All posts tagged: Monday Motivation

Enthusiasm Equals Greatness: A Quote & Encouragement

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*Revised from May 6, 2016 “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” ~RALPH WALDO EMERSON Whatever you set your mind to do be sure to do it with enthusiasm. People appreciate the spirit in which something is done more so than the actual doing. And in that shared spirit is true greatness. “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”     ~II COR. 9:6-7 The Word of God instructs us to be cheerful givers and to sow with purpose from our hearts. Great or small, a simple act of kindness, a story written, a picture painted, or even a glass of water, give it with enthusiasm. It is out of little seeds of enthusiasm sown that fruitful trees of greatness grow. *Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash ~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!

A Merry Heart: The Gift of Laughter

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*Revised from May 20, 2016 “The most wasted of all days is the one without laughter.” ~E.E CUMMINGS Laughter, like food, is the one other universal language that every person on this planet not only enjoys but needs to survive. Laughter is the music that is never out of tune. It is the one song that we all can sing, and find ourselves singing along with even if we can’t explain why. Laughter is a gift, a precious gift given to us from Christ Jesus and one that we can give to others. It is a fire that burns nothing but calories! And who doesn’t like that? Laughter is priceless. Be sure to treasure it and share it with those around you. No day or heart is complete without it. “A merry heart does good like medicine…” ~PROVERBS 17:22 ~Dream. Imagine. Believe. Do. CONQUER!

Renewing Your Vision

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*Revised from April 15, 2016 “Worse than being blind is to see and have no vision” ~HELEN KELLER Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no VISION the people PERISH…” (Emphasis mine) To be able to see is one thing, to have a vision is another. Vision is the driving force that calls us to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Vision is the crown that causes us to press even in the face of repeated failure because it’s given you hope for the future. To be a person who has lived and not simply existed, you must have a vision–a goal. Although vision and sight are different, they are not mutually exclusive. To maintain your vision you must keep it ever before you (Habakkuk 2:2) Put it down in the simplest of words as a reminder of what you are aiming for. It is very easy to allow the challenges of life to stifle our vision. In faith, in Christ Jesus, we are called to ‘renew’ or minds, that we not be conformed to the …

Inevitable Change: Encouragement in Transition

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Revised from August 18, 2015 “Change is inevitable, Growth is optional.”~JOHN C. MAXWELL Change. The only time that most people search out change and willingly run with it is when unsavory circumstances have begun to dim the light and joy form their life and they are desperate to get it back. Otherwise, change is seen as the unwelcome guest who showed up at your perfectly numbered dinner party, uninvited. Change requires sacrifice, which generally goes hand and hand with discomfort and for some of us, discombobulation. But change is necessary. It is going to happen whether we like it or not, whether we are prepared or not. Think about an infant in their mother’s womb. Change comes and is without a doubt a straining shock to everything within the infant and around them. But what awaits them at the end of their travailing journey is something far greater. Consider the caterpillar who crawls through life, knowing in the core of their being that they are meant for greater heights. They must burn with the urge to …

A Word to the Waiting: by Briana Lassiter

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Have you received promises from the Lord that your breakthrough will come this year? Has He given you specific impartations, specific instructions and specific direction about what to look forward to? Have you received attack on attack? Have you felt in a fog? Have your promises seemed untrue? Has the voice of the Lord–however He speaks to you–grown dim and hard to hear? Have you experienced pain and hindrances like never before? Beloved, we are shifting. We are moving. We are coming out and we are breaking forth in a historical move of God. We are like waves crashing on the shore, sometimes being pulled back, but gaining in momentum and power and height with each crash. We feel as if we are walking alone at times, we feel blindsided and oppressed by the enemy. We may carry the fear of being hindered and fear that we will forfeit the promises by how we are getting through this time. But we are being called forth in a new glorious way. We are being called out …

Abiding Fruitfulness: Summer Series Coming Next Week!

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On Tuesday, July 9th ICFTS will be kicking off a Free 40-Day Community Teaching called Abiding Fruitfulness-Resting into Success, and we want you to join us! WHAT IS ABIDING FRUITFULNESS: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.  Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” ~JOHN 15:1-5 In the Book of John chapter 15, the Lord Jesus tells us that He is the Vine and we are His branches and that if we abide in Him we will bear much fruit, that apart from Him we can do nothing at all. For the hustlers and …

The Art of Stillness: Creative Motivation

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 “Sometimes using your time well or wisely is really just a matter of  being still.” ~Candice Coates via the Lord Jesus I, by nature, am a woman given to hard work. I have an inherent urge and drive to be productive, to seize the moment and bear fruits from my labor. Being still, not producing, often leaves me with an anxious feeling that I have wasted my time, time that I will never get back. The deception of that ideology is one that plagues many of us, I am sure; being still means you have wasted a moment. I am so grateful that this thought process is not based on the truth. Years ago, I was presented with the converse of that false ideology. I learned that there can be great wisdom in resting… or simply being still. All too often we confuse stillness with the lack of productivity. We in the west have been conditioned to believe that if there is no movement then nothing has been done. This is actually an enemy of …

Lost in Translation: Turbulence in Transition Pt 2

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Imagine this. You pick up a novel that you were told was one of the greatest novels ever written and that once you’ve read it from start to finish, your life is going to be mightily changed. You are going to experience every twist and turn, every high and low, you are going to relate with the characters in a dynamic way, and when it is all over, you are going to want to share it with others and just might want to flip right back to the first page and start the tale all over again. But then, imagine that you only read the first chapter of this say, four-hundred-and-fifty-page tome only to decide that the author is off track, that he or she isn’t doing the characters justice and that the book is just not worth reading. As a result, you toss it aside with frustration, imagining that after only one chapter you have wasted your time. Sounds kind of ridiculous doesn’t it. I mean one chapter in that many pages isn’t sufficient …

The Process of Patience: Power in the Process pt 1

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“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him…” ~PSALM 37:7 Patience. For many, especially in the age of ‘hustle and grind,’ has become a foul word and even more a foreign concept to those who have a heart that beats to the tune of ‘do and achieve.’ Patience itself seems to be the very antithesis of progress and success itself, almost as if it is a waste of time. And waiting on the Lord, well, that seems to be a difficulty all its own. But oh is it so very worth it! First, let’s gain the understanding and the truth that more than you or I want to succeed, the Lord wants us to succeed even more. The glory and beauty of His desire and plans for us is that He is the one who planted those desires in us in the first place. He is the one who has written each of our stories from beginning to end, and He knows exactly what it is going to take to get us for beginning to glorious …

The Promise of Pursuit: Pursuit of Passion pt 5

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“For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hand. He knows your trudging through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.” ~ DEUT. 2:7 Over the past month, we have journeyed through the concept and truths of our pursuits of passion. By the Grace of God, we have learned where our passions come from, what it means to pursue, and with what posture we need to pursue with Christ always at the center and head of it all. But even with all of this, there will still be times in our journey that we face discouragement and even find ourselves questioning if our efforts and even our pursuit was worth it. There are several reasons why we may ever get to these places; maybe our pursuit seems fruitless after an extended time. Maybe there was once life but now it seems the fruits of our labors have shriveled up into laughable dried stumps of lost potential. Maybe we question if we were ever really pursuing …