and she left to join a mission team. A few years later, while this young woman was serving on the mission field, she met a young skinny Indian named K.P. Yohanan. She knew this was the man God had chosen for her to marry.
Gisela's willingness to give up her life for Jesus, even at a young age, is what has given her the strength over the years to continue to follow the call of God despite enormous tests and trials. This then is the ultimate secret. We hear and respond to the call of God when we surrender ourselves to Him.
Each of us has been given one life and the choice as to how we will live it. The Apostle Paul pleads with us in Romans chapter 12, I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will. There have been many sermons and much exposition on these two verses from Romans. One thing is clear, whether you were saved last night or 50 years ago, these verses call for absolute surrender of yourself to God.
What will you do with yourself? E. Stanley Jones addresses some of the choices the world makes in his book, Victory Through Surrender. He writes, Many ancient systems have come to the question of what is to be done with the self and have come to many differing answers. The answers coming out of the East have been in large measure answers that show world weariness.
Buddha focused this pervasive disillusionment about the self into the decisive sentence, Existence and suffering are one. As long as you are in existence, you are in suffering. Then the only way to get out of suffering is to get out of desire.
So, cut the root of desire, become desireless even for life. Buddha would get rid of the problems of the self by getting rid of self. Vedantic Hindu philosophy says that Brahma is the only reality, but Brahma is the impersonal.
So, the devotee sits and in meditation affirms, Aham Brahma, I am Brahma. He tries to pass from the personal self to the impersonal essence, Brahma. When that transition is made, the problems of the self are over.
I asked a devotee his name and he replied, Rama Ram. I asked him where he had come from and he replied, Ram Ram. Where was he going? Ram Ram.
What did he want? Ram Ram. I could get no other reply, for he had vowed to use no name except Ram Ram. This was high devotion, but very expensive to the self.
It was gone. His face was expressionless. Rama was everything.
He was nothing. When we turn from this world weariness of the East to modern psychology, we find a complete reversal of the attitudes toward the self. Modern psychology has three affirmations about the self.
Know thyself, accept thyself, express thyself. What is basically wrong with these three affirmations about the self? I'll take the first. Know thyself.
But how can you really know yourself by studying yourself in relation to yourself and other human selves in a purely material environment? It is all earthbound, lacks any eternal meaning or goal. Second, accept thyself. But how can you accept an unacceptable self, a self full of conflicts and contradictions, full of guilt and frustrations, inferiorities and inhibitions, full of its self? To ask a man to accept himself, that kind of self, is to ask the impossible.
Third, secular psychology says, express thyself. But if you have a dozen people together, all of whom have been taught to express themselves, what have you got? You have the stage set for clash and confusion and jealousy and strife. What will you do with your self? Many women and men are still in darkness trying to figure out the meaning and purpose of life.
But no matter what you try to do with your self, whether you deny it, obliterate it, annihilate it, accept it or express it, believe me, it is still alive and kicking. Jesus tells us what to do with the self in Luke chapter 9, verse 23. If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
But questions remain. How do we follow him? How do we hear God and implement the power of the gospel in our lives? This can happen only through an all-out surrender of ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. It means acknowledging the lordship of Christ in our lives, not just in theory, but in practice.
Jesus asks us to love him supremely, more than anything or anyone else, and to let him live in us and through us. Paul expressed it beautifully in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
When I let Jesus live in and through me, my self is no longer the one that directs and dictates to me. Now it is Christ, his will and desires, living and acting through me. This is why the habit of compartmentalizing our lives must end.
All of me, all that I am, belongs to Christ. It is a daily practice to learn this principle and live it out in our lives. The choices we make are ultimately not collective ones that we make as a church, a family, or even a couple.
They are choices we make as individuals. A young missionary lay on her deathbed in India. A friend came up to her and said, You must feel a little sad to go so early.
No, she told him with a smile. Death is mild. My job is finished.
I am going to be with Jesus. Once your life is given over completely to the Lord, you will no longer be intimidated by circumstances or swayed by what others think. Paul says, it's there in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 21 through 23, All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.
Paul also said in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20, No matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. When we understand who Christ is and surrender our lives to Him, we recognize that He is not a tyrant who sits on a high and mighty throne, shaking his finger at us and saying, Paul tells us that in Jesus all the promises of God are yes. When the Lord calls you to consecrate your life to Him, He is looking for a living, breathing, moving sacrifice.
He wants a total surrender of your will, your intellect, your mind, your five senses, your emotions, your actions. I pray that you will take a closer look at who you are. From now on you can live your life for a different purpose than for this world alone.
I pray that you will hear the call of God and begin to consider eternity as your perspective. But I must also warn you, if this is your decision, know that you have chosen to walk a narrow road. When Jesus called His disciples to follow Him, He set some conditions before them.
The choice you make to follow Christ involves a cost. There will be inconveniences, difficulties, pain, and counterattack by Satan. We will look at that counterattack in the next section.
But praise the Lord whether you're standing or have fallen. You can rejoice because you have surrendered yourself to Him when everything has been said and done. And the earth as we know it is only a memory.
Jesus will say to you, Well done, good and faithful servant. And His approval is all that matters. Part 2. Overcoming the Obstacles Chapter 5. Only One Concern Imagine that you have traveled to northern India in the early 1900s to a little village where a tall, turbaned man is the center of attention.
A heart-rending scene begins to unfold before you as you watch, invisible to the cast of characters in this real-life drama. The man, Sadhu Sundar Singh, is about to leave on a long journey. The others, who appear to be his friends, are weeping and begging him not to go.
But you can see from Sadhu's face that although he is touched by their love for him, he is determined to go. He says he is on his way back to Tibet, where he has apparently been before, a forbidding land where evil principalities and powers of Buddhism hold the citizens captive. He knows the dangers he faces, and so do his friends and co-workers.
They continue to cry out, Please don't leave us! But Sadhu tells them, I must go. The curtain falls on this scene and rises on another one. Sadhu has arrived in Tibet and is preaching the gospel openly.
But he has been seized by the Lamas, the Buddhist priests. He threatens their existence, and they act accordingly. They fling Sadhu Sundar Singh into the Death Well, a place no one has ever escaped.
A bone in his arm crunches painfully beneath him as he lands. He hears the key turning in the cover of the well. His eyes grow accustomed to the murky darkness.
Snakes writhe in the dank hole. Rats skitter around him. He can feel around him the skulls and bones of those who have been thrown into the well before him.
As Sadhu lies there with a broken arm in the midst of the filth, he begins to pray, Lord, I am so grateful that you have given me this privilege to suffer for your name's sake. Over and over he repeats this prayer as the night grows deeper and darker. Suddenly the well cover opens, and a rope is thrown down.
After a few seconds of amazement, Sadhu grasps for the rope and is pulled out of his filthy tomb. When he reaches the top of the well, no one is there. In the next scene, we see Sadhu preaching once again in the streets of the Tibetan village.
The lamas are confounded, for they know that only the head lama has the key to the Death Well. Let's allow the curtain to fall on the drama and take a closer look at the life of this early 20th century missionary. We know from books and oral accounts that Sadhu Sandarsenj underwent times of intense persecution and hardship.
Ultimately, he laid down his life in Tibet for the sake of the Gospel. Yet, as this real event from his life shows, something allowed him to rise above his circumstances, something that enabled him to endure and even rejoice in hardship, because he considered it a privilege to serve and suffer. Sadhu Sandarsenj had the key to what many of us are looking for.
As human beings, we cannot survive any commitment for long without motivation, whether it is godly or self-centered. Self-centered motivation can be money, power, appreciation, anything that gratifies us. Have you ever wondered why some people tolerate boredom, frustration, or pain just to work at a job they hate intensely? They dislike everyone there and cannot stand what they do, but they stay with it anyway.
Why? Because they get a paycheck every week. That is their motivation. Self-centered motivation has its spiritual side, too.
We may do wonderful things for the kingdom because we want to look good or because we feel guilty if we do not do this or that or because we got charged emotionally from some challenge we heard in the pulpit. It's easy to fall into the trap of horizontal motivation. Our motives may be impure, but we think to ourselves, who knows, and does it really matter? It does matter when we convey the outward appearance of holiness without the inward foundation.
Here is what A. W. Tozer said about horizontal motivation in his book The Root of the Righteous. The test by which all conduct must finally be judged is motive, as water cannot rise higher than its source, so the moral quality in an act can never be higher than the motive that inspires it. For this reason, no act that arises from an evil motive can be good, even though some good may appear to come out of it.
Every deed done out of anger or spite, for instance, will be found at last to have been done for the enemy and against the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, the nature of religious activity is such that much of it can be carried on for reasons that are not good, such as anger, jealousy, ambition, vanity, and avarice. All such activity is essentially evil and will be counted as such at the judgment.
In this matter of motive, as in so many other things, the Pharisees afford us clear examples. They remain the world's most dismal religious failures, not because of doctrinal error, nor because they were careless or lukewarm, nor because they were outwardly persons of dissolute life. Their whole trouble lay in the quality of their religious motives.
They prayed, but they prayed to be heard of men, and thus their motives ruined their prayers and rendered them not only useless but actually evil. They gave generously to the service of the temple, but they sometimes did it to escape their duty toward their parents, and this was an evil. They judged the sin and stood against it when they found it in others, but this they did from self-righteousness and hardness of their heart.
So with almost everything they did. Their activities had about them an outward appearance of holiness, and those same activities, if carried on out of pure motives, would have been good and praiseworthy. The whole weakness of the Pharisees lay in the quality of their motives.
That this is not a small matter may be gathered from the fact that those orthodox and proper religionists went on in their blindness till they at last crucified the Lord of Glory with no inkling of the gravity of their crime. Horizontal motivation will not sustain us long. It takes only a few people, a few challenging circumstances, or an unfavorable environment to cause us to fizzle out in our activity for the kingdom.
From the inside we can muster up only so much strength. We need continuous input. The physical life in which we must have food and water to survive illustrates what is needed in the inner man as well.
We need motivation that is objective, from the Lord. The life of the Apostle Paul is the story of any normal Christian. Paul was no superstar or extra-anointed person.
He crafted tents with his hands, making his living like anyone else. But every tent he made, every trip he made to the market, every voyage he took in a ship, was incidental to his real goal in life, to pull a few more people out of the fires of hell. About reaching his own people, Paul wrote in Romans 9, verses 3 and 4, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.
Paul was ready to give his life if it meant the Jews would be saved. Why? And what kept him going when he was misunderstood and forsaken by those around him? When he was left to die after being stoned? When he was shipwrecked? Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 14, that Christ's love compels us. The Amplified Version uses the words controls and urges and impels.
Paul was not moved to live as he lived by any factor other than his relationship with the Lord. He was motivated to do everything he did for one reason, Jesus. God said regarding Paul, when he was first converted, in Acts 9, verse 16, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.
Later, Paul himself, in his letter to the Philippians, wrote, in the first chapter, verse 21, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Paul could live like this and endure hardships because of one thing. He lived constantly for the approval of his Master.
Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 3, admonishes us to consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Psalm 119 contains two dynamic verses that deal with this vertical, objective motivation from the Lord. First, the psalmist wrote, Indignation grips me.
Have you ever seen how a ravenous lion holds his helpless prey by the scruff of the neck? That is how the psalmist felt, that burning indignation has grabbed hold of him. Had someone beaten him up? Had someone violated his rights? Had he lost his salary or had to keep working overtime? No, he was indignant because of the wicked who have forsaken your law. Now, verse 136, streams of tears flow from my eyes.
In our culture, people experience all kinds of hurts, whether through personal problems or situation imposed on us. Our own sins may hurt us. Our expectations may not be met.
Other people may fail us or harsh circumstances may bear down on us. There are many reasons we experience sorrow, pain, agony, self-pity, discouragement, disillusionment, mental breakdown, even suicide. I remember when my mother died.
If I don't control myself, I thought when my mother's body was carried from our house to the cemetery, I know I will begin to cry. I need to be rational about this. I know she is happy with the Lord and in the best place she can be.
I'll see her soon. But when I saw others weeping out loud, I completely lost it. I sobbed.
As I walked outside following the casket, I could not even stand up. I had to hold on to a tree for support. But my weeping lasted a few hours, perhaps a day at the most.
This man was broken-hearted and could not stop crying. Why? Because your law is not obeyed. All his grief had to do with one small word.
Your. One of the most beautiful statements I have ever read on genuine vertical motivation was made by E. Stanley Jones in his book Victory Through Surrender. He made it a habit to spend time before the Lord during a time in the early morning when I don't ask for anything, but listen to see if God has anything to say to me.
This is what Jones heard one day. He said to me, You are mine. Life is yours.
I was startled and asked him to repeat it, and he did. You are mine. Life is yours.
That saying has been singing its way through my heart ever since. If I belong to Christ, life belongs to me. I can master it, rescue some good out of everything.
Good, bad, and indifferent. I do not have to be concerned about this, that, or the other. I have one concern, and only one, that I be His.
If you want to stand firm when trials come, like said who Sundar sinned, not be moved by circumstances, nor waver in your faith, then know that you cannot even begin to do it in your own strength. For the people of God to stand firm, and even to survive in the days to come, we must relinquish our lives, and all they mean, to Jesus. Your only concern is to be His, to be approved by Him, to please Him, to belong to Him.
All that you are and do must be centered around Him and His purposes. Then as you walk through life, every emotion you feel, and every circumstance you face, will be secondary. Are you His? Then life is yours.
In the next chapter, we will take a closer look at motivation. Signs that we are horizontally motivated, and steps to make us more vertically motivated. Chapter Six What Motivates You? The man stopped hoeing and straightened up, wiping sweat and grime from his forehead.
He thought he had heard unusual sounds coming from the house. Strains of music drifted across the field, and he thought shouts and laughter as well. What was going on? Well, it was way past quitting time anyway.
He swung the hoe over his shoulder and trudged over the freshly turned-up field toward the house. As he drew nearer, the music grew louder. He could tell the wine must be flowing freely, the dancing and merriment were in full swing.
Father must have real reason for celebration, he thought. Just then a servant came scurrying out. What's going on? he asked.
Your brother has come home, the servant replied. Your father has killed the fatted calf, and we are all rejoicing because your brother is safe and sound. Please, your father wants you to join the celebration.
Come! The man's face darkened. So this was the reason that they were celebrating. His brothers returned.
His irresponsible, wild, loose-living, inheritance-wasting brother! How dare he return after all the years of grief and uncertainty he had caused! A storehouse of angry memories flooded him. I will have no part of this celebration, he spat at the servant. You can tell my father I will not go in, and he turned on his heel.
We are all familiar with the story in Luke 15 of the man and his two sons. We know the younger brother as the prodigal son, but the story is really about the love of his father. Jesus had been criticized by the Pharisees and scribes because he chose to eat with the publicans and sinners.
Look at this man, they whispered to each other. He says he's God, but look who he eats with! Jesus' inner companions were indeed reputed to be the worst members of society, but the Pharisees misunderstood God's holiness to mean he would have nothing to do with sinners. So Jesus told them the story of the man and his sons to show them the heart of the father.
He was saying to them, God has everything to do with sinners because he loves them. It is plain to see that the younger son represents the sinner, the outcast. But let's take a closer look at the older son.
The older son is a picture of the believer, someone who knows the Lord and is within the fold of believers. What was he doing when the younger son finally returned? Working out in the fields. He was committed to his father and to his work.
In appearance, anyhow, he loved his father more than his brother did. He never left home or gambled his money away. The older brother is a classic illustration of the individual who seems to be doing a lot of good and whose life is full of activity, but who may be motivated horizontally, not vertically.
The motivation keeping the older brother going was not genuine love for his father. When his brother returned and adverse circumstances bore down on him, the truth came out. Someone once said, if you fill a jar with honey and jolt it as hard as you can, no bitter water will ever come out.
The older brother was perfect. He sacrificed and worked long hours. He gave money faithfully for missions every month.
He cut back on his lifestyle and lived more simply. He prayed an hour every day. He was active in his church.
He always went the extra mile. Am I talking about you and me? I am. But as we are in the midst of good activity, sometimes things begin to go wrong.
Wow, we say to ourselves. I didn't realize I would ever face rejection for doing the right thing. I thought everyone would appreciate my hard work.
I thought I'd get a few rewards, a little recognition. When external pressures bear down upon us and jolt the jar, whatever is inside comes out. This jolting is orchestrated by the Lord, who wants us to see what is really in our hearts.
Why did the older son act the way he did? He felt taken for granted and was angry with his father for receiving his younger brother back, who had done wrong while he had done right. If we look carefully at Luke 15, we can see at least nine signs that something was missing in the older brother. He had lost the genuine motivation of his heart, his love for his father.
Let's look at each of these signs. Strangely enough, the person who has lost authentic, vertical motivation from the Lord falls into legalism. The love of Christ no longer constrains him.
He works for the sake of the work alone, whereas true motivation in working for the kingdom of God is love. Love is the oil that keeps the machinery running smoothly. With this motivation, there is no murmuring, no complaining, no grouchiness.
People motivated by the love of God can serve Him 24 hours a day and be the happiest people in the world. They cannot do enough for the Lord because they love Him so much. When you lose that vertical motivation, you are doing things for the Lord because you have to.
Legalism also means serving only for the reward. The older brother tells his father, Look, all these years, I've been slaving for you, yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. When a person loses the love motive of his heart, he sees the father as mean and unfair.
He begins to compare service records. The older brother compared his work with that of his younger brother, who wasted and destroyed everything his father had given him. The man in Jesus' parable of the talents, who buried the one talent that he had been given, told his master, there in Matthew 25, verse 24, I knew that you are a hard man.
He saw his master as unloving and cruel. Then there is the parable of the vineyard owner, who gave equal wages to all his workers, whether they began at nine in the morning or four in the afternoon. The ones who had started work early began to grumble.
It's right there in Matthew chapter 20, verses 12 through 14. The Bible says, These men who were hired last worked only one hour, they said, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day. But he answered one of them, Friend, I am not being unfair to you.
Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I like the story in Genesis 29 about Jacob. Good old Jacob, what a rude awakening to find out that the woman you married was not the one you meant to marry.
Yet we read that all those years of hard labor for Rachel seemed like only a few days to him, because of his love for her. He was not working just to feed a few sheep. He was not working for pay.
The focus of all his labors was Rachel alone. I spoke to a group of people once who were working with a Christian organization on the mission field, and I asked them to think about this question. If your entire allowance were gone, if your benefits disappeared, if next month you would not earn even a penny, would you still come here? If you had no money even to ride a bus to the office, would you walk here and serve the Lord anyway? This is the kind of question we must ask ourselves if we want to avoid the trap of legalism.
The father, weeping and rejoicing over his young son, pleaded with his elder son to come in, but the son refused. His unyielding, headstrong disposition is a clear indication that he was not motivated by love for his father. He refused to go in because he felt sorry for himself.
He was bitter about his situation, and he was discouraged. But self-pity, bitterness, and discouragement have nothing to do with genuine vertical motivation. The older brother had little feeling for his father or brother.
His feelings had festered so long that he could think only about himself. Third, a person not motivated by love for the Lord will experience jealousy over others' blessings and the desire for honor and position. He may want to be noticed by others, looking for opportunities to tell them what he has done.
He may be dissatisfied with second place, or he may secretly expect appreciation or approval. When our hearts are not motivated by love, our relationships with others are strained. The older brother had apparently been content working in the fields day after day, but when his brother came home, he became jealous.
Now that this brother of mine has returned, he thought, look at the hugs, the ring, the shoes, the new clothes. Look at the feast, the dancing, the celebration. All the attention I've gotten, all the benefits I've received, all my father's love will now be turned to him.
Take another New Testament example. Before Paul's conversion on the Damascus Road, he wanted to eliminate Christianity. If you had been a believer during that time, you would have had a hard time accepting this new convert.
It's just a ploy, you might have said. He's only coming to find out who we are. Then he'll kill us.
And this is exactly what those believers thought. No one trusted Paul. It's right there in Acts chapter 9, verse 26.
Then Barnabas came along and put his life on the line. He vouched for Paul and convinced others that Paul had truly been saved. A wonderful partnership was begun.
But a few chapters later in Acts, we no longer read about Barnabas and Paul. Now we read about Paul and Barnabas. Fascinating.
Barnabas took second place to Paul because his motivation was not based on honor or position. Barnabas simply loved Jesus and wanted to serve him. It is a sign of true godliness to desire nothing but the Lord himself.
It's no simple thing to take second place and let someone else get the honor. It can be done only by someone who loves God. The older brother told his father, in verse 30, all these years I've done your work, revealing an I'm-better-than-my-brother attitude.
He also complained about this son of yours. Notice that he did not say my brother but your son. He was filled with pride, an exalted opinion of himself.
Pride is the fourth indication that a believer is not motivated by love for God. The older brother did not even have room in his heart to acknowledge the tramp weeping and repenting as his brother. There was no room in his life for weak people.
In his eyes, he was plainly superior. When we work as a team, as a church, as a fellowship, we must remember that the body of Christ is made up not of superhuman entities but of weak, broken-legged, half-blind, bruised, hurting, sinning, and repenting people. And it seems to me from this story that God has more compassion for them than for the superstars.
This story is about the all-embracing, all-forgiving, all-encompassing love of a father. But his older son, who lived in the same house and worked for him, was untouched by his love and made no concession for the weak, failed, backslidden man who stood before him. All he could say was, he had it coming.
True motivation from the Lord, by contrast, manifests itself in humility.