Restoring Us to Humanity 1.0 – Motivating Factor

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

In my previous post – Restoring Us to Humanity 1.0 Pt 1 – I outlined the process God is using to recreate the character of His Son in each authentic Christian. The process of course, will not be complete until each person passes from this life to the next through death or Rapture. At that point, our sin nature will be completely excised making it impossible for us to ever sin again and we will experience true eternal life.

If I could narrow things down to a more simplistic view of this whole process, I’d say that it all boils down to what we can call our motivating factor. In essence, all people are motivating by something in life. I’m not talking about being motivated to become a doctor or lawyer, teacher or healthcare worker, etc. I’m talking about the thing that motivates a person is all aspects of their life. In essence, that motivating factor is their foundation from which they make all decisions. Human beings are either motivated by a true love (that only comes from God), or they are motivated by a deep sense of self. That’s really it; as there are only those two true motivators.

I’m almost 68 years of age. I was raised attending church and I can remember all the way back to being in kindergarten/first grade and being enamored with the baby Jesus in the nativity display at the church we were then attending. I vividly recall just starting at this tiny baby in his manger. I don’t know what drew me to him, but something clearly did. That was not salvation though, as that didn’t come to me until I reached the age of 13, when the reality of my need for Him and His salvation became clear.

Since that time though, I also vividly recall the absolute stupidity of some of my decisions, as they were totally based on my own self-centeredness. I won’t go into any real examples because they’re embarrassing to think that I actually thought as I did. My mom tried her best to help me through difficult emotional times. My dad was pretty much gone during the week and wasn’t much help when he was there because he also was very focused on his own wants/needs. He had a bit of a short temper when it came to life so it was far better to steer clear of him unless he was outwardly in a great mood. I’m not blaming my parents at all because they had their own baggage from having lived through the Great Depression, which I still cannot wrap my brain around frankly, since I never experienced it.

As I grew in age (and hopefully, maturity), while I thought I was drawing closer to God (and there were times I certainly was doing that), overall, I was still placating Self and living my life from that perspective. It is now fifty something years later and while I can look back and note some progress in my walk with God in Christ, I am often severely disappointed with the seeming lack of progress that I think should have been part of my relationship with Him.

But as I say, it all seems to come down to two things; either I am loving as He loves more today than yesterday or I am loving Self and following its dictates. It is one or the other and I will – unfortunately – never be done growing in love while I live. That to me, is frustrating, but it is reality.

When I say “love,” of course, I’m referring to the definition we already discussed in the first part of this series found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. That definition of love is something we should use to compare ourselves to Jesus and how much God is working within us to recreate that love that Jesus had and has for His own and for people in general.

When Jesus walked this earth physically, His entire demeanor toward everyone was loving. This was true even if He was taking someone to task for their shortcomings or their deliberate refusal to obey God from the heart. We need to remember that He was sent to the lost house of Israel, to call them to repentance, so He lived among Jewish people and did His best to minister to them and call them to the truth of the Gospel. Most could not see it at all. Oh, they loved the healings and feedings of 5,000 or 10,000. Those were awesome! But they often remained blind to who He was and remains. When they did understand what He was calling for, they found His Words to be too “legalistic” or demanding. They didn’t want to give up their own course for what He was calling them to be.

Remember the Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-27)? He thought he had it made and was doing everything correctly. Jesus ultimately showed him he was simply serving himself and when push came to shove, that young man could not/would not turn away from serving Self to being what God wanted him to be.

Is that you? Is that me? As for me, I am forced to admit that over the years, my focus has been on ME, even though I often tried to pretend that I was only interested in doing what God wanted me to do. In other words, while I spent lots of time trying to figure out if God wanted me in the ministry, I spent far less time trying to figure out how to love people as God loves. What I completely failed to realize is that if I had concentrated on the latter, the former would have taken care of itself.

I’ve also realized it’s not too late for anything because I’m still alive. God wants me to choose the correct motivating factor and by doing that (choosing the way of love), He will work, He will guide, He will open doors that need to be opened. I won’t have to worry about this, that or the other thing. All I have to do is concentrate on learning how to actually love people (especially those of the household of God), increasingly over time.

Isaiah 58:10-11 says it succinctly and by the way, this is not the only place in Scripture that tells it like this. There are many, many places in Scripture where God outlines how He wants His people to live. He repeats Himself often and in many ways because we are often deaf. We are deaf because Self tends to speak very loudly to us drowning out many of God’s attempts to get us in line.

If you extend your soul to the hungry And satisfy the afflicted soul, Then your light shall dawn in the darkness, And your darkness shall be as the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

In considering the above text, it should become obvious that God wants people to live in a way that they become blessings to other people. This is exactly what God in Jesus did daily. He blessed people in various ways. Even if He went off to pray by Himself, as soon as people came to Him, He left His praying and ministered. I don’t believe He actually stopped talking to His Father though as He likely continued talking with the Father as He ministered to people. Sometimes that’s how busy our lives are that we cannot spend hours on our knees, but we should always be in conversation with God.

So how can a person fulfill Isaiah 58:10-11? It can be done two ways. One way is to do it with the energy from Self. It is done for accolades or upward mobility. It is done not for eternal rewards but for temporal ones. The other way this can be fulfilled is by submitting ourselves to God for Him to work the needed changes in us, so that we internally become more loving to people.

I love dogs and I’ve talked about that before. I have found that dogs, when treated well by people, are loving in return. Dogs who have been mistreated by people are often wary and even antagonistic toward people. A friend of ours had a dog appear on his property after the dog walked out of the woods one day. She’s a beautiful dog, but I learned was extremely wary of men (not women). Each time I would go over there, I would try to get close to the dog, but she kept her distance even though I could tell she wanted to come near. Her fear kept her back.

So, I began carrying treats with me whenever I went there. Initially she would still not come near, so I would gently toss them to her. She would look for them on the ground and it would take her a while to find them. I realized that her ability to smell was not that great, though she finally found the treats.

Eventually, she came closer to me and at one point, she would stand on her hind legs trying to reach me, but still out of reach. I also noticed that she would tend to fall over. It appeared her balance was really off. Was she beaten by some man? Was she damaged in her ability to smell and her balance? I have no idea but the fact that she obviously distrusted men was telling.

One day, I was there with my wife and this dog immediately went over to my wife who had crouched down. The dog not only went up to her but immediately started licking her face! This confirmed to me that the problem was with men, but I was overcoming it in my gentle persistence.

Several months later, the dog – named Princess by my friend who took her in – will now come up to me and actually allow me to pet her on her head/face, neck and back, but still tries to stay a bit out of reach.

I’m telling you this because it reminds me of people and how important it is to reach out to people even when they choose to resist our efforts. They may reject our approach, but possibly over time, they may soften up to the love we are attempting to extend to them.

I have realized that I have spent too much time holding grudges against people, that I have written people off, and I have not gone out of my way to help when I could have done so. The Lord will judge me for these things (but not my salvation), when I stand before Him.

It is past time for me to put Self solidly and completely in the rear view mirror. With two doors before me – Self and Love – I need to deliberately and continually choose the love than Self. In doing so I will be imitating Jesus and the life He lived while here on earth and He will empower me to do so. I believe that as I choose to decide to love people as He loves me, He will increase my ability to love them and I will begin to see Isaiah 58:10-11 fulfilled in my life increasingly.

I’m nearly 68. Why has it taken this long to begin to understand this truth?

What we often fail to see is the amount of pain that people are dealing with today. Just recently, I learned that a 15 year-old male student in our county chose to end his life. There were no signs that anyone could detect. In fact, it is likely that after he made that decision in his mind, he probably grew much calmer in life because he saw it as the way out of here. He was fifteen years-old and had much life to live. Unfortunately, he didn’t think so and I have no idea who did or did not try to reach out to him.

Which brings me to my next subject that’s connected to this one: loving people with God’s love and strength will subject us to sorrow and grief inevitably. Life won’t all be filled with cheerfulness. There will be tears, sadness and sometimes heart-wrenching pain because of God’s inspired love in and through us as we reach out to the lost or simply other Christians in need. It will always be like this as long as we are in this sin-laden world. That’s due to the fall and our resident sin nature until things are completely changed by God later.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)

I personally do not believe the above text was simply summarizing the end of Jesus’ life. I believe Jesus experienced sorrow and grief, rejection and anger on a near-daily basis, yet He never responded in kind. He continued to love people as God the Father loved Him (and us). He took what people dished out yet He endeavored to raise them out of their situations in spite of how they treated Him.

We will talk about that next time in this Restoring Us to Humanity 1.0 series. I will also eventually get into exactly why and how the love of many will grow cold as Jesus tells us in Matthew 24 as He focused on the end times with His disciples.

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

Source: https://studygrowknowblog.com/2025/01/16/restoring-us-to-humanity-1-0-motivating-factor/