I was talking to a person who struggles with getting depressed in the wintertime when it gets rainy and dark; in fact, I know many people who struggle with that. I go through times when I am flat and unmotivated; I bet most people have those seasons in their lives for various reasons.

I wonder if Jesus did? He never sinned, but going through downtimes isn’t a sin any more than getting a cold is. The Bible says He experienced all that we do, and because of that, He can sympathize with us and come to our aid when we cry out to Him.

Many of the Psalms are a prophecy of the words and emotions of Jesus when He lived His life, and the Psalms are filled with words like “dismayed, bowed down, pining away, my bones are bowed down, my heart is forlorn, and many others.” In almost every event of the Psalmist being down the response was prayer, asking God for strength, joy, peace, and direction. For me, when I am feeling unmotivated and lethargic prayer is almost spontaneous, like the only response that seems reasonable.

Psalms 6:2-9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am pining away; Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are dismayed. And my soul is greatly dismayed; O Lord, rescue my soul; I am weary with my sighing; Every night I make my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears. My eye has wasted away with grief; For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication, The Lord receives my prayer.

I have a lot of tools. I have carpentry tools, which I used today as I built a deck. I have automotive tools for the engine, for the electrical, for the interior, for the body, and painting. I have bicycle tools and a few tools to repair my glasses. I have sheetrock tools and concrete tools. I have gardening tools and tools for cutting firewood.

My Dad used to say the key to doing an excellent job on almost anything is having the right tools and knowing how to use them.

My favorite of all my tools is goals. Goal setting is the best tool for the most critical job, changing my character and life into the character and image of Christ. Nothing I do to be proactive in my growth is as effective as my goals.

I write them prayerfully and thoughtfully and read them regularly and often. I strategize on how to accomplish them and work on them faithfully and diligently.

It is so easy to get in a rut. A rut is where we do pretty much the same thing over and over and over and over and over. We get in ruts because it is easy and comfortable to do the same thing over and over. After all, we have become experts because we have done the same thing repeatedly.
The problem with ruts is that they go downhill; the quality and volume become less and less. It is a law of life; brainless activity becomes unchallenging, leading to mediocrity.
Some of my goals for my goals are to make a goal to do something I have never done before, another goal is to learn a skill that I have never learned before, and another one to go someplace that I have never been before. Those three goals take a lot of thought and planning, and I think about what they might be all year long. As I read books, listen to videos and podcasts, and read magazines, I am looking for ideas for these three goals.
That is how I came up with the goal of riding a motorcycle, hitting all the lower 48 States in 30 days, and camping each night. I also made a goal to learn how to make soap, and I did that for several years. I learned how to keep bees and had two hives for five years. I have ridden my bicycle in 40 of the lower 48 states. I have been to 38 different countries, Hawaii, Alaska, and all of the Canadian Provinces.
Doing something you have never done before, going somewhere you have never been before, and learning a new skill won’t happen without making goals. Without a goal, you won’t plan when to do it, how to pay for it, and how to make it happen. It could be as simple as learning to knit, paint, or take a college class.
Most never get out of their rut except for a vacation to a different place once a year, which is undoubtedly not bad, just not enough.

All of the Bible’s prophecies are God’s recorded goals, His declaration of what He will do in the future. Everything that God has done He premeditated; he plans the future before He does it. God is not impulsive. We have been created in the image of God, and we can think about the future. Most people worry and fret about about the future. We have been given God’s freedom and power to do what He does, to plan the future. Our thought-out goals are a declaration of faith. We believe this is God’s will for our life, and we plan on pursuing it as God’s will until He shows us otherwise. I have 76 goals for next year, and I believe they are good goals because I believe each goal is God’s will for my life. I thought about them, prayed about them, got counsel about some of them, and I feel good about them that God is well pleased with them. When I read through my goals, I am energized and motivated; I genuinely want to accomplish each one of them. Every one of my goals will make me a better person, more like Jesus in character. Each one of my goals will result in me accomplishing more with my life for eternity that matters than I would without them. Every goal I have set will result in more rewards at the judgment seat of Christ. Some of my goals are:
I will take Patty on a date at least twice a month.
I will read twelve chapters in my Bible every day.
I will pray for all 45 members of my family every week.
I will pray with Patty three times every week.
I will run a half marathon on April 6th.
I will read 100 pages every week in a good book.
That is six of the 76 goals I have written for this year.
Most people don’t write goals; I wonder why not.

There are many verses in the Bible about music, musical instruments, and singing. Our kids all took piano, other musical instruments, and voice and singing lessons, so we had lots of music around our house. The constant informal singing that the kids did and the piano practice all made for a beautiful environment in our home as they grew up. In reading the Bible, heaven appears to be a place of constant and fantastic music. Occasionally, I will hear someone comment that they don’t enjoy music in church, and I think, I hope you will enjoy heaven because there will be a lot of music there.

Tonight, we had the first of our three weekend Christmas Concerts. It was amazingly good. I was so blessed by the quality, energy, and words sung tonight by each person who participated in the concert. It was a foretaste of heaven for me.

Seeing talented people using their gifts to honor Him and bless others is so enjoyable.

I was building a deck today, and I lifted some concrete pier blocks and pulled a muscle in my back. I am limping around now like a one-legged duck. I plan to sit in my hot tub for a long time, rub some linament on my back, and take some ibuprofen.
2 Corinthians 5:2 For indeed in this house, our present body, we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.
Whenever I get sick, have a bad back, or get a headache, I think about heaven and my glorified body.
Philippians 3:20-21 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
When I was younger, I would think, I hope Jesus doesn’t come back yet because I still have some things to do and experience, but now I can’t think of a single thing I haven’t done or experienced that matters much. I am ready and anxiously waiting.

I feel so much better right now physically than I have felt in years because I finally figured out that I am allergic to a bunch of different foods, and I am avoiding them like the plaque. Six months ago, I was maxed out on my Parkinsons’s medicine, and now I am taking none. Six months ago, I couldn’t sleep more than four hours at a time because of my muscle cramps and tremors, and now I can sleep 9 hours without waking up once. During the last bicycle trip, I thought that was my last trip, and now I am signed up to run a half marathon on April 6th, and I am going to leave on a 2400-mile bicycle trip with my brother and his wife on May 20th. Also, I am considering making a 6,000-mile bicycle trip by myself, unsupported, and hitting all lower 48 estates in 2025. At this point, I am just thinking about it and planning the route. At 75 years of age, health is a day-to-day thing, but I am very thankful for my relatively good health now, and I plan on bearing as much fruit as possible and having as much fun as possible until some health issue pops up, which could be any day.

My motto for my life is to control what I can control for maximum production and rejoice about the things I can’t control.

I know that there are tasks that I do that are my responsibilities; they have a significant benefit for others in my life, and doing those tasks is important to them. I am not motivated to do those tasks because I necessarily enjoy them but because of what they do for others. There is a deep satisfaction in being a faithful man and doing those tasks when needed. Being motivated to be faithful in doing these kinds of tasks is what the Bible calls being a servant to others.

Jesus said of Himself, “I did not come into the world to be served, but to serve and give My life as a ransom for many.”

As a person moves from being a two-year-old baby to a 75-year-old man, there needs to be continual growth in character so that we are more and more motivated in life choices by a “servant’s heart.” Having a “servant’s heart” doesn’t mean that we simply go through life doing what others want us to, but that we choose to do what they need.

Periodically, I hit stages in my life where I start feeling a strong sense of being overloaded. I am not usually really overloaded but struggling with motivation. The “why” has gotten cloudy in my thinking. If the “why” moves to “have to,” “supposed to,” or ” you need to,” I get to feeling tired, and I start procrastinating on tasks that I used to do with great enthusiasm.

I want to move through life doing the desires of my heart, not obligations or duties. They can be the same activities, but the “why” has gotten refocused and cleared up. It is easy for our “self” to focus on ourselves instead of others. The shift is subtle and usually hard to detect, but it is a constant pull in all of us, requiring periodic mental tune-ups. It is a self-talk issue as we remind ourselves that Jesus is the Lord of our life and that we serve Him by serving others.

Jesus said, “When you do what you do for others, even the least important of them, you do it for Me.”

As people of flesh, we all have some negative tendencies, and we must overcome them as we live life. One of them is procrastination, putting off doing what needs to be done even though we know that doing so will result in negative consequences. I have often asked myself, “Why do I do that??” The answer is, “That is just the way we are.” But we can change and grow and, as Peter says, “put on the divine nature.”

I can sit in my recliner and think, “I need to get up and run on my treadmill for thirty minutes; I will do that in five minutes.” But I often will continue to sit there until it is too late to do it. It doesn’t seem that big a deal at the moment, but later, I will kick myself for being such a wimp.

I regularly will take on a character trait as a personal goal to improve, and decisiveness is my goal for the next several months. I have come up with some mottos that I will say to myself to push myself in this area. One of them is, “Don’t just keep looking through the scope, pull the trigger, shoot something!” I have memorized a number of Bible verses on this problem; one of them is in John 4, where Jesus says, “You say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest, but I say to you, “lift up your eyes and look, the fields are ready for harvest now!” Another one of my commands to myself is, “Do it now, Duke, not in five minutes, do it now!”

I did research on a bunch of book reviews and recommendations from other pastors on the best book on this subject, and I purchased and am not reading the book, “The Now Habit,”

I enjoy challenges and competition, and I fully expect that I am going to win this contest with my flesh, the world, and the devil.

Some years ago, I did a series of sermons called “The Dirty Dozen,” about twelve reasons God doesn’t answer our prayers. One of the twelve reasons our prayer power is reduced with God is because we are haphazard and wimpy in our Bible reading.

Proverbs 28:9 He who turns away his ear from listening to the law, Even his prayer is an abomination.
John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

I want my prayers to God to have great power and influence, so I am highly motivated to stay disciplined in my Bible reading and memorizing.

The key is having a system or plan for reading your Bible that you can keep track of and have a time and a place that you usually read, as well as a goal and system for your Scripture memory time.

At least fifty blessings come into our lives from faithfully reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word.

Occasionally, people will respond to me, saying, “I don’t want to be motivated to read the Bible because of reward,” and my response is, “Why not? God wouldn’t have put all those promises to us in His Word if they were less than noble.”