This morning, as I was on my usual ten mile excursion, I was thinking about how important motivation is to succeeding in life.  It has been my experience that someone can motivate you to get started, but at some point during the journey, self-motvation has to kick in to cause you to finish.  One of the reasons why so many never finish what they started is because of either a lack of or a loss of motivation.  We see loss of motivation in every aspect of life:  from diet and exercise to breaking free from bad habits, staying in abusive relationships, remaining in crippling debt and so on.  Lack of motivation can be a contributing factor to a lot of negative things in life. 

Where does motivation come from?  It can come from someone like a parent, teacher, or mentor encouraging you to give something a try.  You may be even encouraged to keep going and finish by someone other than yourself, but self-motivation must kick in to prevent stalling out.  In order to succeed, a person has to be able to motivate himself.  In the words of the Bible concerning David at a low point in his life, the Bible says that David encouraged himself.  How do you do that?  I think that you have to tell yourself that despite popular opinion, I can do this.  Inspite of how you feel, what you say to yourself can become stronger than what you feel in your emotions. 

I had a distinct, God-given opportunity to build my own home with my own hands.  It was an enormous undertaking.  Like anything else, you don't fully know what's going to happen even after sitting down and counting up the cost.  You don't know what setbacks are going to be encountered along the way.  This endeavor took two years, but by the grace of God I was able to complete it.  Whenever you are compelled to start something in life, it is a fact that before the job is finished you are going to need motivation to overcome obstacles along the way.

I find it to be true that anytime you are endeavoring to accomplish anything in life motivation is going to be needed to finish it.  Having a good idea is not enough.  We must have the determination to take this idea and see it through. 

Although we don’t like to admit it, we all occasionally run into dead end places in our lives where we don’t know what to say, what to do, where to turn, or even how to pray.  Sometimes it seems like we’ve hit a dead end.  In other words, it seems like everything is finished, over, and done with!  If you’ve ever been in a place like this, you know what a hard place this can be!

I remember coming to a dead end when we were in the midst of one of our building programs.   What the building inspector was demanding was going to cost us about a $100,000 more than we budgeted to spend.  Sometimes when you come to a dead end, it seems like you can’t go forward but turning around is not an option either.  One of the worst things that we can do in a dead end situation is to become a bone on your own and try to figure your own way out.  I chose to reveal it to congregation and encouraged them to pray for a breakthrough in the situation.  The end results was that God made a way out of no way. The Bible says that God is no respecter of persons.  If He did that for me He will do it for you.  God has a purpose for dead ends in our lives.  It doesn’t always mean the end but it sometimes marks the beginning of a new season if we will persevere and not take defeat as an option.

Through these kinds of experiences, you and I discover that in our own strength, we are no match for some of life’s problems.  That’s why we must learn to depend on the power and wisdom of God! The apostle Paul tell us that he, too, went through this kind of learning experience when he found himself face-to-face with life-threatening situations in his own ministry.  In 2 Corinthians 1:9, he says, “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”  Paul was definitely at one of those dead end places that we’re talking about. In fact, the situation he faces was so bad that he compared it to a sentence of death. 

But in spite of how it looked, Paul didn’t die, nor did he fail at fulfilling the job God had given him.  It may have looked like it was the end of the road, but it was really the beginning of a new supernatural flow of divine power into Paul’s life.  That’s why he went on to say that through it all, he learned not to trust in himself, but in God who raises the dead.

When you don’t know what else to do and when you have no one else to turn to, that’s usually when God’s resurrection power begins to operate in you to the greatest measure!  You see, there’s no such thing as no hope.  If you learn to rely on him, that dead end place in your life that you’re facing right now can become a new beginning!  

Have you ever gone after something that you thought was the will of God for your life only to find out that obstacles seem to keep you from doing what you thought God wanted you to do?  If you have, you need not feel alone because many of us have been in the very same place.  Even the apostle Paul felt this way from time to time.  In 1 Thessalonians 2:18, the apostle Paul said, "Wherefore, we would have come to you even I Paul once and again, but Satan hindered us." 

So, what should you do in times like these?  I want you to particularly notice the word hindered in that verse.  It comes from a Greek word that was originally used to describe a road so deteriorated and broken up that it was impassable.  It means to cut in two; to impede. 

When I was a kid, I had a friend who lived down a dirt road that was almost impassable after we received a hard rain.  The road was too full of deep ruts and holes to continue our journey.  As a result, we would have to turn around and go back or find another mode of transportation to get to where we wanted to go.  Well, that is exactly the image the word hindered portrays to us.  Paul used this word to describe hindering forces that kept him from going to see the Thessalonians.  There is no doubt that this means that Paul was on his way to see them, not once, but twice, but the journey became so filled with danger and unexpected bumps that he had to turn around and go back and rethink his strategy on how he was going to get to the church at Thessalonica.

I am sure that you can think of a time when you encountered something like this on your journey, but the Greek word that is used here means even more than this.  It was also used in ancient times in an athletic sense.  It was used to portray the moment when a runner comes along side another runner and literally elbows him out of the race.  Although the second runner was running a good race, he is shoved out of the way by the aggression of his fellow runner.  As a result of this action, the runner who was elbowed losses the winning edge he previously held. 

This means that Paul really understood Satan's tactics.  The enemy had tried to make use of dangerous and unexpected bumps along the way to throw Paul off track and to elbow him out of his spiritual race.  In fact, Paul was convinced that Satan had specifically orchestrated these unforeseen and unanticipated hassles to keep him from getting to the church at Thessalonica.  When these two ideas are combined together the primary idea of the word hindered becomes that of an impasse so severe that it prohibits you from going where you need to go, or of an aggressor who unkindly elbows you off course in your spiritual race.   

When something happens that seems to keep you from doing the will of God remember that you are not the first to encounter such difficulties.  Others have been in the same predicament.  In time, however; the devil's attacks ceased and the way for them to move ahead became clear.  In the same way, you can be sure that God is going to empower you and give you the wisdom you need to get you where you need to go.  Don't give up!  It ain't over until God says it's over.  Don't throw in the towel just because you run up on some kind of problem.  The devil has never had the last word on anything; and he is not going to have the last word on this situation either.  Regardless of what the devil has tried to do, it is time for you to remember that what God has promised shall come to pass as you hold fast to your faith in Him.

Pain is something that nobody likes, but I find that it is one of those so called "necessary evils" in our lives.  There are basically two types of pain that we suffer through:  physical and emotional.   I want to deal with physical pain in this blog.

Pain in and of itself is one of life's greatest teachers.  When there is physical pain, it is usually an indication that something has gone wrong somewhere in the body.  What a lot of us do is to try to ignore the pain, but when we do that it can lead to something far worse.  Many people have died because of that very reason.  Some of the most dreadful diseases are those that a person has and doesn't have any symptoms to let them know that something is wrong.  By the time they find out it is too late for them to do anything about it.   My daddy died from a battle with prostate cancer, but there was no pain in the initial state.  He was thinking that he was healthy until he finally got checked and it was too late.  I watched this strong man waste away quickly and die. 

So, I am convinced that God created pain as a mechanism for our protection.  For example, if you didn't have any way of feeling pain in your hand and you place that that hand on a hot stove, you would let that hand sit there until it burned severely or somebody else rescued you.   The effects of the burn could take you out of here.  The pain receptors protect you from doing harm to yourself. 

If you look at the ministry of Jesus, for the most part, those that he set free were people who were plagued with physical pain such as:  the woman with the issue of blood, the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, the young boy that was possessed with demons who would through him in the fire, and Lazarus whose pain was so bad that it took his life.  Jesus came to set the captive free!  We have to believe that he is the Great Physician, Jehovah Rapha, the God that heals us. 

Had they not had great pain many of them would not have tried to reach out to Jesus for help.  The pain caused them to come and know Jesus.  If you are in physical pain today, perhaps you can use that pain as a motivating force to reach out to Jesus for help.

We will talk about the mother of all pain; the one that is most difficult to deal with next time. 
 

Giving up is an easy thing to do when you're under pressure.  In fact, for many of us, we become convinced that it is God; convinced that it was the will of the Lord for us to give up and quit, especially after we have fought for a while.  There are some immediate benefits that we gain by giving up:  We get rid of the pressure; We don't have to deal with the test anymore;   It feels like God has given us relief from our pain; It's just outright easier; There is a short-lived peace that you quickly obtain;  You are free to put your energy into something that seems like it's better; and It gives the impression of moving forward.  

However, we all need to understand that nothing happens to us unless God allows it.  Scripture says. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Corinthians 10:13).   Note that in scripture, escaping the temptation is not quitting (unless you're practicing sin), but it is bearing up under a burden.  Why? Because this is one of the many ways that God has chosen to strengthen our faith.  There are two ways to come out of a trial.  The first one is to give up.  The second one is to bear up. Both routes out end in the word up, and they both will seem like they are taken you in an upward motion.  The truth is that one is deceptive; it's a lie and won't lead you up and out...it could just take you out.

It has been my experience that when I have chosen the first way out that I usually find myself right back in the midst of the same set of circumstances a little later on.  But when God brings me out,  it means that I have learned the lesson of faith that the Holy Spirit was teaching me and my faith is ready to move UP to the next level.  Consider what I have said and may the Lord give you wisdom.

There was a couple (whom I will call Potato and Tomato to protect their true identity) that I was counseling one night.  At the conclusion of the session, they had gone out of my office door into the adjacent office and then into the hallway.  I actually walked them into the hallway and returned to my office, knowing that no one else was in there.  After I went back into my office, they discovered that the outer door of the building was locked and they couldn't get out.  They turned around and came back to the other door that led to another part of the hallway and that door was also locked.  They tried to go back into my office and that door was locked.  In essence, they were locked in.  I heard them outside scrounging trying to figure out what to do.  Tomato (the Mrs.)  was saying to Potato (the Mr.), we are locked in.  We can't get out.  By that time, I turned on the alarm system and it started counting down.  When they heard the alarm system counting down they really panicked...they lost it.  Tomato said to Potato, "The police are going to come and lock us up. We are going to jail!"  They literally panicked as the alarm system was ticking down...tick, tick, tick.  Meanwhile, I am behind the other door listening to all of this, and before it armed, I punched the code to cut it off just before it would alarm.  They were still behind the door panicking.  All they had to do was knock on the door that they went out of and the dilemma would be over.  After a few minutes (though they thought I was gone) I opened up the door laughing hard.  This reminds me of our walk with God.  Sometimes, the Lord will allow us to go out of a door and it seems like we walk into a trap while time is ticking away.  For most of us, we do like Potato and Tomato, we panic.  Jesus told us to knock and the door shall be opened.  It is a good lesson that all of us need to learn.  The Lord is on the other side of the door, and he is listening to you.  All we have to do is knock and He will open up.