Les Henson
Whenever we approach God, we must always be on the lookout for mixed motives because it is challenging for us to engage God without an agenda that involves mixed motivation. Even when we experience conversion, we rarely do so without an agenda. We may assume that we come to faith because the Spirit is working in our lives, but a parallel movement is the human side of the encounter that we must recognise. The human side involves our mixed motives for coming to faith, and we rarely, if ever, receive Christ without thinking of what we will get out of the transaction. Indeed, we need to acknowledge that even our highest expression of spirituality spring from mixed motives.
Likewise, we taint our commitments to serve others by the motives we bring to the process. Are we seeking acknowledgement and commendation? Are we doing this for our glory? These are questions we need to keep asking because we are so prone to seeking own our benefit and fulfilling our own agenda that we need to continually test our motivations bringing them under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. These realities do not prevent us from serving God or other people, but we do need to face the truth of our motivations if we are to grow in grace and the service of God. Such transformation needs to be a continual process. Still, it will only happen if we continually seek to bring our mixed motivations before God and under the searchlight of his word allowing the Spirit to take us on the journey of transformation so that we conform our hearts, minds and motives to Jesus Lordship.
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