May 24 Of Hidden Motives

Proverbs 16: 2 All a man's ways seem innocent to him but motives are weighed by the LORD.

I know this is from last week, but it seems like many of the entries since them have been related to this one. The first few words: all a man's ways seem innocent to him, caused me to stop, to reflect on what the writer is really saying. The man in question, who reviews his ways and calls them innocent, is only evaluating those ways from his own perspective, from how they impact his life.

I have to be upfront about what I am going to say here, I seldom get out of bed and think through my agenda for the day to determine how it is going to affect the rest of the world. what it is going to say about who I really am. Instead, I run through my to-do list and consider how I am going to get it done...how I am going to achieve my goals set for my good that day.

How different it might be if I thought through what God would want me to do, or how He might want me to do it, or how my plans would affect those touched by them. Good choices, selfless choices require contemplation, and too often we march through our day with no time for reflection. Oh, we may be doing what we think of as good things, harmless things even, but if we took the time to think through our motives for all of our choices, perhaps we would make some different ones.

The word meditate appears 15 times and the word consider 71 times in the New America Standard Version of the Bible. It would appear that God places significance on our taking time to think about things - to mull them over so we can make right choices. I wonder if our failure to do this is a by-product of our American culture and the false virtue of busyness. It is almost as though the busier we are, the more virtuous we are. And I am pretty sure that God does not think of it that way.

He would be more honored by our taking the time, even building it into our schedule, to slow down, and think about what we do and why we do it....so that we act with pure motives and He gets the glory.