Motivation comes from?

The apostle Paul wrote in the fifth chapter of Galatians:
16-18My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness."

What motivates you is one of those questions that everyone needs to ask themselves.

Is it the desire to bring people to Christ? Is it the Spirit of God that turns your motor on? Or is it the terribly complicated compulsions of selfishness?

The answer to that question might be the one that determines your eternal home.

In an earlier verse in the same chapter, Paul wrote, " 13-15It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom."

You can not, repeat can not, love others as your love yourself if you are motivated by selfishness. Can't. Be. Done.

So ultimately your life is governed by what frees you, what helps you and what motivates you.

According to the dictionary, motivation is is the activation or energization of goal-orientated behavior. That being true, then, where to you turn to find the energy to love others, help others, do for others? Paul absolutely said it came from one place. God's Spirit.

Compelled to remember his labors in order to enlighten the Corinthians, the Apostle wrote: "Are they ministers of Christ? - I speak as a fool - I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness..." (2 Cor. 11:23-27).

In comparing himself to the other Apostles, his humility prompted him to call himself as the "least" among them, even though he would have been fully justified in declaring: "But I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Cor. 15:10).

Where do you get your motivation? Family? Friends?

This week let your spirit spend time with the Spirit of God and be motivated to do one thing more and better than all others. Tell someone about the gloriousness of Jesus Christ.