Motivating ourselves to live with God

To whatever religion we belong, for most of us it is again and again difficult to motivate ourselves to go our course to live with God. What can be done about it?

First we need to realize that God never wants us to do something unvoluntarily. The reason for this is that we are created to have freedom. The deeper meaning is that God made it such that when we give to God or to others, it also really will be a free gift. Love that is received by demanding it from someone or by tempting someone to give it has no deep meaning. It isn't really love because the person giving that love does it to acquire a certain self-centered benefit.

Therefore, God never asks us to do something that we don't really want to do. How does this relate to our own motivation to live with God? It means that whenever we seriously lack desire to do what we may think we have to do for God, we should not do it. That is my own take on life. Instead, I go in prayer until I found out from where my disliking came. Sometimes in prayer I realize that I did not deeply enough understand God's desire. Sometimes also I realize that what I thought was God's will, wasn't really wanted by God. In the first case, my motivation has deepened and I can do what I know i have to do. In the second case, I was right in not wanting to do it and I can find out what I should do instead.


One big problem can be when God's will is passed on to us by a religious leader. Sometimes a religious leader misunderstands what is God's will. Sometimes a religious leader knows what externally is God's will but he or she does not represent God in terms of love and understanding.

Even when a religious leader knows what is God's will and also has a good relationship to God and love for us, it still is essential that we establish a direct relationship to God about God's will. We all are children of God and God wishes to relate to each of us directly. Furthermore, even if our leader correctly understands God's will, it is not enough for us to blindly follow. We may entirely misunderstand the meaning of what God wants from us and if we have such misunderstanding, it will lead to problems in our life of faith. Even if we can totally trust a central figure, we still need to ask God because we may be lacking in our own comprehension of what he or she tells us.

So we always need to pray to God about all that we do, because it is the right relationship between parents and child and because it is the only way for us to be sure that we have the right understanding of God's will.

Sometimes this can lead to conflicts with the people around us. If a leader or a parental figure has a bad time and isn't connected well to God, we may get problems in our relationship with him or her. If we perceive it to be God's will to do certain things in life, our relatives and friends may have other opinions and find us weird or even openly oppose us.

Also in these cases, the only way to solve it is in prayer. When we pray, God can explain to us the meaning of the problems we have. God always wants to help us with each problem in our lives of faith. We have this assurance because of God's deep love for each of us.


Maybe the most common problem of lacking motivation to do God's will is when we are addicted to a life style that isn't centered on God. It is the nature of sin that it is liked by many people, but sin destroys our heart of love and our desire to do good. Always when our lack of motivation is caused by our own sins, there is only one solution. It is to stop sinning and to go back to God in repentance.


There are still many other ways in which we can motivate ourselves to love God and to live with God. One important method is the study of God's Word. Another gate to God's love is the beauty of creation. Maybe the most effective way to understand God's love and to be motivated in our love for God is by giving out good love ourselves.

But all these roads can be misdirected as well. We could enjoy the beauty of creation in a selfish way. We could be blinded by wrong doctrine to see the real truth in Books of God's Word. We could give love but forget to establish a personal relationship to God and our love may not be the best way of expressing God's love. Therefore, we do absolutely and always need sincere and personal prayer to keep a close relationship to God.


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