Works Tried By Fire Series

And he goes, "Yeah, but you know what? The first five years you served on the worship team, you did it because you thought you were a pretty hot guitar player. You did it because you wanted everybody to know how good you were." And he said, "But you know what? Here's the thing. Something happened in year six, and you know what happened? You started to change, and all of a sudden your motive became more for me, and that was like a silver time from years five to ten. But year 11, man, you really brought it to another level, and then that worship leading and playing turned to gold. And you know what? Boy, by the end of your time leading worship and being a part of the band, it was gold, silver, precious stone." But it started there and moved to good.

Which leads me to this thought: It takes a lifetime to get to pure motives. It takes a lifetime to get to pure motives. You think, "Well, I'll wait until I get to pure motives." It just takes forever to get there. The longer I serve God the more I realize what was my motive there, why did I do that? Oh, I didn't have a good motive, and I feel like I'm refining my motives. And they are getting better and better and they are getting closer to God.

And the other thing that I've learned about this is the motive percentage moves. Sometimes I'm doing things out of poor motive and then good motive and then great motive and then right back to poor motive. How many know that? And the flesh rears its ugly head and it's back to poor motive. And you're like, "No, no. Don't do that. Okay, back to good motive." Okay, and I'm trying to stay over here, but every once in a while the flesh comes in and I do things out of the wrong motive. But it moves your whole life, and I want God to be able to judge the percentage. He's the great judge. It doesn't give us an excuse not to examine our motives. We need to examine them.

You know, God may be calling you to step out of the stoplight; embrace anonymity. You know, you don't need to give that gift to get your name recognized; you do it in an anonymous way. God may tell you to hold your tongue on the credit. How many know that's really hard? You know, they are like, "Hey, great job, Tim! What a great job. You did great on the project."

And you're like, "No, it wasn't Tim, it was Rob. Rob did a great job!" And you're clapping for him, and you're like, "Hey, he didn't do it." How many know that's really hard to hold your tongue because you want the credit.

God is saying, "Hey, hey, hey, hold, hold, hold. I know who did it. There is coming a day that I'll judge."

But you want to say, "I did it."

But God's like, "Hold your tongue. Have the right motive. Do it because you love me, not because you get the credit."

We can deflect the praise and so, you know what, hey, maybe did you it, and then God is like saying, "Deflect it. Let everybody share the victory. It is not just yours, let everybody share."

The last thought on that would be this: Let's give God something to burn. Let's give God something to burn. On judgment day let's remember this is a moment that whatever we have is going to be there, and he's doing to burn it, he's going to try it; wood, hay, stubble, gold, silver, precious stone. My theory is this, I want a giant pile for God to burn. That's my theory. I want a giant pile for God to burn. Knowing that all these piles are going to shrink, I want a giant pile to say, "This is all that I did on this earth for you, God." And then God can burn it down.