Esther: Seeing Our Invisible God in an Uncertain WorldExemplo

Your Motives Don’t Matter as Much as You Think

Today’s key verse, Proverbs 16:2, says, “All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.”(NIV)

When my friend confessed to me one day, I felt it to the tips of my toes. “In the beginning, my motives weren’t good,” she admitted.

She's got a huge heart, but when she started volunteering at an organization that helps previously incarcerated women, there was a whole range of reasons for her service. Combined with her generosity, she admitted some selfish motivations in the mix. The pain of her realization hit me hard because I’ve been there, too.

Being human means that we’re all a complicated blend of good, bad, and very ugly. The people in the book of Esther are a great example. Let me introduce you to a few of those characters with both a flaw and a strength.

King Xerxes was brutal in his selfishness, but he also saved Esther’s people in his favor for her.

Mordecai bravely thwarted an assassination attempt, but he didn’t hesitate to send Esther, his adopted daughter, into an unpredictable king’s arms.

Esther risked her own life to intervene in her people’s future genocide, but commentators agree that she sought revenge when she requested a second day to slay her enemies.

Just as the name of God is never written in the book of Esther, the character’s motives are not spelled out, either, but we see glimpses of them. In this epic, true story, there’s love, hatred, selfishness, bravery, revenge, and passivity woven throughout.

As humans, we can swing between a whole gamut of motives in a single day, but before you get too disheartened, I want to say something revolutionary.

Your motives don’t matter as much as you think.

In the case of each of the people mentioned above, God worked despite, and sometimes through, their motives. It puts our presence in His story into proper perspective…

Do our motives matter? Absolutely.

Proverbs 16:2 tells us, “All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.” (NIV)

Are our good behaviors and pure motives essential to His story? Nope. We can look at the people in Esther and see the truth.

God works despite Xerxes’ self-centeredness and anger.

God uses Mordecai even though he’s a less-than-perfect parent.

God places Esther’s story in the Bible, joining her story with His forever, even though she’s just as flawed as we are.

Through her story, God shows us that Proverbs 16:3 is true as well, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.” (NIV)

God’s providence is immovable, despite His people’s wavering faithfulness. His work is uninterrupted by human actions that seem irredeemable to us.

As you process these truths, you may wonder, Do our motives matter at all? Yes! Although pure motives aren’t essential to God’s work, He desires to make us spotless in every way.

I’ve seen this truth play out in Lynn’s life in real-time. I remember our early conversations about her involvement at Changed Choices, and it’s true that her original motives were mixed.

But over time, I’ve watched our good God use those increasingly purified motives along with her commitment to Him. He has refined Lynn and her motives until they shine like gold. In His wondrous mixture of Providence and Sovereignty, the way He reigns over everything with love and care, He’s leveraged flawed motives to do great work in and through Lynn. She has become a gift to the previously incarcerated women that she loves, and they’re a treasure to her too. It’s a beautiful thing to see.

If you’ve recognized mixed motives in your own life, don’t despair. And don’t let them interrupt the process as you listen, feel, do, and speak. Instead, give them now to the One who is able to use and transform our motives as we commit ourselves to Him.

Please pray with me as we wrap up the final day in our series:

Lord, I confess that my motives are mixed. Please refine me so that my motives are pure in my actions, service, decisions, and how I treat others: In Jesus’ name, Amen.