Question – what motivates you to get up out of bed every day and do the things you do? And secondly are those motivations resulting in the sense of contentment and fulfilment that you’re looking for?

So the alarm clock goes off again tomorrow morning, great, you switch it off, into the bathroom, get dressed, have breakfast and then we’re off and running. For some of us it’s off to work, maybe you have a long commute ahead or maybe you work from home. You get to your work place, pick up your tools of trade whatever they are, for me it’s a keyboard and a phone, and the day begins. Or maybe you’re a stay at home mother. Other people think, “boy wouldn’t it be great to be able to stay at home and not have to go to work”.

Hey, but the novelty of staying at home wore off ages ago. Kids are hard work right? Housework is boring and tiresome and no one, no one seems to appreciate it. If only the kids would say thank you from the bottom of their hearts that you made up their lunches. If only your husband would appreciate the clean house and the meal you put on the table at night.

Maybe you live alone, a lot of older people do. The day is going to be lonely and long and empty so you try and sleep in for as long as you can but, well somehow you seem to be waking up much earlier these days.

Some people seem to have such exciting jobs. I remember when I had a consulting firm almost every week I was off flying somewhere and people would look at me and say, “wow, I wish I had his job”. Little did they know I was so sick of taxis and airports and hotels, planes and landing and scrambling to get to my meetings.

I’ve been to the USA so many times I can’t count the number of times. I’ve flown over the top of the Grand Canyon and looked down from the plane and thought, “you know one day I’d love to be able to go and see that place”. And there’s a hotel in New Zealand, in Wellington where I’ve stayed one hundred and eight times. That’s a hundred and eight return trips between Australia and New Zealand.

So even what appears to be glamorous or desirable really ends up being a grind. So I’m going to come back to it, whatever your lot in life is, however you spend your day, however glamorous it may appear to other people, however boring it may appear to you, what motivates you to get up and get out of bed every day?

Is it just you have to get up, you have to go to work, you have to do that long commute and sit there in that cubicle and do that job because that’s what pays the mortgage and that’s what puts food on the table and that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it’s always going to be?

Can I tell you, the tragic truth is that that’s precisely how it is for a lot of people. They’re stuck on this endless merry go round of life and drudgery and pressure and stress that has precious little in it to be motivated about at all. You might wonder, how is it that Berni can describe that reality so accurately. Well it’s because I lived a lot of my life just that way. There was nothing in it to motivate me and to give me satisfaction or joy.

Now let me just say I did have some motivations, I wanted to make a lot of money, and I was on the way to that. I wanted to be successful, and to some degree I was. I wanted to be a recognised leader in my industry and to be sure, people knew who I was and my consulting services were very much in demand.

Those were my motivations but there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They’re motivations, you’d think, that if realised would bring a great degree of satisfaction and contentment. Yeah there was a bit of that but it was fleeting, it was elusive, it didn’t last. Deep down at the end of each day when I laid my head on that pillow that sense of achievement and satisfaction of what I’d achieved that day simply wasn’t there and of course in just a few hours that alarm clock will be off again and off we’d go.

Come on, what are your motivations? What gets you up out of bed every day? What are your hopes and dreams? And most importantly are they the sort of motivations and hopes and dreams that are bringing you the sense of satisfaction and contentment and fulfilment that you’re actually looking for. That you’ve been spending most of your life looking for, well are they or aren’t they?

You know Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But that’s how many people, can I say most people are living their lives. Well you know, no, I’m not content, no, I’m not satisfied but if I just keep going, if I just keep working harder maybe it will come.

Can I be blunt here? Can I be really direct? No it won’t because 99% of that sense of satisfaction and contentment and fulfilment that everyone’s yearning for has to do with what’s going on inside your heart. And there is a simple yet profound switch that each one of us can flick on the inside that changes everything. Everything. Would you like to know what it is? Well here it is – the words of Jesus. Matthew chapter 23, verses 11 and 12:

The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

That switch is turning our lives around from filling ourselves, gratifying ourselves, satisfying ourselves to using who we are and what we are and what we have to serve others. It’s turning our lives around from dreaming about how successful we can be to harnessing our hopes and dreams to impact other people’s lives and when we do that here is what happens.

The things that we’ve been doing that seem so mundane all of a sudden they have a purpose outside ourselves and that purpose is to bless other people, to help other people, to use who we are and what we have to make their lives better.

That’s where the satisfaction is, that’s where the contentment is, that’s where the greatness is. I mean what is greatness after all? Greatness lives in the hearts of the people whose lives we’ve impacted, doesn’t it? And all those who try to exalt themselves, who try to build themselves up, who try to be someone will ultimately be humbled because in everyone else’s eyes they’re not that great at all. But all those who humble themselves, to be servants, will be exalted because they’re greatness will live on in the hearts and the lives of those people whom they have served.

It’s a simple switch. So let me ask you again, what motivates you each morning and is it giving you the satisfaction that you’ve been looking for? Oh Berni you just don’t know how boring, how terrible my job really is do you? You have no idea because if you did you wouldn’t say any of this rubbish to me.

No, I don’t know but God does and this is His word to you today if that’s what’s going on in your heart right now. Colossians chapter 3 beginning at verse 22:

Slaves obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while you’re being watched and in order to please them but whole heartedly fearing the Lord. Whatever your task is put yourself into it as done for the Lord and not for your masters. Since you know from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You serve the Lord, Jesus Christ.

Serving God ultimately means serving people. When we love Him and we want to serve Him with all our hearts He often calls us into difficult places and dark places to be the one light that shines there; to be in effect His light shining into the darkness.

And that’s what brings meaning to the reality of our mundane existence, that’s what brings purpose to our lives, a focus to serve Him and to impact others with His love. No people won’t always fall over one another to come and say thank you, we won’t always feel appreciated and yeah some days it’s going to be a really tough gig but that’s okay because when we do it for Jesus then it’s from Him that we’ll receive His inheritance as our reward.

When we’re in the business of serving Jesus that, I have to tell you, is where the action is. It’s the only place so far that I’ve been able to find the peace and the contentment, the sense of fulfilment and satisfaction that I’ve been looking for.