Tag: Motivation

Several Are Snowed-In Today

Our friends up north are always amused by the paralysis suffered by their fellow-Americans to the south whenever we have a snow event. We do them a favor, though, by staying in and not crashing our vehicles when the roads are bad–less crashes, lower insurance rates!

Being a minister, I don’t get to hear other sermons live very often. When I do have occasion, usually by attending a conference, I am usually intimidated by the skill and presentation of the highly experienced preachers who are used to preaching in front of thousands of people every time they stand in the pulpit.

If you are a minister, snowed-in today and not able to travel, take this opportunity to watch a sermon online. Listening to other people helps us to realize where we may need to improve our exposition or presentation. People are not bored by the Bible. People are bored by bad sermons. We owe it to our calling to be as skillful as possible at the preaching craft.

If you are a lay person and are snowed-in today, take the opportunity to listen to an online sermon preached by someone other than your pastor. It is not being unfaithful to your church to listen to other preachers. As a matter of fact, sometimes it helps motivate us to hear encouragement from someone besides the one we are used to hearing. The message captures us afresh and we find ourselves in a good place to serve the Lord and to serve others. Blessings to everyone for a great week!

New Year’s Resolutions Time Again!

Only three years ago. Time flies!

Have you started thinking about your New Year’s Resolution yet? Don’t tell me that you had a resolution in the past to not make any more! That’s a lazy cop-out. Everybody needs a restart every so often and this is a good opportunity. If you aren’t being evaluated periodically by someone to help you set goals for improvement, then you need to get motivated to do some self-evaluation and set your own goals.

It may be better not to wait until December 31st to make your resolution for next year. One of the ways to ensure success with your resolution is to have a plan going into it. I’ll be honest, I haven’t set mine in stone yet, but I can tell you that one is going to have to do with fitness and the other is related to organization.

I’m a new retiree from public teaching. I minister at Providence Baptist Church in Adair County, Kentucky. My congregation is small. But, in order to do my best work, I can see improvements that need to be made in my organization. So I’m not going to wait until January 1st to start implementing change. I’ve already assembled some tools and ideas to help me get started so that when the first day of the year rolls around I’ll be ready to fully implement changes in my organization.

As far as fitness goes, I haven’t developed a full regimen yet. But I have started working on cardio at the elliptical and lateral trainers. I’ve also been doing some light resistance training. I can already feel a difference in my fitness. So, when the first day of 2019 is upon me, I will be able to put in a solid day of training on my new program. A lot of people wait until Jan. 1 to get started. Then they find that they are miserable because of their eating habits over the holidays, so they quit training or working out two or three weeks into the year.

The same can be said for kicking a habit. Don’t plan to quit smoking after the first of the year. Start a program now so that you will be quit January 1, 2019. Then you can experience an entire year of success without feeling days of failure from the beginning. Set your self up to begin with success and you will have a much better chance at continued success.

I’d like to hear your ideas and maybe share some past successes and failures if you would like. Just respond below. Thank you for visiting the orange office! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!