Our Motivational Zeal

As a pilot skillfully and knowledgeably flies an aircraft in all weather conditions relying faithfully on the navigation instruments, as a racing car driver brilliantly drives that racing car with an amazing dexterity and in a fabulous synergy, so is a Christian at the hand of God, Jesus Christ, through the leading and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.   When perfectly in tune with the Holy Spirit, a Christian knows insightfully well how to hear God’s voice, how to follow God’s instructions and how to adjust the personal course of their life to suit the plan of their Master, Jesus Christ, on a daily, hourly and constant basis.  The Children of Israel (the Israelites), under the Leadership of Moses, have experienced that exact fact and knew exactly to move forward while they were being chased and pursued by Pharaoh’s (Egyptian) army, and as they were being protected and led by God (“The I Am Who I Am”) (*1) in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night (*2).

“Like the feet of the deer” (*3) God will guide us through all our endeavors as we learn to listen and to hear His voice.  It is an individual thing, yet it is a mutual endeavor between God and ourselves as each human being has been created, called and chosen by God to play our specific role and to fulfill our special duties through the use and the application of our divinely-entrusted abilities, gifts, talents and intelligence.  Our Motivational Zeal, therefore, is to Please God and to Do God’s Will obediently without asking God why, and without questioning God’s Sovereignty.

Joshua (*4) was instructed by God to do the most unusual and irrational exercise, i.e., to march around the walls of Jericho seven days and seven times each day.  On the last day, at the end of the seven-time march, everybody shouted as directed and the walls of Jericho collapsed.  That was an example of practical obedience.

Ananias (*5) was told by God to pray for Saul of Tarsus, blinded by God Himself, while he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians.  After Ananias finished praying, Saul of Tarsus, who later became Paul the Apostle, did regain his sight miraculously as per God’s plan.  That was an example of reverential obedience.

Has God spoken to you to do something, or to release something, or to correct something in your life, and you either refuse to obey or you decide to play the deaf ear?  You have then decided to hinder and to forfeit the plan of God for someone else’s life, for yourself or for a great divine purpose.  Can God count on you when you are the only one he has for that specific assignment?  Can God count on you regardless of how minute, how insignificant, how absurd and how strange the assignment may look to you, or regardless of how grandiose, how scary or how tough the assignment may appear to you?  Your job (our job) is to say “Yes, Sir” and to follow through by using your valiant and gutsy faith.

Queen Esther said:  “If I perish, I perish” (*6).  Yet, by faith she succeeded in her endeavor and saved her people (“the Jews”) from being annihilated by Haman’s plot (*7).

The clay does not question the maker.  The slave does not question or argue with the master.  We should not argue with God, we shall obey His commands.  God’s results and success depend on our ability to hear and to apply the instructions that we receive from Him, and on our willingness to execute and to obey the orders that we get from Him.  People will be saved, lives will be spared and restored, peoples’ living will be improved, and failure and chaos will be avoided if we are willing to do and to act exactly as per God’s instructions or commands to us.  All the answers, all the cures, all the solutions, all the creative ideas and all innovative developments are available in God as we ask and according to our state of preparedness and readiness to receive them.  Are we ready to receive them?  Are we ready to be stretched to receive more and to do more?  Are we willing to humbly submit ourselves to God’s personal training, to do the required and expected sacrifices in order to be able to hear, to pick up, to receive, to apply, to execute God’s commands and to fulfill God’s mandate to us regardless of our incomprehension or the outcome?  Do we want God’s full, complete and encompassing results or do we satisfy ourselves with our own, limited, seemingly-complete and so-so results?  Are we ready to meet the requirements for God’s outpouring of harvest and for God’s downpour of blessings, goodness and forgiveness into our lives, both personal and collective?

It all starts with a simple act of kindness towards our neighbor, with a simple expression of love and appreciation towards God and towards a complete stranger, with the offering of a glass of water or of a loaf of bread to someone in short-term and temporary need, with the visualization or the dream of seeing our brother’s future smile and our neighbor’s upcoming happiness as a result of our sharing and our giving to them.  It continues with the outcome resulting from our tangible and concrete action to fulfill that visualization and to make that dream (our dream for them) come true and become a reality.  It also continues with our desire to be God’s extended hands to others, to someone else, to a total stranger, and to do things, to help and to serve others with no strings attached, without any expectations of any forms of return from the recipient(s) of our acts of kindness.  It is the complete release (the “let-go” action) of our loving kindness to others.  This is also the willingness to be a solution or “the solution” according to our blessing to others, according to our level of doing, of giving, of sacrificing or according to the extent of our sacrificial doing and giving to others as per our heart’s compulsion.  That is the constant and steady beginning of the gradual and effective training to be ready for God’s trust in us and for His subsequent entrusting assignment(s) to us for His greater purpose and for His evident glory.  Interestingly, surprisingly and on a convergent note, the bible states that if you “Give, and it will be given to you” (*8).  Therefore, each wholehearted Giver is an automatic Winner according to God’s rewards system.

We are talking here based on our own personal experience.  As a part-time Christian Missionary abroad, I, the writer of this blog, know what it is to make sacrifices out of obedience to God, out of embracing my mandate and out of giving and caring for others in need.  In so doing, I do not think twice and I do not hesitate (on those appointed times) to take my own savings money, or my own retirement savings, and my own vacation time from my regular place of employment to go and do the will of God towards others.  When I come back home from those trips, not only I do not feel tired at all (since I leave my workplace to go to work somewhere else abroad), but also I am joyful and doubly motivated to work more and harder.  Why?  Because I have seen the tangible results of my time, of my money and of my energy investments in the life of others, I have seen the smile on those faces, young and mature, I have seen pain eliminated, I have seen their joy to receive the services, our kindness, the supplies (goods, medical / medications, eye glasses, toys, et cetera) that we deliver to them.  There is no price tag, no “auction price” and nothing big enough to beat my joy (our joy) and my sense (our sense) of accomplishment.  In this very specific case, the word “our” represents our Team and our Group of Traveling Missionaries under the Exemplary Leadership of Our Church Founder / Senior Pastor.  It is investments well made, well carried out, well directed and well operated.  We ALL made the equal sacrifice individually towards that common and collective goal.  And we thank God for choosing us and for giving us the Golden Opportunities to serve, to do His will, to share His Love and to be His hands extended to others.

Until we learn to freely give, to freely release and to freely let go onto God of the actual and valuable things in our lives for divine purposes, God is not going to bless us Fully, or to trust us Fully with greater assignments, or to release onto us nicer and bigger things of higher quality and of greater value that we long for ("the desires of our hearts") (*9).  Our divine purpose and our divine prosperity will be somehow “unnoticeably” limited and not fully developed and magnified.  Therefore, let us begin to freely release and to freely give to God through the life of others and through our own endeavors, and let us begin to bless one another as soon as possible so that our wealth and our prosperity in God may be increased far beyond our greatest imagination.  The writing and the sharing of this blog are the practical example of what we are talking about.

We understand that some of us may have been deceived, stolen from, taken advantage of, used, abused, played by tricksters, misled, badmouthed, resented and befooled before.  Nevertheless, let us not stop there.  We are not going to be consumed by self-pity or to cry endlessly over the bad experiences of yesterday that would keep us back forever and render us permanently cold, indifferent, bitter and stagnant.  We cannot and should not withdraw ourselves now, or get into a long-term reclusive state in our hearts either while putting on a happy front.  We are valuable life changers and others in need count and depend on our kindness and compassion.  Let us begin to do again, to give again, to share again, to have faith again, to trust again, to love again, to have passion again and to care again.  After all, it is not about us.  It is about God’s Love to others through us.  It is also about healing, restoring and “building up” others and ourselves.  The world can be and got to be a better place.  We can make it happened as we truly devote ourselves in making the dream and the desire become a reality.

People might make fun of us, ridicule us, laugh at us because our obedience to God’s voice, to God’s commands and to God's instructions to us is too high, too advanced, too elevated for them to grasp, to understand and to comprehend.  People may not have understood Noah either when he was told by God to build the ark (*10).  Nevertheless, let us not be distracted by peoples’ ridicule.  Let us take action based on what we heard from God.  The results will soon amaze and astonish them all, those mocking observers, those discouraging spectators and those sarcastic distracters  that said (in their limited and “presumed” science) that it cannot be done, that we cannot do it, that it is too big, too wonderful and too grandiose for us to do, to achieve or to accomplish.  Very confidently and very convincingly we say loudly and decisively to ourselves and to the whole world:  “Yes We Can”.  The Bible states that “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (*11), and also "All things are possible to him who believes" (*12).

Our Motivational Zeal, again and again, is to Please God and to Do God’s Will.  We urge you and we encourage you, our Faithful Readers, to follow our example and to do the same.  The beginning might be uneasy and shaky as this might be a new territory or a new endeavor to some people.  Nevertheless, try it gradually anyway.  Practice makes perfect.  Before you know it, you will be like that mature and experienced eagle that soars freely and confidently in the sky.  You have absolutely nothing to loose.  You are an Instant Winner in God.  Therefore, let us, by Faith, do what we are called, mandated and trusted to do for the Glory of our LORD, Jesus Christ.  Enjoy!

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Reference List

(*1)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Exodus 3:14.

(*2)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Exodus 13:17-20 (The Crossing of the Red Sea).

(*3)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Psalms 18:32 & 33.

(*4)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Joshua 6:1-27 (The story of the collapse of the walls of

                   Jericho).

(*5)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Acts 9:1-19 (Conversion of Saul of Tarsus); Acts 9:19-31

                   (Saul of Tarsus began to preach in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ).

(*6)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Esther 4:1-17 (Queen Esther’s determination to save her

                   People (the Jews).

(*7)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Esther 7:1-10 [Haman’s plot revealed to the King (King

                   Xerxes); Haman is impaled on the pole he had set up for Mordecai]. 

                   The whole book of Esther is wonderful and is a recommended reading.

(*8)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Luke 6:37 & 38.

(*9)   Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Psalms 37:4.

(*10) Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Genesis 6:1-22.
(*11) Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Philippians 4:13 (New American Standard Bible).
(*12) Ref.:  The Holy Bible, Mark 9:23 (New American Standard Bible)
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P.S.:  I have worked as a (non-medical) Support Volunteer / Traveling Missionary being part of a  Medical Mission Team.
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Special Notes

#1.  The "Reference" list above is given solely for information purposes to the avid, the curious and the eager minds like us who like to do research, who want to deepen their knowledge and to widen their understanding in their leisure time.  Life is fun.  Therefore, let us have some fun while digging for, while learning and while sharing the right information.

#2.  A desktop link to a Multilingual and Multiple-Version Bible is "Now Available" for easy reference and for the reading convenience of our Readers.  Thanks to YouVersion.  The YouVersion Bible App for mobile device is  downloadable for free at www.youversion.com.

#3.  This blog is also optimized for mobile device reading format and convenience.  Thanks to Blogger.

#4.  To read this blog in other International Languages other than English:

  On your Desktop Computer:
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  (C) Voilà! You are now able and ready to read this Blog in the Major Language (or Native Language) of your choice.  Thanks to Google.

 On your Mobile Device:

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  (B) Or, Download the "free" Google App on your mobile device.

#5.  "We are Going Boldly into the www (world wide web) and into the world in accordance with GOD's LOVE for the World".  Joseph Dubois.