Proverbs 17:20
A bad motive can't achieve a good end; double-talk brings you double trouble.
One day, I'm going to learn how to play Chess. Even though I don't like playing board games because I hate losing, I've always been intrigued by Chess I guess because you have to exercise your brain for some serious critical thinking in order to win a game.
To satiate part of my curiosity, I decided to research how to play.
I found out that some pieces are allowed to make certain moves while others are limited in the kind of moves and amount of moves they can make. The objective is to checkmate the king, or in other words put the king in a position to be captured and without an ability to make a move and escape.
Here's a basic explanation of the movements per piece type:
One day, I'm going to learn how to play Chess. Even though I don't like playing board games because I hate losing, I've always been intrigued by Chess I guess because you have to exercise your brain for some serious critical thinking in order to win a game.
To satiate part of my curiosity, I decided to research how to play.
I found out that some pieces are allowed to make certain moves while others are limited in the kind of moves and amount of moves they can make. The objective is to checkmate the king, or in other words put the king in a position to be captured and without an ability to make a move and escape.
Here's a basic explanation of the movements per piece type:
♟️King can move exactly one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. At most once in every game, each king is allowed to make a special move, known as castling.
♟️Queen can move any number of vacant squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.
♟️Rook can move any number of vacant squares vertically or horizontally.
♟️Bishop can move any number of vacant squares in any diagonal direction.
♟️Knight can move one square along any rank or file and then at an angle.
If you've never played a game of Chess as I haven't yet, these movements won't make a lot of sense until we actually play a game or two. But hold that thought for a moment as I want to somewhat tie this into today's post while piggybacking off of last week's post, #Perspectives.
We examined how our current outlooks on life are a direct reflection of our perspectives. And if we find ourselves in toxic cycles then more than likely they've been fueled by some kind of skewed perspective that was either shaped by pain or trauma from our adulthood or the way we were raised and brought up in our childhood.
Making a landing here, if your perspectives are trash, then your motives will be trash as well.
You see what I did there?
These two have a sordid relationship with one another.
If you were to take inventory over all of your past movements, could you honestly say all of them were made with PURE motives? I know for a fact, a nice portion of my movements weren't made with pure motives because many of my perspectives were shaped by fear or pain.
As a result, my motives were selfish and panic driven.
As a follower of Christ we are challenged everyday to check our motives because as King Solomon so eloquently in the first part of Proverbs 17:2 said,
"A bad motive can't achieve a good end..."
You've got to be willing to ask yourself some hard questions before you make any move, 'Why am I doing this?" "What kind of outcome am I looking to achieve from this?" "Will what I do now come back to haunt me later?" "Would God be pleased with me if I go through with this?"
"Will what I do corrupt my witness?"
Wew. That last one though...
Even if you can't determine whether or not you had a motive for some of the past movements you've made, to have NO MOTIVE is even worse.
It's still a motive. A very absent-minded one at that.
I have a lot of energy right now to hit this thing harder.
Hear this,
where perspective is a vision issue, motive is a heart issue. You can't tell me that impure motives aren't originated in the heart department once one's perspective is more jacked than a little bit. It's almost like a twisted perspective will correspond with the heart and feed it documents that are then decoded and transcribed into other impurities.
In the 5th chapter of Acts, it's recorded that there was a particular man by the name of Ananias who with the consent of his wife, conspired to sell a piece of their property, took some of the proceeds of the sell for he and his wife, then laid the rest at Apostle Peter's feet.
When Apostle Peter exposed the conspiracy, Ananias fell dead. Three hours later, his wife Sapphira was asked by Apostle Peter if the amount that he was given by her husband was accurate. She told him yes not knowing what had transpired earlier with her husband.
Apostle Peter exposed the lie and she fell out and died too.
Ok so why this even happened won't mean much if we don't put this caboose in reverse and go back to the latter part of Acts 4 right during Pentecost when all the saints were filled with Holy Spirit.
Everyone was on one accord, flowing in heart and mind. No one claimed any of their possessions as their own and shared everything they had. They were operating in so much boldness in the spirit that no one was needy among them. People who had houses and land sold it and laid all the sales at Apostle Peter's feet to be distributed to all those in need.
Fast forward back to Acts 5, you have two finesse gods falling dead because the MOTIVES of their hearts were exposed and too heavy to bear. It's often believed that God punished them for what they did. Oh the contraire! They made a move out of turn and got checkmated.
I have no idea what happened between the latter part of Acts 4 and the beginning of Acts 5 to have these two operating outside of the influence of Holy Spirit.
But I can make a very intelligent guess.
I mean, what would provoke someone to make steps toward an act of benevolence only to turn around and commit an act of greed?
Apostle Peter basically was wondering the same thing in verse 4 when he asked Ananias,
"Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
Look here, their motive was to pretend like they were moving like everyone else while secretly protecting their own presumed need. They probably never had a correct perspective about giving anyway so their motive to commit an act they had no plans on participating in, in the first place, automatically followed! Therefore they suffered the consequences of their actions.
And here we have it folks, tying this into our game of Chess,
(That we haven't actually played yet. *wink*)
whatever is king in your heart, has the potential of being exposed when you start moving with ill intent. Stay undelivered in your perspectives, you stay heavily corrupted in your motives. Keep moving out of turn you leave yourself open to be influenced by something else other than Holy Spirit.
If God truly is the king of your heart every move you make will be blessed and you will never have to worry about being cornered or betrayed by other movements you've made because all of the movements you've made will be in order.
And the upswing to this is you won't have to worry about other people and their ill motives catching YOU off guard either, when all your pieces (movements) are in agreement and alignment.
Does that make sense?
I was talking to a close friend the other day and we accepted that God doesn't punish people for the sake or pleasure of seeing people in pain.
That's not His nature.
He just pulls His grace off a matter to allow the consequences of our actions to befall us in effort to expose the lesson or revelation which should correct us.
So when everything has been said and done, we can be a people humbled, blameless, and postured to hear one day,
"Well done, My good and faithful servant."
You see what I did there?
These two have a sordid relationship with one another.
If you were to take inventory over all of your past movements, could you honestly say all of them were made with PURE motives? I know for a fact, a nice portion of my movements weren't made with pure motives because many of my perspectives were shaped by fear or pain.
As a result, my motives were selfish and panic driven.
As a follower of Christ we are challenged everyday to check our motives because as King Solomon so eloquently in the first part of Proverbs 17:2 said,
"A bad motive can't achieve a good end..."
You've got to be willing to ask yourself some hard questions before you make any move, 'Why am I doing this?" "What kind of outcome am I looking to achieve from this?" "Will what I do now come back to haunt me later?" "Would God be pleased with me if I go through with this?"
"Will what I do corrupt my witness?"
Wew. That last one though...
Even if you can't determine whether or not you had a motive for some of the past movements you've made, to have NO MOTIVE is even worse.
It's still a motive. A very absent-minded one at that.
I have a lot of energy right now to hit this thing harder.
Hear this,
where perspective is a vision issue, motive is a heart issue. You can't tell me that impure motives aren't originated in the heart department once one's perspective is more jacked than a little bit. It's almost like a twisted perspective will correspond with the heart and feed it documents that are then decoded and transcribed into other impurities.
In the 5th chapter of Acts, it's recorded that there was a particular man by the name of Ananias who with the consent of his wife, conspired to sell a piece of their property, took some of the proceeds of the sell for he and his wife, then laid the rest at Apostle Peter's feet.
When Apostle Peter exposed the conspiracy, Ananias fell dead. Three hours later, his wife Sapphira was asked by Apostle Peter if the amount that he was given by her husband was accurate. She told him yes not knowing what had transpired earlier with her husband.
Apostle Peter exposed the lie and she fell out and died too.
Ok so why this even happened won't mean much if we don't put this caboose in reverse and go back to the latter part of Acts 4 right during Pentecost when all the saints were filled with Holy Spirit.
Everyone was on one accord, flowing in heart and mind. No one claimed any of their possessions as their own and shared everything they had. They were operating in so much boldness in the spirit that no one was needy among them. People who had houses and land sold it and laid all the sales at Apostle Peter's feet to be distributed to all those in need.
Fast forward back to Acts 5, you have two finesse gods falling dead because the MOTIVES of their hearts were exposed and too heavy to bear. It's often believed that God punished them for what they did. Oh the contraire! They made a move out of turn and got checkmated.
I have no idea what happened between the latter part of Acts 4 and the beginning of Acts 5 to have these two operating outside of the influence of Holy Spirit.
But I can make a very intelligent guess.
I mean, what would provoke someone to make steps toward an act of benevolence only to turn around and commit an act of greed?
Apostle Peter basically was wondering the same thing in verse 4 when he asked Ananias,
"Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
Look here, their motive was to pretend like they were moving like everyone else while secretly protecting their own presumed need. They probably never had a correct perspective about giving anyway so their motive to commit an act they had no plans on participating in, in the first place, automatically followed! Therefore they suffered the consequences of their actions.
And here we have it folks, tying this into our game of Chess,
(That we haven't actually played yet. *wink*)
whatever is king in your heart, has the potential of being exposed when you start moving with ill intent. Stay undelivered in your perspectives, you stay heavily corrupted in your motives. Keep moving out of turn you leave yourself open to be influenced by something else other than Holy Spirit.
If God truly is the king of your heart every move you make will be blessed and you will never have to worry about being cornered or betrayed by other movements you've made because all of the movements you've made will be in order.
And the upswing to this is you won't have to worry about other people and their ill motives catching YOU off guard either, when all your pieces (movements) are in agreement and alignment.
Does that make sense?
I was talking to a close friend the other day and we accepted that God doesn't punish people for the sake or pleasure of seeing people in pain.
That's not His nature.
He just pulls His grace off a matter to allow the consequences of our actions to befall us in effort to expose the lesson or revelation which should correct us.
So when everything has been said and done, we can be a people humbled, blameless, and postured to hear one day,
"Well done, My good and faithful servant."
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