Matthew 6:1 beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise, you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.

Can you imagine standing before Jesus at the Judgment seat and He is looking in His book about your life, and He says, “Oh that is a good work deserving a nice reward! Oops there is a note by it that says you already got your reward from the people you were trying to impress, to bad.” Then he says it again and again and again and again. . . Then Jesus gets to the end of the book on your life, and your hands are empty; too bad, so sad. You can get your rewards now or you can get them in heaven from Jesus. The big difference is that rewards that we get in this life don’t last long but the rewards we get from Jesus in heaven last for eternity.

It is a good idea to think about what motivates us. We were created by God with glory and majesty, His glory and majesty, but we lost it the first time we sinned. The result is that we all have a huge hole inside of us and we crave glory. We can attempt to fill it with praise from people or wait until we stand before Jesus and have Him give us glory and honor for what we have done for Him with our life. We are all pulled very hard by our flesh to be people pleasers because of our hunger for the glory we lost, and we have to constantly work on our motives and guard our hearts.