Why Do I Want This So Badly? Getting Honest with God (and Yourself) About Your Heart Motivations

Emily A. Jensen and Laura Wifler are two ordinary Christian moms with an extraordinary passion for showing women how to practically apply the gospel to every aspect of motherhood, and life, in general. As busy moms, Emily and Laura would be the first to tell you how easy it can be to let our thinking and decision making slowly but surely drift away from God and onto our own wants and interests. How do we spot this subtle shift in our own thinking and how can we get our focus back on Him? It is my absolute delight to welcome Emily and Laura to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Emily A. Jensen and Laura Wifler

Every person was designed to worship. What does it mean to worship?

Does it look like bowing down or reciting prayers or even raising your hands as you sing to God?

It could, but that’s not the only way for someone to fully give themselves to God in worship. Worship is an expression of our commitment to or our adoration of something or someone—it’s spending our time, attention, care, words, and precious resources on what we love and value.

When we worship, we bring figurative offerings and sacrifices to the altar of something or someone in our lives, and we lay those things down, typically in exchange for something we desire—unconditional love and acceptance, wealth, popularity, happiness, and so on.

For Christians, we ought to direct all our worship to the Lord.

This is the sum of the first and greatest commandment: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.1

God is deserving of all that we are and all that we have. Our whole life and breath and thoughts and time and talents and money should be given up in service and gratitude to him. But as fallen humans, that’s not often how we direct our worship.

Instead, we tend to struggle with idolatry—worshipping false gods in our lives.

Though few people set up actual statues or have figurines in their houses where they might bow or pray, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have functional idols that we live for. As moms, each of us tends to have pet issues or lifestyles or things we want that are of tremendously high value to us—so high that we’re willing to give a ton of time, attention, and money to make them happen. Whether we intend it or notice it doesn’t change the fact that those things can become idols in our lives, detracting our worship from the One True God and putting it onto something or someone else.

Someone who idolizes being seen as accomplished or successful might pour an undue amount of time into their work, even to the detriment of their family, their marriage, or their physical health. Someone who idolizes being specially connected to someone talented or famous might pour significant time and money into their child’s sports training, competitive leagues, and traveling in hopes that the child will become great and thus show everyone else how great their parent is.

“Who we say we worship (God) might not actually be what we worship when we look at our lives and the way we spend our time, attention, and money.“

Few (if any) Christian moms think these things consciously. If we knew that’s what we were doing, we’d (hopefully) repent and make changes. But such thinking can creep into our lives unconsciously, and that’s also why it’s so important for us to soberly and prayerfully evaluate our lives and choices from time to time. Who we say we worship (God) might not actually be what we worship when we look at our lives and the way we spend our time, attention, and money.

When we have a strong reaction to a situation or decision or we operate in an extreme in some area of our lives or motherhood, these are like little flags of warning. Like the tears of the hurt child who comes into the room, these disproportionate or exorbitant actions or emotions might reveal a need to pause and ask, What’s going on here? What am I worshipping? Is it God or is it something else?

Uncovering and tearing down our idols to reorient our worship toward God takes humility, compassion, and curiosity. It takes prayer and the leading of the Spirit, who searches and knows our hearts. It takes being willing to notice where our time and money and energy actually go versus where we think they go. It’s like the screen-time report that our phones give at the end of each week—it might be hard to look at or something we’d prefer to ignore, but those hours and percentages reveal something about how we’re spending our lives and, even more so, what we love, desire, and value deep down.2  

Amid this spiritual self-inventory, we need to remember the following:

1. We’re not going to solve all of our problems in one go.

We can only address the things that God has shown us for now. Try not to let the search for idols paralyze you from moving forward with something that is otherwise good and seems in line with God’s will.

2. It’s helpful to examine these things in Christian community so that others can help you sort things out.

You might be too hard on yourself in an area that isn’t a big deal, or you might be avoiding addressing an area that seems to be obviously out-of-whack to others.

3. God gave us a spirit not of fear but of love and self-control.

He is bigger than our idols, and his grace is bigger than our idolatry. Trust that regular patterns of confession and repentance are doing the good work of sanctification.

“Beholding him is how we find joy and freedom.“

As Christian moms who have the Spirit and the flesh, our motives (this side of heaven) will never be wholly pure and perfect. We will not be able to fully rid ourselves of other loves or idol worship. We know how hard and frustrating this can be. But we want to pause and encourage you that you don’t have to wait until your motives seem totally pure and perfect before you make a decision in faith.

Just as it’s good to prayerfully evaluate our reasons and motivations, after a time of searching, it’s also good to lift our eyes from ourselves and focus them more firmly on God.

Beholding him is how we find joy and freedom.

Mark 12:30We’ve found the following list of questions, developed by David Powlison, helpful for believers to uncover their motivations and potential idols: David Powlison, “X Ray Questions by David Powlison,” accessed August 23, 2023

Emily A. Jensen and Laura Wifler are the cofounders of Risen Motherhood and the authors of the bestselling Risen Motherhood book. Through their ministry, podcast, and books, they help moms connect their faith to their motherhood. Sisters-in-law Emily and Laura live in central Iowa with their families.

Join Emily and Laura in exploring what it truly means to be a gospel mom, a woman who experiences renewal by Christ’s righteousness, knows her mission and purpose, and lives free from guilt and unhealthy comparison.

As friends, fellow moms, and expert guides, Emily and Laura walk women step-by-step through the practices and thinking of how to rest in the grace of Christ, gaining peace and assurance in motherhood.

This is your masterclass on gospel-meets-motherhood! Gospel Mom: How to Make Biblical Decisions and Discover the Mom God Created You to Be, along with its companion workbook Becoming a Gospel Mom, is available now anywhere books are sold.

{Our humble thanks to Harvest House Publishers for their partnership in today’s devotional.}