Right Motivations Lifts Our Burdens

The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg
(My Thoughts)

Pages 35-40

“Spirituality wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.” -Dallas Willard

When the focus of our lives is to appear to be spiritual, it is exhausting. Doing spiritual activity only to appear to others that we are spiritual or to deceive ourselves into thinking we are spiritual, leads to a miserable and tired life.

What we do for God should flow from a heart that loves God and is seeking to know Him more.

Therefore, spiritual activities such as Quiet Times, going to church and church activities, reading good Christian books, or witnessing should be done with the attitude of loving God and loving others. If these activities are done solely to follow the rules of good Christian conduct, we will miss the point, become judgmental of those not following the rules, and eventually become so weary of trying to measure up to “God’s” standards that we will drop out of the race.

This new perspective doesn’t change our Christian practices, it merely changes our motivation and goals.

Ortberg writes “The pursuit of righteousness is always an exhausting pursuit when it seeks a distorted goal” page 38.

To have a daily Quiet Time or go witnessing with your small group can be exhausting if your goal is to impress others or score brownie points with God. But if they are done out of love for God and others, then they are not burdensome to our soul. These should be our goals:

  • We read the Word to understand God and His life-giving principles.
  • We pray to seek God’s help and gain strength for life’s challenges
  • We meet with other Christians to get and receive encouragement
  • We share the gospel to help others find what we have found in Christ and because the expansion of God’s kingdom is in the center of His heart.
  • We serve others because we realize that in so doing we serve Jesus Christ – “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'” Matt 25:40

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