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| Motivations and Speeding Tickets | |||||||||||||||||
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The crashing surf of the English channel beat with no hesitation against the wooden hulls of the ships of Ceasars armada. Strewn for hundreds of yardsacross the tossing surf were vessels loaded with the soldiers of Rome invading the land of Britain. As the savage invasion begins to unfold the tide of battle runs very strongly against the superior forces of Rome. As the first waves of determined Romans spill from their tossing ships they find the vast weight of their shields, armor and supplies weighs upon them acting liking an unrelenting enemy slowing their attack. Being thrown about in the surf and in a strange land in conditions that were frightening to them the first soldiers of Rome to rush onto the beach those two thousand years ago found the strength of the natives to be too great. Under a deadly rain of spears and arrows hundreds of these Romans were killed within the first minutes of their invasion. It became clear that their vast invasion party would soon perish due to the greatest of all enemies; fear. Fear began to overtake these well trained and supplied soldiers and fear raced through their ranks like devastating tongues of fire through dry piles of straw. Caesar knew that the devastation of his forces was now imminent. In one last chance maneuver Caesar ordered that his battle ships, normally of little use to such an invasion party, to move out away from his perishing troop transport vessels and charge at full speed onto the crashing surf ahead. The strange and fast motion of the smaller vessels moving into the flank of the natives and the small hail of arrows that were sprayed from Caesars vessels frightened the unsuspecting natives into a small retreat. During the confusion caused by the desperate assault on the Celtic flank the cowering soldiers of Rome found their guidon bearer charging onto the beach alone in a zealous rampage. As if an army by himself this lonely and desperate man carrying no weapon and holding aloft his brigades prized insignia raced over the side of his vessel and charged through the shoulder high surf. Being swept in by violent waves and in floating masses of dead roman soldiers this soldier rises up on the beach-head a victorious zealous conqueror. Inspired by this act of heroism and fearful that their brigades guidon would be captured the soldiers spilled from their sinking transports and routed the natives into full retreat and achieved victory in their invasion of Britain. In a crucial point in the life of that army, under the generalship of Julius Ceasar, a great shift in attitude occurred. The tide of the battle fought on the sands of those distant lands many centuries ago was turned not due to the unveiling of a powerful weapon. No tangible change had occurred logistically to either army. The powerful fear of the enemy that debilitated the invading Roman army was sparked into a more unrelenting fear of defeat by the valor of one lone soldier. The scales of activity shifted from one motive to another motive. The change in motivation, that happened in almost the blink of an eye, is what forged a cowering fearful mass into a determined charging victorious army. It is in this historical account that can be seen a powerful example of how a very small change in motivation can profoundly change outcomes. As in our new life in Christ, our motivations, or what�s really in our hearts, is what God sees. It is in our heart�s relationship with Christ where our motivations should generate. If our motivations are born from anywhere outside of our relationship with Christ, when articulating resolutions, then no matter how hard we try failure is assured. Worse yet, we may actually get what we ask for before realizing that we didn�t want it or it�s ramifications at all! If our resolution is to read the Bible every day, and the motivation for this may be to �become more religious�, then it will probably be around March before your missing days in reading Gods word. If you are really committed to becoming �more religious� then you might even make it into June before you forgot that May went by with your Bible under your tackle box in the trunk of your buddies car. Regardless of the resolution, if your serious about getting it accomplished we have to turn to God and to do this we must first carefully examine our motivations. Php 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. With no real thought to your motivation in the pursuit of your resolutions and multiplying the best efforts you have in the race to attain them you will only end up with a violent train wreck of activity. If your motivation to read the Bible everyday is to strengthen your relationship with Christ then that would be a motivation born in the heart of a loving and seeking relationship with our creator. With this form of motivation you�ll be lucky if you haven�t read the Bible twice by July1st. If you have resolved to loose weight that�s commendable. If your motivation to loose weight is to look better you probably won�t make it far into the year before your rushing to McDonalds one midnight for a half dozen cheese burgers and a large chocolate shake. Then the guilt of eating like that will do a number on you and then both your confidence and your body will feel crushed under the weight of failure. You can�t look any better to God period. As a Christian, you can�t look better than you are to God. God doesn�t create things that are flawed or things that just aren�t good enough. Ge 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. God loves you 100 % Whether you wear a size 15 or a size 4, whether that spare tire you used to carry around now looks more like a stack of spare tires, God loves you for who you are. If your real motivation to loose weight is for legitimate dietary reasons to aid you in becoming a better steward of your own blessings of health then there again is a huge difference in motivation and expect a profound difference in outcome. I�ve got a lot of friends I like. I�ve got a few friends that I even really like. I would have to admit that if I had to take a long car trip, let�s say for eternity, the people I�d want to car pool with would be people that I really REALLY loved. I had just put my turn signal on and was moving onto the interstate from a quick rest stop. It was early evening and the evening air was warm and delicious smelling. I was just about ready to really accelerate into the right-hand lane when off in the distance I saw a man waving a bright flash light at me. As I moved the speedometers needle just a little over the speed limit I saw that the man flashing a light at me and standing on the road was a state patrolman now darting for his parked cruiser with a ticket booklet in hand. A cold sweat broke over me and I knew I was busted. I dropped the gas pedal back and cruised on a few seconds watching for those flashing colored lights of the state patrolman I almost ran over a few hundred feet back. His flashing cruiser pulled up to my now stopped car and you could tell this officer was cooked at me! The ticket he wrote up for me was a hefty one for over a hundred dollars. I remember the person I was driving mentioning a few hours before not to worry about the speed limit. I remembered the offer to pay any ticket that I might get because we were in a serious hurry. But when I looked at the ticket and saw all those numbers with a dollar sign in front of them it was clear that I was going to pay this one. Generosity has it�s limits. And this fine was one that crossed over the line of Generosity by a few miles! The love Christ has for us and the payment he made for us exceeds the line of mere generosity by the width of the universe and the depth of our national debt a hundred times over. 1Jo 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. So in the essence of our salvation, and in our assurance as born again followers of Christ, we know that it was not just the fact that God used his power to pay our fine of punishment for the sins we all committed; � Ro 6:23 For the wages of sin is death... � by becoming the propitiation, or covering, but his motivation for doing this was: Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. As it was in our salvation and entrance into His family of born again believers, it was not enough to say certain things. It was our hearts. The only acceptable offering we could make to God was a heart of faith. It was our motivation that God received. Ro 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. 14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?... Jas 4:3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Our landing crafts have been beached on the shore line of a new year. Our guidon bearer has rushed upon the beachhead and he inspires us to charge forward with changed hearts. With new motives and a new opportunity to serve Christ this year we must charge forward and know that �...all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. � Ro 8:28 | |||||||||||||||||
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