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Time to Check Your Motives

By March 4, 2025No Comments4 min read

“Love must be sincere hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love, honor one another above yourselves.” Romans 12:9-10

Love must be sincere. How do you know when your love is insincere? Usually when you have false motives. When you are seeking the approval of man over the approval of God (Galatians 1:10) you can easily find yourself hijacked by insincere motives. A mask that looks like love is used to accomplish what flows from selfishness.

Don’t be fooled, God cannot be mocked, a man reaps what he sows, if you sow to please the flesh, from the flesh you will reap destruction, if you sow to please the Spirit from the Spirit you will reap eternal life (Galatians 6:7-8). It’s easy to deceive ourselves. This is for sure a job for Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit within us. A powerful prayer to begin your day with is: “Lord please protect me from deceiving myself today. Cleanse me of false motives, disguising behavior in the form of love yet fueled by selfish motives.”

Attachment walks hand in hand with false motives. When you are attached to a specific outcome other than the will of God, you render yourself vulnerable to anxiety that often fuels negative emotions. An attachment is an emotional state of clinging due to the belief that without a certain outcome, you cannot feel happy, enough, successful, accomplished etc. False motives disguised as love can easily be used to manipulate the behavior of others. Keep watch. This is a slippery little serpent that presents one way and yet hooks you into a form of intimidation to get your way over the good of another.

The flesh is self-focused, insecure and demanding. It is in a constant search to satisfy itself. It’s like a spoiled child, the more you feed it, the more it wants. The flesh cannot honor another above itself for fear that there won’t be enough to satisfy its own needs. The flesh fears everything.

The Spirit is God focused, obedient and confident. It does not need anything outside itself to know its value and purpose, therefore it’s able to pour love into the lives of others without any thought to self-benefit. The Spirit knows that there is plenty to go around and that the more it gives the more it receives from the Father’s love. The Spirit fears nothing.

Sincere love flows directly from the Father’s love for us as Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so I love you,” John 15:9. There is no room for suspicion or false motives when the Spirit is guiding the flesh. Love is sincere and seeks to honor another over itself. It is free from worldly attachment to be liked, right or understood. Jesus modeled this freedom perfectly when He cried out from the cross, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” We typically see each other through our own filters: our knowledge, experience and values that impact how we listen think and communicate (Be Don’t Do, by Brenda Corbett and Judith Coleman). Basically, I see you not as you are but as I am. Our fleshly nature is always at work; by nature, we are self-focused. As St. Paul says in Romans 7:23-25: “but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.”

Jesus holds the keys to our freedom from motives fueled by selfishness. As we lean into His love through the Father, we find ourselves renewed in our mind able to tune into what Jesus desires for us to think and do in our relationships with each other. As we think less of ourselves and focus on Jesus’ love, we gain access to pure motives. St John the Baptist knew the pathway to internal freedom from alternative motives and selfishness when he declared in John 3:30: I must decrease, and he must increase.

Proverbs 16:2, “All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.” Invite the Lord to weigh your motives and redirect when necessary, so that you become emotionally intelligent in Christ.

Take Action:

Pause and reflect on your behavior this week. As you interact with people around you ask: what is my motive? Pray: Holy Spirit protect me from self-deception. Keep my motives pure and obedient to the work of love you are doing through my life for your Glory. Show me any area of insincerity around my behavior and reveal to me all falsity around my motives. I want to do what I do for your glory, and I need your help to override selfishness.

Listen to Edge God In Podcast: Launch into God: 4th Thing to Quit with CS Lewis: Quit Magnifying what’s going wrong.

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