Growth

Not Even A Lean

If you have ever seen military personnel stand walk in formation, you know that they do so with a precision that is unseen in other parts of our culture. Toe-to-toe or side-by-side, they stand in such a way that if you were to take an aerial picture of them, you would see that they are in a perfectly straight line. No one leans to the right or the left; they are fixed in their formation.

Psalm 141 tells Christians that our hearts should be similarly fixed upon God and His ways. As verse 4 states, “Do not let my heart incline to any evil” which means that we are so focused on walking the narrow path that we do not even lean towards the path of destruction. We are so committed to walk in the straight ways of God, that we do not dare to even look towards the direction of sin.  Just as military personnel concentrate their efforts on maintaining the integrity of their formation, so the Christian should concentrate on maintaining the integrity of our faith, walking in the way God has commanded.

May our hearts be so focused on God and His ways that we do not even lean in another direction.

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Growth

Motivated

If you’re driving down the southern California freeways, and all of the sudden see a spate of red lights flicker in front of you, you’re fairly safe in presuming one of two things just happened. Either there’s something in the road that people are trying to avoid, or they just noticed that there was a police car sitting on the side of the road.  On the LA freeways, if there’s not traffic (which can be a rarity in itself), there’s a generally accepted principle to drive beyond the speed limit. However, seeing the police car there reinforces to drivers that they are in fact doing something illegal, and quickly motivates them to hit the brakes.

What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that as soon as the individuals are beyond the police officer’s view, they speed up again. They are only motivated to obey the rules when they think they might get in trouble for it. After that, they are back to their old ways of barreling down the highway.

As Christians, we often do the same thing. We know what we are doing is wrong, however, we are only motivated to stop when we think we might get in trouble for it. When that fear is removed, we are back to our old ways of doing things.

There are two ways to look at this. First, we should be reminded that we are never outside the watchful eye of our Lord. He keeps careful account and He disciplines those He loves (Prov. 3:12) so that we may be more like Him. Therefore, we rightly could always fear “getting in trouble” for doing wrong. However, it’s also worth noting that the mature Christian is motivated by a far deeper force – they are motivated by love. They do the right thing not because they are fearful of punishment, but because they do not desire to disappoint their Savior.

Fear and love can both be powerful motivators. As we grow in Christ, may we be increasingly motivated by love.

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