Motivated by Love

This coming Sunday is the second Sunday of Advent, and our focus is on the love of God, the motivation for all that He does. And this begs us to ask the question, what motivates you? What is something that gets you up in the morning and gets you going? There are any number of different answers that could be given as to what motivates us: our family; our work; retirement; a sense of duty or obligation that we need to fulfill. And our motivation might change from day to day and week to week as our lives go through different seasons. But if we call ourselves followers of Christ, then our motivation should be more than something that is short lived — our motivation should come from an eternal focus. If we are to be Christ-followers, then our hearts need to be like His. Jesus Himself said that we can only serve one master (see Matthew 6:19-24 or Luke 19:13-27), and if we place something (anything!) before God then that is where our treasure is.

So what is Jesus’ heart like? His heart is first set on loving God the Father, and then that love flows outward to others. We read in John 3:16 (a familiar verse, I know) that “God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And Jesus then demonstrates that love by giving His life up for all who would believe in Him (Romans 5:8), even when we were against Him! “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ lad down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16). That should be our motivation for anything and everything that we do — to love God and others as Jesus loved His Heavenly Father and all those He came to save. Our motivation, the something that gets us up in the morning, should be our love for God.

I hope you’ll be able to join us this Sunday as we continue our Christmas celebrations and preparations. Our gathering begins at 6pm.

Pastor Mike