I strive as many of you do to make my motives pure.  It tells us in the Bible in 1 Corinthians 3:9, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” You may not feel like you belong because of all your daily struggles.  If you ever ask Jesus into your heart…you do belong.  Do not deceive yourself by self doubt.  As believers, we are responsible to carry out the work set before us in scripture.  Our problem is that we easily forget to do God’s work because we are too busy with getting our children to bed, up and to school, to sports or other events and homework done, job responsibilities and all the other activities of the day.  Our motives become secular in nature…not Godly.

From the outside, we may look like we have it together and are living obediently the Christian life.  We go to church and take food to a shelter or help with disaster relief.  On the outside, it looks as if our motives are pure and honorable.  Yet, underneath we may not even realize our motives are undesirable to the Lord.  We need to constantly ask our heavenly Father to reveal to us whatever may be driven by selfish motives.  Unfortunately, I am speaking to myself.  So…what do we do?  We must go to the Lord in prayer and stay in His word.  We must ask God to reveal whatever selfish motive to be exposed and brought under His authority.  Only then, can we rejoice in all things.  We may still face trials and tribulations, but God will be with us and we can rejoice.

Keep trying!  There is a story I once read about a man in his early nineties.  He said this, “I am going to live to be 100, or die in the attempt.”  I thought that this was well put…even a little comical.  He had hope and joy in life and though the odds were against him to reach 100, he was not going to let that dampen his enthusiasm.  In a similar way, though we will not be perfectly pure in our motives, and it may look impossible to change, we should not give up hope of trying because Jesus is there to cheer us on.  We can change our motives to one of purity.

How can I change my motives to ones of purity?  Here is a Psalm to pray and memorize to make your motives spiritual.  Psalm 51:10 says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew your right Spirit within me.”  We must remember to pray this Psalm daily so our motives remain pure.  There is no limit to what God can do with your help.  Get involved! Your life will be transformed.