Our motives matter. Approaching the Christian life as merely a series of outward behaviors isn’t healthy or biblical. We can’t always know our motives, but it helps to stay in God’s Word and to soul search along the way to try to find out what drives us.

• “Our motivation for commitment, discipline, and obedience is as important to God as our performance, perhaps even more so.”
• “Such a works-oriented motivation is essentially self-serving, prompted more by what we think we gain or lose than by a grateful response to the grace he has already given us through Jesus Christ.”
• “Obedience performed from a legalistic motive–from fear of consequences or to gain favor with God–is not pleasing to Him. Abraham Booth (1734-1806), an English pastor and author, wrote, ‘To constitute a work truly good, it must be done from a right principle, performed by a right rule, and intended for a right end.’ Booth defined a right principle as our love for God. He defined the right rule as God’s revealed will in Scripture. The right end–the right goal–is the glory of God.”

-Jerry Bridges, Holiness Day by Day, Week 20 / Friday

Ân điển, chứ không phải những quy tắc / Grace not rules