When Life HurtsSample

Motives matter

Motives matter, don’t they? Sometimes a man tells a woman she’s beautiful because he’s a nice guy; other times it’s because he wants to take her back to his apartment. Sometimes a teenage boy gives his mom a big hug because he’s a kind kid; other times it’s because he wants 20 bucks for pizza. The reason we are wary of a salesman with a big smile is because we know that motives matter, that a person’s inner intentions matter as much, if not more, than their outer actions.

That’s true with God too. Since God is love, his desire is to love us and to have us love him back. He doesn’t want to use us for our praise, and he doesn’t want us to use him for his presents. God is not a vending machine. He’s a Father. And he wants to have a genuine relationship with us.

This is one of the strangely beautiful parts about pain. Jesus’ friend Peter wrote that your suffering, grief, and trials prove the “genuineness of your faith” (1 Peter 1:7). In other words, your pain proves it. If you were using God for a good life, then you wouldn’t praise him when life wasn’t good. If God was just a vending machine who exchanged the coins of worship for the candy of blessings, then you wouldn’t worship when God held back blessings.

Pain is anything but fun. Yet it has a grand purpose in our spiritual lives. It proves to the devil and the watching world that we genuinely love God.