John 21:15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.

I did a bible search using the word motivation. Not surprisingly the results came up zero, in usage and in the topical index. I tried five of the more popular versions of the bible and found that each one posted John 21:15-17 as an example of motivation.

The essence of these passages is that if we love the Lord, we should love what He loves, in the same way He loves them. He also reiterated that sentiment for being disciples.

John 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

To paraphrase another verse Jesus left us; if you love the Lord do what He tells you to do. I understand that the majority of teachings on that verse want to place the focus on the commandments which we have demonstrated time and time again as being impossible to keep.

If you place the focus on our love for Him, it overshadows performance in favor of relationship. The reason for that is evidence in His sacrifice. We couldn’t do it for ourselves, so He did it for us. Now having accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts by faith nothing has changed. We still cannot do it. He will do it for us.

Recently I tried to press the issue that we should consider ourselves betrothed to Christ. That is a more intimate relationship than student, disciple, servant or friend. In this intimate relationship we will discover that if we love Him that way the things He tells us will be more intimate.