Faith Reflections

External VS Internal Motivation

One of my favorite experiments that I’ve come across was conducted with college students where some were paid for doing puzzles and others were not. Later, all were given some free time to read magazines, do more puzzles, or whatever. Those who had been paid for doing the puzzles worked less on puzzles in their free time than those who had not been paid. “Rewards had…turned the play into work. Extrinsic rewards undermined intrinsic motivation.” (The Human Connection, Bolt & Myers, p. 78)

Are we externally or internally motivated? I suspect most of us would answer, “Well, that depends on the situation.” In many situations we may feel we have both external and internal motivation. A job for which we get paid certainly has the primary external motivation of being paid for doing the job, but if we’re only motivated by the money we’re probably not going to last at it or do a good job at it. In a close relationship we should have a primary internal motivation of caring about the person, but we also may have some external motivation of not wanting to make the person mad or wanting the person to give us what we want.

I think it’s safe to say that internal motivation is almost always better than external motivation. This rings true to the teaching of the Scriptures. We sometimes think of God’s laws being external, even having been written on stone tablets and hand-delivered from God by Moses. But it has always been God’s intention that we internalize Him and follow after Him with primarily internal motivation. The prophet was speaking for God when he declared, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

Here’s how I see this working out in a practical way: Anything I believe to be a right and good thing to do should be part of God’s call upon my life, if not I shouldn’t do it. Because it is part of God’s call upon me then this should become my primary motivation for doing it, not because I’m getting paid, or that I feel it’s expected of me, or for any other possible externally motivated reasons. I want to do it because it’s God’s plan for me, because I want to please Him and serve Him. Shifting from humanly oriented external motivation to divinely called internal motivation is the way to live!

Just a Thought…

Just a Thought…

The Danger of the Drift

As a boy, one of my favorite Bible stories was about Samson. He was a very strong man — the Bible’s version of the Hulk, who first appeared in comics when I was twelve, in 1962. I remember seeing pictures in my Sunday school literature of Samson carrying off a city gate and of him pushing apart two pillars that held up a building, killing himself and many other people.

Of course, my Sunday school teachers steered clear of some of the details of Samson’s life that would give the story an “R” rating, at the least, for sexual content and violence. When you take a serious look at his short life you realize that he started well but quickly began to mess up his life. Though he was a strong man, he was weak in resisting the culture around him and the passions within him. He consistently drifted from the divine call on his life.

There are many ways we can drift from the best we can be or do. In our marriages. It’s like the couple where every few years the wife came down with a cold. The first year when the newly wed husband heard his wife sneeze he told her, “Oh, honey bunny, you better lay down and take it easy. I’ll get you something nice and warm to drink.” The next year she sneezes and he says, “That’s sounds like a cold coming on.” By the tenth year of marriage, upon hearing his wife sneeze, he says, “Stay away from me, I don’t want to get your cold!”  There’s so many other areas of life we can drift – our thought life, our work ethic, in how honest we are, our walk with God.

The journey of life is a series of steps. We rarely jump directly to success or failure, to holiness or sinfulness. It’s one step at a time, in one direction or the other. Both bad habits and good habits form slowly, but form they do!

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” (Colossians 4:2)

Our Ever Changing Lives

On a wall in our home we have two frames, one for each of our two children, now adults. Each frame is filled with a dozen class pictures from kindergarten through graduation. Each picture shows growth and maturing from the one taken the year before. I’ve also looked at some pictures of myself taken just a few years ago and when compared to those taken more recently, well, I’m not going to comment!

The only thing that never seems to change is that things are always changing! All of our lives will look different a year from now, more different three years from now, and even more different five years from now. That’s why we often picture life as a journey — because we never stay in the same place. In a sense, we’re always moving on to new ground: the new territory of tomorrow.

As we move through life with its landscape always changing, the question becomes whether we’ll let the new territory conquer us or whether we’re going to conquer the new territory. We can’t stop change; but we can manage change.

What changes are happening in your life and mine? God, who Himself never changes, has a plan on how these changes can work out in a good way, for He is a good God.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:7)

Just a Thought…

Joy for Each Day

Last evening I walked through the small woods behind our home and out into the open field. Across the field I saw a mother fox and her cubs, their coats painted even a brighter orange by the setting sun. Then this morning I had a chance to do some reading on my patio, hardly needing my sweatshirt. It was a glorious morning. I just finished an hour and a half with my accountability buddies, two other guys who are senior pastors. We sat outside, sharing our hurts and hopes, laughing and praying. It was a good time. Now I’m sitting here typing this while sipping a cup of coffee.

I could also give you a description of events and situations that have me concerned, leave me feeling burdened, and even tempt me to gripe to whoever will listen. Don’t worry, I’ll resist doing so with you here and now! That’s the point I want to make: we can choose what to focus on. It’s not that we shouldn’t be realistic and honest about what we’re facing, it’s just that we can get fixated on it to the detriment of the day.

At the beginning of most of the meetings, rehearsals, and gatherings at Mayfair-Plymouth we’ve taken up the habit of sharing “God happenings” with each other. We tell of ways in which we’ve recently seen God working. It’s been such a good experience.

God is at work from when morning dawns to when the evening fades, but we can miss much of it unless we pay attention. What goes wrong seems to shout for attention while what goes right is a whisper that often goes unheard. It takes intentional effort to hear the chirping cricket over the squealing tires. But this is a choice people of faith in God should make. After all, God is a good God and continually does good things, even though this world is fallen and broken.

So, look around. What is God up to? “The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.” (Psalm 65:8)

Just a Thought….

Just a Thought…

Law of Inertia, Law of Life

Isaac Newton’s (1643- 1727) first law of motion, the law of inertia, states that an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by external forces. Likewise, an object that is in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by external forces.

This law of inertia is not only a law of physics but of life! I know, for instance, that when I’m resting I have a tremendous tendency to stay resting! I’ve said on more than one occasion that I love work so much that I could sit and look at it all day! On the other hand, a child that’s had too much holiday candy is an object that stays in motion, way past the appropriate bedtime.

Most of us get going and do things because of external forces that will keep us from staying at rest; we have to earn money so we get up and go to work, the dog won’t stop barking until we let him out, those kinds of things. But it seems to me that we often don’t overcome inertia when it comes to some really important areas of life. Apparently the external forces aren’t great enough to keep us from neglecting putting adequate effort into important relationships. We often find ourselves overlooking doing something good that we could do. We frequently fail to focus on building a stronger faith in God. We can be like the man in a story of Jesus’ who, given one talent to manage while his boss was gone, did nothing with it, unlike his two peers who worked at multiplying the two and five talents entrusted to them. (Matthew 25:14-29)

Sometimes it’s not a matter of overcoming the inertia of doing nothing. Sometimes it’s a matter of overcoming the inertia that keeps us speeding along in a certain direction when we should be changing directions, or slowing down. In Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan we label the Samaritan character “good” because he overcame the inertia to keep going to his destination.  He stopped to help the injured man, while the two men who were further down the road kept on going. (Luke 10:33-37)

In some ways we’re called to get going. In other ways we’re called to slow down or stop. It’s a challenge to live out the law of inertia properly.

The law of inertia states that only external forces can move an object from rest to motion or from motion to rest. The ultimate external force is, of course, God. But one of the messages of the Bible is that God wants to internalize Himself within us. Some of us are fond of describing this as “taking Jesus into our hearts.”

God can become a wonderful combination of both an external and internal force. We just have to be intentional about letting Him be the major force in how we move through each day! The prophet Jeremiah declared, “Now reform your ways and your actions and obey the Lord your God.” (Jeremiah 26:13)