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Motivation,Intentionality and Discipline

Today I want to consider three things that will help us develop our spiritual life. We’ll jump right in, without introduction.

The first thing we need is motivation. There has got to be some glimmer of desire to see our relationship with God deepen. If you have no motivation to see your intimacy with God develop, it won’t. But if you do long for a deeper relationship with God, you will find you need to make some choices. You have to turn it from a dream into a goal, something that you are willing to plan for and work at.

However, having motivation, by itself, isn’t enough. The second thing you need is to act intentionally. Nobody's spiritual life improves by accident (unless it is the kind of accident where God puts you in the hospital for six weeks to unclutter your life and then it might improve). But I am not talking about that kind of accident. Naturally, we are headed away from God and even when we become believers there is always something trying to pull us back. In Luke 10, Jesus said to Martha, “You are distracted and troubled.” There are distractions that lead us away, so we have to be intentional, deliberate. We make a choice and then act on that choice. Good intentions are necessary, but they are not enough. We need to put them into action.

The third element necessary for building our spiritual life is discipline. You have to actually do it. Doing it is hard but it is not the hardest part. What is harder than doing it, is doing it again - and then doing again, and again and again until it becomes part of who you are. I can't tell you how many times I have made really deep fervent commitments to something, whether it is to a particular program of Bible reading or reading theology books or spending time in prayer - things like that. I do it and do it, and then, I don't do it again. Once you set the pattern of "don't do it again" it is much easier to follow that pattern than the "do it again" pattern.

If we are really going to make time for God, we need to have these three things: motivation intentionality and discipline. I want to look at the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and consider His example. He is the supreme pattern for our lives and I think He has a lot to show us in this. In John 4, at the end of the story of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman, His disciples urged Him to eat. "They said 'Rabbi, eat.' But He said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know.' Therefore the disciples said to one another, 'Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?' Jesus said to them, 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.'"

For Jesus, doing the will of the Father was like sitting down to steak and lobster or whatever your particular favourite meal is. It was more deeply satisfying to Him than physical nourishment and dare I say physical pleasure, because a lot of us eat more for pleasure than for nourishment. For Jesus, everything associated with eating, both the nourishment, the pleasure, the fellowship of sharing food, all of that was secondary to doing the will of the Father. He knew God in such a way that pleasing the Father just filled Him up.

Jesus was always doing something. You hardly read a passage where it says that Jesus took a nap. He did take a few, but mostly it was to teach the disciples something, like the nap in the boat when the storm came up. Jesus was always doing things but we never see Him rushing about, out of control, or having a melt down. Even when He got urgent news, "Lord ,your friend Lazarus is lying at death’s door step. Do something! Hurry!" He let a couple of days go by.

As followers of Jesus, we are going to be busy in our spiritual exercise. There is going to be activity, I am not promoting passivity. But God doesn't call us to frantic activity, spending ourselves to such a degree that we harm ourselves and are unable to continue to serve. There are some who are asked to lay down their lives - true, but, generally speaking, those would be exceptions. We are not all called to be martyrs and certainly not in this way through service - working ourselves to death.

In John 5, at the beginning of the chapter, we find the account of the man healed at the pool of Bethesda. The story records that Jesus only healed one person out of many. He didn’t do everything. Some of us forget that. Especially those of us who are more service oriented have a task emphasis. We say, "I love you, Lord. What can I do for you?" We like to be busy and tend to want to do everything.

Some of us want to do something every time there is an opening. We think that is right because we are Christians and God would want us to. Not always. Jesus didn’t do everything He might have done. Yet He did everything God wanted Him to do. Remember, Jesus wasn’t driven to meet needs. He was driven to please the Father. To be driven to meet needs is more about our own psychological motivations than anything else. We are not here to meet needs; we are here to glorify the Father.

After just three years of very intense but unhurried ministry, Jesus was able to say in John 17 as He prayed, "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do." God only expects us to do what He asks us to do. Much of our inability to find time for God stems from the items we have put on the agenda. If you are too busy for God, it is not because God has given you so much to do that you have no time for Him.

Perhaps this is a good time for you to do a little self-evaluation. What is making you busy? Perhaps you are crowding God out of your life because of what you think He might demand of you. Maybe you keep thoughts of God at bay by filling up your life so you don't have to confront the ultimately unavoidable questions about your purpose in life.

The Lord Jesus perfectly pleased His Father by doing the one great assignment He had been given. Jesus came to seek and to save those who were headed away from the Father. Their faces were set on some distant goal on the horizon and their backs were toward home. Jesus came to turn us around. In Him, we find the key to balance, rest and life itself. "Come unto me," He said to all of us who feel overworked, too busy, and dreadfully weary, "and I will give you rest."

Ron Hughes
© March 2006