Here are some thoughts I’ve been having regarding motivation and desire. I thought you might like to reflect on them.
Motivation has to do with why you act on this desire over against that one. What motivates you determines what desires you choose to entertain. If you are motivated to just serve yourself, you act on self-serving desires.
Allow me to borrow an analogy from the computer world.
Until we are regenerated by God’s Spirit, motivation is a hardware problem. Our inwardly defective motherboard only cranks out self-serving desires and only recognizes coding — thought patterns — that cater to those desires. All other coding that would suggest living to love God or to self-sacrificially bless others is instantly redirected to the trash bin as gibberish.
However, God, in kindness, to some extent is constantly overriding the defective motherboard with influence that gives unbelievers desires for something more satisfying than living just for themselves. His activity gives them a choice and and even sufficient strength to act on his influence.
Consider this: “From one man he made every nation of the human race to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope around for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” Acts 17:26-27 (NET 2nd Ed.)
That desire to seek God and grope around for him is a gift from God — influence overriding the defective hardware.
If a person starts to act on that influence and hangs in there, they find God. God answers by regenerating their inner life. The motherboard is replaced with one that generates motivation to live for God and God supplies the corresponding desires. Since it now recognizes coding that caters to desires to live for him, the Word of God comes alive because it’s full of information on how to live for God.
However, even though the hardware problem is now repaired, a software problem remains. There’s old coding in there, some hacked in by the malicious encoder, satan himself. There’s malware and destructive viruses still generating command lines trying to reintroduce old, self-serving motives and desires.
What’s going to win the day — our lingering, old motivation and set of desires or our new motivation and set of desires?
At bottom, if you are a follower of Jesus you are already motivated to live for him. That motivation was his gift to you and came installed with the new motherboard. But the old coding has to be overwritten with new coding. How?
It comes down to this simple truth: think about what you find desirable and your desire for it will grow.
In other words, the more we direct our thoughts to what the Holy Spirit desires, the easier it will get to think even more about what the Holy Spirit desires. That momentum of thought will overwrite the corrupt coding. It will increasingly become natural and instinctive for us to set our minds on what the Holy Spirit desires.
