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. 

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. 
 

I had the opportunity last week to travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico with a group from our church. It was an amazing trip. If you ever get the opportunity to visit San Juan, I highly recommend that you visit El Yunque rainforest. The scenery is great and the nature trails are wonderful. If you do go, walk one of the nature trails. We wanted to walk on one of the most visited trails in the rainforest (Arboles Grandes/Big Tree), but we had no idea what we were in for.

Being from the east coast, when we think about nature trails, we think of flat land. When we began this trail, it wasn't long before we began to realize that this was more than what we had bargained for. It started out pretty easy, then a steep incline, then winding and twisting, and going up and down hills. As it continued to go up and down, we soon realized that we were in for a serious, physical challenge. If we were going to see the waterfall at the end of the trail, it was going to take a struggle to get there.

One individual that was with us soon began to feel faint and quickly wanted to drop out. The rest of us that were in my small group told this person that if you started you are going to have to press your way through. About every ten minutes or so, they would stop to catch their breath, and we had to keep pushing them. Along the way they forgot about appearances. There was no room for anything cute; it was about survival. Not wanting to be left behind, they kept pressing on the hillside. It seemed like that about every five minutes we would meet people coming back who would tell us that you have only about five more minutes to go. That was encouraging ...until we would run into someone else about five minutes later and they would say the same thing: "You've only got five more minutes."

Later, we were pretty close to being there, or at least we thought we were. We heard the sound of running water. We thought that we were close to the falls, but we soon discovered that it was just a stream running down the side of the mountain. It was not the final destination. In the meanwhile, another group came by saying it was just around the bend. I didn't know. Once again, I didn't know how far around the bend was. It still took us another ten minutes to go just around the bend. After about seven or eight minutes, we started to hear the voices of children, the sounds of laughter and talking, and the sound of running water once more. We pushed ourselves on and made it to the destination. To me, it was worth all of the toil that it took to get there. People were cooling themselves off in the water. It was a sight to see. I really didn't want to get in the water, but I took a few pictures to prove that I came, I saw, and I conquered, or at least I thought I had. What I had forgotten was that the trip back was going to be as challenging as the trip there.
 
We started the long arduous journey back. This time, we were not rested up like we were when we first started our trek. There was another sister that we ran into on our way back. She was one of our own group members. We could see the tiredness in her and she looked weary, but she didn't want to give up because she didn't want to be by herself. She was heading toward the falls while we were heading back. The person that was with me really got weary going back. As they wanted to quit, it took all that we could do to keep encouraging this person to keep pressing on. She really wanted to quit. "Hang in there, keep pressing your way", we would say. Going back was just as challenging as going down, maybe even more challenging. But...they did not quit and they eventually finished even though they had to stop several times along the way. The journey for the other member of our group didn't end in quite the same way.