Part Three: “You Have Power – It’s a Fact!” Motivation You Need!
Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth.”
I don’t know about you, but when I watch something that motivates me, I immediately feel strengthened and empowered. When I watched the first “Rocky” movie, I went out and ran five miles. Motivation acted upon equals power.
Those that have made Jesus their Lord and Savior have great power available to them as I laid out in Part One. You and I – we have untapped motivation available to us to help draw out that power. God gave us power so that we would benefit from it. What is really cool is that we have natural motivators easily available to us to help “keep the power on” and experience it working in our lives.
I want to help you see that you have natural God given motivators within you that, when properly understood and trained, will help you draw out more of God’s power from within. Those natural motivators are called instincts. Let me explain.
Instinctive behavior is generally defined or thought of as “an inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species.” For example: the Monarch Butterfly only eats milkweed plants. How do they know to do that? It’s instinctive. As the weather gets colder, monarchs begin their annual migration. Tens of millions of these butterflies migrate from all over to spend the winter in a mountain forest in Central Mexico. How to they know how to get there and back? Instinct!
People have instincts too! For example; people instinctively use their voices to communicate. Babies are too young to talk and so they cry to communicate until they can learn to talk to communicate. How do they know to cry and then talk? How do they know to crawl and then walk? Instinct!
There are God given inward instincts within animals and people. You can train the behavior of those instincts to achieve greater motivation and power.
The first of four instinctive behaviors most people do frequently throughout their life is – talk to themselves. People engage in self-talk all the time. You see people talking to themselves as they walk down the street or as they drive in their car. They talk to themself when they are intently working on something. They talk to themself when they are frustrated or mad. Athletes talk to themself as they are focusing on their next move. Business people talk to themself as they get ready to meet with a client. I could go on and on but the bottom line is this – people instinctively talk to themself. If this truly is an instinctive quality, then there is natural motivation – it happens without effort. We simply do it. If there is natural motivation, then why not recognize that fact and use it to our advantage?
If we talk to ourselves all the time anyway, why not speak words that will benefit us and others? Why not talk the promises of God? Why not profess them over our life? Why not profess who we are in Christ? Why not talk to ourselves about God and how awesome He is? Why not talk about the victory that He will lead us to in every situation? Does that sound crazy? It’s not.
Most people are already doing the opposite. They are talking unbelief and cursing over themself. Maybe you’ve heard them in their negative self talk.
“I just know I am going to get laid off.”
“They’ll probably ask me to take a pay cut.”
“It’s flu season, I’ll get the flu for sure.”
“I’ll catch a cold. I get one every year.”
“We are never going to have enough money to get a bigger house.”
“This country is going down the tubes.”
“I’ll never find the right man to marry.” “No one would marry me.”
“I’ll never be any good at this.”
“Why do I have to work for people that are so dense?”
These mumblings of self-talk go on and on in a diversity of places.
People talk to themselves like this every day. They instinctively self-talk speaking doubt and unbelief and cursing their life.
We are motivated to talk to ourselves so why not just say the right thing using – “faith- filled edifying words.” After all, Eph. 4:29 says, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”
Imagine if you hooked up the instinct and motivation of talking to yourself – with saying right and godly and motivating things. Better yet, putting the Word of God in your mouth!
Today’s Fresh Manna verse reminds us that God used His Word to create. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.”
Proverbs 18:21 reminds us “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”
Don’t just talk to yourself. Either talk with God or talk to yourself about His love and promises to you! Fill your mouth with words with faith and thanksgiving! IT DOESN’T COST YOU ANYTHING BUT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING – and you have the natural instinct to do it
Say or pray, “Heavenly Father, I thank you that your Word says you have given me the mind of Christ. I thank you that I have your thoughts and your ways within me. You said you wisdom liberally to those who ask. I ask you and thank you for your wisdom operating in my life. I thank you that your word says that because I love and obey you, you bless everything I put my hand to. I love you and praise you for blessing all I do today. I praise you that your word is working to create everything that is good and beautiful for my life. I thank you for your promise that you would withhold no good thing from those that love you. I am blessed to be a blessing today and I praise you for it!
Which self talk do you think is better? Your expressed unbelief and doubt, or the profession of Gods’ promises? You decide. Next time – our second motivating instinct…
In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://readfreshmanna.blogspot.com/
Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2008 Tim Burt, All rights reserved.