November 2

Ezekiel 3:16-6:14; Hebrews 4:1-16; Psalm 104:24-35; Proverbs 26:27

What’s your motive?

Why do you and I serve others? Why do we use our spiritual gifts to honor God? And how do we even discern our own motives? Sometime we think we are serving in our church from a desire to help others or teach others so that they may grow in their Christian walk with God only to discover that deep in our heart is a desire to be noticed and admired. I’ve often wondered if I have any truly pure motivations to serve the Lord!

I remember saying to a friend in AZ many years ago, “I might just as well give up having a devotional time every day because on the days when I don’t read my Bible and pray, I’m full of guilt and the days when I do, I’m filled with pride!” I was frustrated with how to proceed. Eventually I figured out that it would be best to keep having a devotional time (do you think?), though maybe not every day while the kids were young, and that I should not focus on either guilt or pride, but instead focus on my goal: getting to know Jesus better and letting Him change me.

Our reading in Hebrews 4:12 sheds light on this. Here’s a helpful comment from The Bible Knowledge Commentary:

“The inner life of a Christian is often a strange mixture of motivations both genuinely spiritual and completely human. It takes a supernaturally discerning agent such as the Word of God to sort these out and to expose what is of the flesh.”

In Ezekiel, there are convicting words that also penetrate us to the core.

“When I say to a wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood" (Ez. 3:18).

Strong words that remind us: we are to speak the truth of God to our generation, like Ezekiel did, and we are accountable to God for our handling of God’s truth in our generation.

In Ezekiel, we see the word of the Lord coming to Ezekiel and he must obey. He does some very strange things at God’s command: he sets up a model of Jerusalem and lays on his side by it for over a year to illustrate that the Nation is going to be conquered and taken into captivity because of their refusal to follow the Lord. This is Ezekiel’s version of Twitter—a way to communicate. As people noticed his odd behavior they would report it to others and so word would spread of what he was doing and why.

God explains to Ezekiel why the Nation will be judged and sent into exile: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her. Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees” (Ez. 4:5-6, emphasis mine).

God’s Word is indeed living and active. We do well to heed it instead of rebelling against it as Israel did, even if our motives are sometimes mixed. Let God sort out the motives in our hearts while we keep on serving Him.

- Nell Sunukjian

How did God speak to you in Scripture today? Click here to share your reflections on God's word or read past posts. We'd love to hear from you.