The surprising science of motivation
While I am not real keen on Daniel Pink’s former life as a speech writer for the inventor of the internet, Al Gore. I do find his case to be an interesting one.
In the Church our motivation for our work should be Christ born out of a continual recognition of the work of salvation, the hope of the resurrection, and the presence of the Holy Spirit during our life of sanctification. I find the case that Daniel makes here translates really well to those of us who follow Jesus because when we find ourselves adrift it may only take a quick look as to what our motivators have been in order to make a course correction.
Listening to shame
Brene’ Brown does it again, but this time she’s on the big stage. Her follow up to her TEDx talk on vulnerability is once again a surgically precise analysis of what haunts the human heart. While she does not wax-theological it is not difficult for those of us who are determined to free the world from the power and curse of sin to see the connection. Shame is sin’s executioner that kills the soul slowly. When Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead He not only defeated death and sin, but He freed us from the executioner’s grasp.
To quote Brennan Manning, “God loves you as you are, not as you should be.”
I am a victim and an assailant. I have been abused and have been the abuser. I have been lied to and I have been the liar. On one hand I can point out the road you should travel and on the other hand I can choose a different road. I would rather hide than be seen, and yet wish to be known and loved. Many come to ask for my advice, and I am often the last one to take it.
The good news is that Jesus died for me anyway.
He died for you anyway.
We no longer must die at the hand of Sin’s executioner, but can live abundantly joyful even in the face of death.
Thanks be to God!
NEEDING to be right…is WRONG!
I used to approach most of my life with the intention of proving myself right.
Some, would say I still do.
It has led to a lot of failed experiments that continue to have lasting effects upon me emotionally, and therefore physically.
Only when I have been willing to admit my wrongness did I experience freedom, growth, change, peace and rightness; however, my pursuit of rightness or truth is different than needing to be right to the point that we refrain from discovering the truth in order to maintain the status quo. In our culture we have equated our worth with our answers or understandings, but our value goes far beyond them.
It’s why the Holy Spirit is such a great gift to us. He doesn’t lead us into rightness, but truth (John 16:13), and often the truth only exposes how wrong we are.
Needing to be right is wrong, but needing the truth is essential to being human. Kathryn Shultz explores in detail our culture’s obsession with rightness and how being wrong can actually be the best place to be.
When was a time that you fought to be right when you were actually wrong? What did the fight cost you? Teach you? How did you, if you did, finally admit that you were wrong?
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