God is usually interested in what you do but I’ll tell you, He’s more interested in why you do what you do. He loves to get an answer to the question ‘WHY?


God is interested in why you’re praying. You say ‘Lord, give me money,’ He says “why, what do you want to do with it?” ‘Lord, give me a husband’ “Why, what do you want to do with a husband?” You will think that the answer is obvious but it’s not that clear for some people.


For some people, they want a wife, a husband, a baby, an education, a promotion on the job or even a job in the first place but God’s purpose, plan and desire is not part of their equation.

That’s why James 4:3 says, “you pray and receive not because you pray amiss, that you may consume it upon your own lust.”
Your motivation is your motive, the reason why you’re carrying out a particular action. There are many things that motivates human actions, you’ll be surprised. This piece is to analyze some of those things so we all can learn.



Let’s answer the question ‘what makes you do what you do?`
The following motivates a man:


The need for SURVIVAL!

A pastor once shared a story about his friend who came across robbers many years ago; he abandoned the car, ran out because he saw them brandishing dangerous weapons. He ran into a side street only to discover it was a close. There was no point going back, the bad boys were behind him, you know what he did? He jumped over the fence. Days later, he went back to that street, when he saw the fence, he was amazed. On a normal day, there was no way he was going to jump over that fence but that was not a normal day.


That’s why they say, “the instinct for survival is one of the strongest instinct in man.” When your life is in danger, you will find yourself displaying extraordinary ability to ensure your safety. So our decisions and actions sometimes are motivated by Survival.


GUILT!

Human actions can be motivated by guilt. When someone is feeling really bad for having done something, then there are extent to which they can go to assuage their feelings. That’s why you’ll see someone, after committing a very heinous offense, feel so guilty to the extent he attempted suicide. Many succeeded.


I saw a movie few years ago, there was this teen, a member of a gang that killed a family man. Although he wasn’t the one who shot at the man, he felt really bad being a member of a gang that took another man’s life. He therefore decided to take upon himself the responsibility of looking after the man’s family, he however didn’t let them know what he had done. He suddenly become closer to the said family, he became their guide, counselor, help meet, comforter, put his life out there on the line so as to ensure the family dwells in safety and are comfortable, he started living for that. Point is, his guilty state pushed him to do all of these things.


JEALOUSY!


Our actions can also be motivated by jealousy. I was reading in an online newspaper and there was this news story about an 82 year old woman who stabbed her husband with a knife. Why? She suspected he was having an affair. I read the story again. 82? And I was like, ‘you mean even at that age?’ Those things don’t go away, what’s yours is yours but the fact that you’re 82 doesn’t mean you’ll now allow anybody to just play around what is yours.


Our actions are just sometimes motivated by jealousy.

And sometimes, our actions are simply motivated by GREED! It’s not that we don’t have but what we have, to us, is not enough so we take more than what we ought to take.

So you’ll understand what Jesus meant when He said you cannot serve God and mammon (the god of money), placing money and material things on equal pedestal with God. For many people, there actions and decisions are motivated simply by money. They read everything around them through the prism of MONEY.


I’m very conscious of that fact when I see big beautiful buildings, charming cars and as I’m about making something out of it another person sees them and the only thing he said is “Wow! This is money.”
I thank God that the Bible says when the trumpet shall sound and Jesus come to take the Saints away with Him to glory, the Bible says, “and we shall be changed.” I take good note of those words. We need to be changed before we get to heaven or else there will be chaos when we get there. One of the things I suspect would happen if we aren’t changed is that some people will accuse God of extravagance with the way I see heaven described in the Bible, they’d be like “What? Gold? You paved the road with gold?


There was a time in the Bible when someone poured her expensive perfume on Christ and Judas wasn’t happy. He was saying it could have been sold and the money given to the poor and Apostle John recorded that it was not so much because Judas loved the poor people, it was because he would have preferred for the money to be put in the purse so he could take some of it. Judas viewed everything from the prism of money. “It’s either going to make money or it’s not going to make money for me, how much can I get for myself?” and so on. His destiny, sense of reasoning was tied to money.


When money takes such a role in your life, it takes God’s place and becomes the driving force but there are things more powerful than money and if you are a follower of Jesus, you will know that the most valuable things in life are not tangible, they are not material, they are not the cars, houses and cash.
I’m just trying to make a point that there are many different things that drive human behaviours. Sometimes it’s REVENGE, sometimes it’s PRIDE.


Dear Readers, what I want to do is to reveal to you what drives God’s actions now and even in the Bible, the coming of Christ to our world, allowing Himself to be taken to Calvary and crucified on the cross. What was driving all of that?

Why not make it a date with me here next week Sunday as we examine God’s motives for all He’d done, doing and going to do?

God Bless You.

http://www.sundayspiritualdigest.com/what-makes-you-do-what-you-do-2/