One thing that is so necessary in order to overcome in this walk is an adequate motivation. There are many good motives you could give for doing things for the Lord, but unless you have the right, perfect motivation, you break down in a time of test.
If you worship for what you can receive, it will never be enough because you will always be focused on what God will give you rather than on God Himself. When the Lord took away everything that Job had, Job still bowed down and worshiped Him.
People can give a lot of reasons for what they do. For example, a young person can be told, “Keep yourself virtuous because someday that Prince Charming or beautiful Cinderella will pop out of nowhere, and you will be so glad that you did.” But that is not always enough.
Sometimes Prince Charming turns out to be a dog. You marry him, and then where is your motivation for virtue? A lot of people live virtuously before they are married, and afterwards they cheat because the motivation that kept them while they were single, disappeared when they married.
You may have a lot of good motives for doing things, being something, or following after a certain way. You may say, “I’m in this walk because God delivered me out of so much.” That isn’t enough motive, either. It has to be because you hold in your heart the perfect will of God and the desire to please Him.
If you desire to please the Lord above everything else, that takes you through. You can have a lot of other reasons, but when the time of deep loneliness or problems come, those reasons won’t be sufficient.
You may have a great love for another person, but the time will come when yesterday’s love is today’s ashes, and then you fall apart; your motivation is gone.
You have to walk according to the will of God because you want to please Him. If you walk all your life alone and die an eccentric old bachelor or a fussy old maid, you can still feel that your life had great dignity, purpose and meaning if you lived for the Lord completely.
Such a life has meaning, regardless of what it seems to have or seems to lack by human standards. A person is never really that lonely, that heart broken, or oppressed who is walking in the will of God.
It is only a fine margin, but the people that make it are those who have the perfect motivation. It comes back to the first commandment—you love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your strength. (Matthew 22:37).
Whatever else has meaning in your life—and it may have so much meaning that you can’t even describe it or express it—it is still secondary, and the loss of it is not a total disruption of the whole course of your life.
When your roots are in His heart, all of the branches and all of the fruit can be cut away and you grow again. You are an eternal perennial because your roots are in God.
This is the reason men have failed and failed and failed—and yet survived. For the righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth up again. Proverbs 24:16a.
All the stumblings, falterings and bad judgment, all the heartbreak and losses that the world counts important are not enough to stop that man or woman.
It is always difficult to discover who you are and why God put you here.
The deep fleshly reactions of resentment and rebellion, all the things that happen to you, that feeling of melancholy, the clenched fists that make you scowl and stalk through the earth ready to fight everybody; moments when you feel like you’re nobody and you don’t have anything or anyone—all are the illusions of youth.
We talk about transplants today. I wish I could transplant some of the things I know into your hearts. It would help you so much. I wish I could plant in your heart the courage that is not just pure guts and college try, but something born in you because of your relationship to Him and your faith in Him, so that you know you’re a winner regardless of what happens to you.
You don’t have to be small. Don’t be little—stand as tall as you can; draw all the grace you can. You don’t have to fight back. All things work together for good to them that love God. (Romans 8:28).
If you love Him first and you love Him best, you are linked to Him. Then in everything you face, everything you go through, you will have a faith; you will learn to sweat until you sweat it out. When the stripes are being put on your back, you will learn that you can never be so down but what you can reach out a hand to help someone else. Then you will learn that there is no defeat, and no matter how heavy the heart, you are always close to a song.
According to the book of Hebrews there was a young man who stood one day before a crowd and quoted a prophecy out of the Old Testament, “In the volume of the book it is written of me, I come to do thy will O God.” (Hebrews 10:7). That was our Lord as a young man.
Here you are. You were digged out of a pit; you were brought out of sin, out of a lot of things, to do His will.
When you seek Him first, the other things have a way of coming. What does not come doesn’t really seem to be important.
Don’t be in this walk because it’s going to be an advantage to you. Don’t be in it for what you can get—even the fellowship and joy. Don’t have any personal hang-ups. If you have personal obsessions, likes and dislikes, deep secret loves, you will fall and be out of this walk and you won’t know why it happened.
The Lord shakes everyone until they want to do His will alone. If you are serving Him because you want to be a success, He will take that away from you to see if you will still serve Him. If you are serving Him because of someone else, it’s not enough.
Although these are all good motives, there comes a time when the Lord wants to be loved for Himself alone. When you worship God with all of your heart, with all of your soul and mind and strength, everything else has a way of changing.
The sadness comes over you like the coming of the fall, when you see the leaves turning all the multitude of colors, and you rub your hands because the frost is on the ground. You think of the beautiful summer, but it will soon be gone. You walk through the brisk days with a kind of sadness.
All wise people learn to take each little moment and draw it in their heart. They see moments in which the radiance of youth is there in first love. It will change.
There comes a time when you hold the little ones in your arms and think there were none more blessed ever born on this earth then your own flesh and blood, but they will change and grow.
It’s a passing scene. There are many beautiful moments in life as one passes by, but because they are limited to time, they’re not that important. They are passing scenery. They are not things you can set your heart upon and say, “This is eternal. This will not change.”
Your youth, your insecurity, the good, the limitations—all will change. With it, you will look back and say like Alice in Wonderland, “I knew who I was this morning, but I think I’ve been many persons since then.” You keep moving on. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. (I John 2:17b).
That is the reason you are giving your body as a living sacrifice—not because you’re afraid of hell, or you are afraid of falling—but so you can know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Above everything else you want that perfect will of God in your life. You yield yourself to God because the will of God is more important to you than anything else. There will be times in which you think, “I’m on a treadmill. I’m not moving. I’m not going anywhere.” You’re looking for big things to happen, but the will of God is a state of heart; it is a state of surrender. It is a thing of subordination; everything else is put down, and He alone is Lord.
Even if you are to be one of His precious ones that adore Him, worship Him and listen to Him, and as the decades of your life slip by, you never hear His voice, He never tells you what to do, yet your life will be counted worthwhile when you stand before Him. The eager waiting of one dedicated to His will is worth more than all the accomplishments of thousands of armies. If you are one of those who wait to do His will and He never speaks to you until you stand before Him, you will still hear Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
The will of God is a state of heart. It becomes sufficient motivation for you. You strive to live for Him. You keep yourself unspotted from the world. You walk the lonely path that young folks walk, but you don’t turn away from it because you want His will above all His blessings. You would rather know that you stand to do His will than to have Him bless you with a thousand things and radiate with His glory, for nothing is as important as the perfect will of God.