1 CORINTHIANS 16:14:  Let all that you do be done in love.”

It is less than ten words, yet, like a small stick of dynamite, it contains enormous power. In fact, it is the greatest power in the earth. It heals hurts. It carries burdens. It lifts the downcast. It removes the dark clouds of depression. And in God’s work of the Gospel, it saves sinners. These nine words are in today’s scripture–let all that you do be done in love. But something else is important about doing all things in love. Before a watching God, if we don’t, then everything we say and do is worthless. The Apostle Paul makes this clear in the opening verses of the love chapter in our New Testaments – If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing(1 Corinthians 13:1-3).Paul is telling us that without love in the action and as the motive, everything amounts to nothing. That should cause an extended time of reflection and self-examination to probe our hearts as to why we do what we do in both the daily things we do and in our specific areas of the Lord’s service we are involved. No love. No profit. No love. No acceptance before God. No love. No rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

So, if love is our motive in everything from acts to words, how would we know? Well, at least three signs are apparent when all we are doing in our lives is motivated by love and thus accepted by the Lord

First, actions motivated by love are centered on God’s glory, not ours. We do all things for His sake. And the way we know this describes us is we will do all things without seeking attention or recognition. We will be content to do all we do for God with no desire for any praise from another person.

Another sign we are motivated by love in all we do is the level of our activity displaying love will be sacrificial; really sacrificial, like really costly – By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers (1 John 3:16). Howard Hendricks once said, “The service that counts is the service that costs.” And love is our motivation in all things, it naturally is displayed by high personal cost.

Finally, a love-motivated Christian life never takes a break. There are no vacations in a life of love, no time off, no long weekends away. When Christ’s love is controlling a Christian, a day never goes by without some love-motivated act of service or word flowing from them; just like it was when the God who is love walked and lived among us.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to keep checking what is the motive in all I do in word and deed.”

QUOTE: “Unless the motive in all we do is love, it stands before the eyes of the Lord as worthless.”