Author: watchstandpray

Biblically worshiping God involves spirit and truth. At the beginning of the 21st Century, most Christians worshiped God in one or the other, but rarely both. God offers such wonder to our spirits and truth to our minds that we easily become satisfied with only one of the two. This creates an imbalanced heart since the heart is a junction of the thinking mind and the emotional spirit.

Mostly peer-motivated, few Christians of the last two thousand years tapped into the immense, intrinsic, self-motivated power of the human will to pursue worshiping God in both spirit and truth. This captivating energy is only discovered when one has a deep, burning fascination with God Himself. Once this is discovered, “encouragement” from other Christians fades to static because God is that fascinating.

Gathering to study and learn, encouraging each other, talking through our challenges together, checking our moral compasses—these are good and necessary. But, they have been oversold by leaders in the Church—both professional and volunteer, both lay and trained—to such a point that they unintentionally invalidated the value of individual motivation. To be fully healthy as humans, each of us must chase after both spiritual and truthful things that can only be found in a relationship between God and one, single human.

While we must interact with each other on the level of truth and spoken ideas, we also require awareness of each other’s spirits. Christianity often describes the Christian life as having horizontal and vertical “growth”, with God and with our fellow Man. Both of those involve spirit and truth. Emphasizing the horizontal relationship to the exclusion of the individual-vertical also imbalances the spirit-truth element. When that happens, the condition of the human heart becomes akin to a body builder who exercises only upper or lower body, or only right or left.

Balance is for all people. Spiritually, that means getting comfortable with the discomfort of emotions, whether in repentance or worship. Balance strengthens one’s genuine connection to God while entertainment-driven excitement is a poor substitute for the real thing. “Spiritual” growth requires that we diligently pursue spirit-inclusive truth—neither trying to contrive one’s own truth nor dismissing academic diligence as “unspiritual”.

Few things are as demotivating to an already motivated motivator as someone who has no motivation. Affluenza is a common cause of demotivation. The Christians at Laodikeia in the Book of Revelation had this problem. Life was so comfortable for them that they didn’t care about the things that mattered to their Savior who died for them.

But, affluenza is not the only cause of demotivation. Sometimes poverty causes despair, which is wearisome in itself. It’s hard to get out of bed after being in a hospital for a year. When someone hasn’t had work for a long time, going out the door seems tiring and, frankly, embarrassing. When you give someone a first job in a long while, that worker might turn out to be one of your best, but only after a few laps around the track. If you’re the one getting off the couch, be prepared for others to need to be prepared to be patient with you.

Some wet noodles can’t come to life, some can, but they can never be pushed.

Jesus warned against giving pearls to pigs. Pigs don’t appreciate pearls for their beauty or the work it takes to find them. So, if you give them to a pig, it might think you’re throwing stones at it and attack you in turn.

Only work with people as much as they are motivated to work with you. Never chase after people who aren’t excited about your reason for getting up in the morning. We don’t need the same reasons to get out of bed in the morning, but people who work together should at least be excited about other people’s reasons. Those who aren’t excited about other people’s good pursuits aren’t excited about other people pursuing good things. Don’t confide in them.

When someone shows no motivation, if you share your joys, worries, dangers, and victories with that person, you just might get bitten. What do you mean you had “difficulty”? Someone with affluenza will think you must have done something wrong. What do you mean you “want money”? Someone who has little money may not know that “making money” is about others. It’s better to keep your peace.

God upholds “righteous” people, who practice fairness and justice, because He likes them for it—because He likes justice and fairness. God wants justice and He won’t let someone who does rightly by others to easily slip between the cracks.

It’s hard at times to believe that God cares or works justice. But, watching how God upholds the people who uphold justice can be proof enough that God is real and God is near.

Everyone dies and hardship makes us stronger; God denies neither to the righteous. “Upholding” means that when times get too hard or the wind blows strong, God interrupts the natural order just enough to make sure that the righteous aren’t swept away. Being “upheld” may mean nothing more than surviving what is unsurvivable.

There are generally three main ways God upholds the righteous, but one could always count more than these three.

1. Because righteous people do what is right and fair, their lives are naturally stronger. Friends will help the righteous in need because people who are fair and honest and do good work naturally have more friends than greedy people who take shortcuts on quality. That was how Job’s fortune was restored. Friends gave him just enough money to start again; Job doubled his original wealth from that.

2. God also brings miracles and coincidence to the righteous. It could be that righteous people, being “godly” are “looking for God” in the small things, so they notice coincidences God already sends to everyone. But, miraculous things happen to people who are honest and fair.

3. Also, by praying, angels will always have the prayer they need to bring aid to the righteous. We each need a cloud of prayer around us for protection. Angels need prayer to wage war against evil. People who pray will supply angels with help everywhere they go, even to help the praying people.

Doing what is right and honest and fair to others is the best way to court favor in the High Court of Heaven. Prayerlessness is an injustice to the angels and to the world they want to help, including ourselves. Thus, prayerlessness is a form of self-mutilation while prayer is an act of justice.