In order to have the fruit of the Spirit grow in our lives, we must be delighting in the Lord. As we delight in His Word, His creation, His awesome works, past, present & future, and live with an attitude of praise, the fruit of the Spirit becomes a by-product of living with this intention.
Likewise, motivation is a by product of gratefulness.
As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to. . .
speak truth to one another,
give thanks together,
rejoice together,
praise God together,
glory in God’s goodness together, and
be sure our speech is seasoned with grace toward one another.
Scripture is saturated with the fact that we are to live life together as brothers and sisters in Him so how we speak to one another can have a huge impact upon our growth and development. All of these actions involve conversation, as we speak with these intentions, motivation will be a by-product of gracious speech. As we speak with deliberate words, of this nature, we will be motivated or spurred on to love and good deeds.
Our words can bring blessing or curses upon ourselves and/or others. So, how can we plan to speak to one another so that we will both be spurred on? Maybe that would mean, no more talking about how tired we are or how unmotivated we are but saying something like… “I’ve got to tell you what God did today!”
Can we do an experiment and see if speaking to one another in words of gratefulness, thanksgiving, rejoicing and praise will begin to stir up motivation? I know there are scads of Scriptures which support this idea but I haven’t taken the time to look them up. This thought came to me recently as I was driving and listening to a praise song “Give Thanks” it goes like this:
Give thanks with a grateful heart, give thanks to the Holy One
Give thanks because He’s given Jesus Christ His Son
And now let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich
Because of what the Lord has done for us. . .give thanks.
As I listened, I was thinking “that’s mind over matter…let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich…mind over matter…convincing yourself of something even though the opposite seems to be true. How do you really do that? You do it by developing a grateful heart, by giving thanks in all things. 1 Thessalonians 5:18... in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. A grateful heart is a joyful heart and a joyful heart is good medicine! It will bring health and healing to our bodies. So lets help one another foster a grateful heart then tell of all the good things that come from practicing this truth.
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