What's Your Motivation?

What is it that really gets you moving? I'm a highly competitive person, and for quite some time I used to think that my motivation was that love of competition, or the desire to see something accomplished that I had started. But as time goes on, I'm finding that's not exactly the case. If you asked me right now, I'd definitely have to say that I'm motivated by stress. It was even like that in high school - don't worry about the fact that I had 2 weeks to write that paper; I would always wait until the night before, and crank out a paper that was fueled on Pepsi and Chili Cheese Fritos. I got mostly straight A's too, so to my mind, it worked! Why would I change a tried-and-true method? If it's not broke, don't fix it, right?

Wrong. My attitude was completely selfish, and that was demonstrated to me this morning in my quiet time. As a Christian, we are called to love others above ourselves. It may not seem like it, but my idea of waiting until the last minute is not loving, and it has developed into a life-long habit. I wait until all the laundry baskets are full before I wash, the sink is overflowing before I load the dishwasher, we have someone coming over in 10 minutes before I start to think about cleaning up. That's not loving, to my family, or my guests, and it certainly isn't living to glorify God. That's a very apathetic lifestyle, and God is NOT apathetic.

My quiet time this morning was, in true form, very convicting. God said in John 13:17

"If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them."

and

"But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lets, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified." 1 Corinthians 9:27

We are blessed not because of what we know, but because of what we do with what we know. We find our greatest joy in obeying Christ my serving others. Today, I'm going to focus on blessing my family by serving them in the place Christ has placed me to serve them. So, I guess I'd better hit that laundry pile :)

Instead of being motivated by stress, I'm switching! I'm doing everything I need to do at the appropriate time because God has called me to love my family.

Here's some music to get me moving: