What are your reasons? A problem with wrong reasons is that the focus is wrong! It’s all about me. It asks questions such as: What’s in it for me? What will it cost me? How long with I have to do it? Often, you do the right things because of some perceived benefit to you. You will stop doing it if it no longer benefits you. If you ever stopped doing something right after awhile, you were probably doing right for the wrong reasons. God is not fooled. He looks beyond your outward actions into your heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 — But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” While self-focused reasons can motivate us to do right, there is a better way. 1 Corinthians 12:31 — So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all. Doing Right for Right Reasons This is the goal. No one is prefect in this. We probably all have areas where we do right for the right reason. We all also have areas where we do right for the wrong reasons. And we all have areas where we do wrong. Successful Christian living is working to renew your mind so that you make more and more right choices out of more and more right thinking—doing right for right reasons. It’s a transformation process that takes place in your innermost thoughts—your heart. This is where we are called to live. GIGO – Garbage in, Garbage out – a computer term. If the information going into the process is bad, then the conclusions will be bad. That’s true of life, also. We often make bad choices because we have believed bad information—lies! The critical requirement in achieving right living is to have right thinking. The critical requirement for right thinking is properly sorting between truth and lies. The critical source for obtaining the necessary information to distinguish lies from truth is God’s Word—the Bible. That’s why there is so much attack on the Bible. If people can get you to ignore the primary source of objective truth, then they can get you to believe almost any lie. And then they can derail your life. Where do you live? In the truth or in the lies?
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 07:58:41 +0000