Heart Training can help you increase motivation, but be aware! There are pitfalls along this path! Please read this article carefully.
Turning from earthly sources changes your natural basis for motivation! So you MUST keep going with Heart Training, or you could eventually struggle to find the motivation to do anything! I am writing here to warn you about this and to encourage you to press through it.
Before I talk about motivation, I want to review again the underlying reasons why God designed us as He did. Because God is seeking worshipers, He designed us with a vague, but driving, sense of His greatness deep inside us (Rom. 1:19). God also put a law in our flesh as a constant reminder that everything about our humanity falls short of His glory, in every aspect of what He is like. The result of our falling short is that we are driven to find a sense of glory and a feeling of power from something we can rely on to feel reassured, confident, secure, and worthy.
King David said, that he “satisfied” the thirst of his soul and the “yearning” of his flesh by seeing with faith the nearness of God’s power and glory while he was in the “sanctuary:” The way I see it, David was doing heart training when he declared to himself and to God, “…You are my God…My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You…Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory…My soul is satisfied…” (Ps. 63:1-2, 5). When God becomes what satisfies you, His nearness becomes your boast. The benefit to God is that He is rightly honored as your God. The benefit to you is that the presence of God and your praise toward His nearness, like you might praise new clothing you put on, makes you feel confident, secure, protected, and worthy. This website helps you reassure your heart with the truth until the presence of God comes easily, and you learn how to enjoy satisfying yourself with His nearness.
The practical problem is that there are pitfalls along the way. Heart Training changes your basis for motivation by stripping away what you normally rely on and replacing it with something far better. I am writing to you because the in-between time can be difficult.
The problem is that most of us have learned to rely on ourselves, other people, circumstances, or material things. Over the course of our lives, the “result” of the Law in our flesh becomes “written” in our hearts as patterns of thinking and reliance about how we can best ease the sense of lack we feel from our falling short. Heart Training rewrites what has been written in your heart by what your past experiences have taught you about what to believe and love about where you can best make up for your falling short.
Because your heart has “learned” to depend on the twisted glory and power from the world and sin, your heart can learn to depend on something better and more available!
Deliverance and inner healing are helpful in removing obstacles between you and God, but they do nothing for changing your patterns of thinking and reliance. Heart Training is necessary because nothing else changes your thinking patterns and your heart-level reliance on worldly things, yourself, and other people. It isn’t fun to admit about ourselves, but let me say it anyway.
Deep down, we feel our lack of glory so strongly that easing our sense of falling short becomes the essence of all human motivation. When human motivation comes from the world, the basis for motivation is the prize of pride from 1) receiving a sense of having glory and power through something we achieve, or think we automatically deserve, and 2) from also believing we earned the right to praise ourselves for having earned it. In other words, when we find glory, we believe it is right for us to receive, we open up to it, we praise it, and we put it on for security, identity, and worth. From this, we feel motivated, energized, driven, and courageous to face the challenges of the day. But you don’t have to get these necessary benefits from the glory of the world! All of this can be applied toward God, with far greater benefits to you and to God. But sadly, because they haven’t known how, or even that more was possible, few have the courage to take it this far.
When we praise ourselves for glory or a sense of power we think we have earned, the praise we give ourselves lets us put on pride as a garment that becomes our identity and basis for worth: “…pride is their necklace; / The garment of violence covers them” (Ps. 73:6). We put on pride and wear it like a “necklace” and a “garment” around us, because the pride dulls our sense of falling short and covers us with feelings of worth apart from God.
Rather than pushing to earn the right to praise yourself inside for glory you think you deserve, you must take your Heart Training far enough to change your thinking and dependencies in ways that keep on building your hope of glory in this life. The Scriptures say we are to live “to the end that we…would be to the praise of His glory (Eph 1:12), instead of living for the purpose of being able to praise ourselves. The Heart Training, front-to-back, is designed to help you with this.
The prize of inner praise for our human glory builds our self-confidence, but it undermines our faith in God. A lifetime of growing as a Christian often will change this way of finding motivation. Older Christians learn humility through the years. But few take it far enough to live like David, where he satisfied himself with a basis for motivation that moved him to faith for boasting in God and in the nearness of His power and glory.
Heart Training humbles you of pride, but it also teaches you to enjoy receiving God’s presence and to boast in Him. But please note: the Heart Training is effective enough that when it helps you cut off earthly sources, it will also completely cut off your worldly basis for motivation to live life with HUMAN glory-based energy and drive.
When this happens, you MUST keep going with the Heart Training. By this, you will find energy and motivation, believing and enjoying that because you are depending on God to draw near so you can depend on Him as your God, you are honoring His glory and grace (Eph. 1:6, 12) so much that He finds pleasure in your faith (Heb. 11:6). Let me repeat.
You must not stop! When your Heart Training is effective, you change so much that you no longer want to find motivation in inner praise of your own human glory. When this happens to you, it feels like you are “dying to self.” And it is deep, because your entire natural human basis for human motivation is dying.
Please don’t be alarmed when you notice this happening to you! When motivation decreases, because you are cutting off glory from the world, the Heart Training is working as intended! Keep going!
You must keep going with the Heart Training so that you change to motivation and meaning coming from enjoying that you are living to the praise of God’s glory instead of yours, and you are boldly confident that God is being honored by your childlike dependence on Him for His presence and kingdom (Eph. 1:12; Mark 10:15; Matt. 19:14).
If you don’t keep going with the Heart Training, you can stay stuck in a horrible middle place where you have cut off the worldly prize of praise toward yourself for motivation, and you won’t have the motivation to want to do anything at all. Please don’t let yourself stay there! Motivation on a practical level CAN come from God. The Heart Training will teach you to cut off the twisted glory and power you get from the world and from sin. It will teach you to trust that you are entering before the Lord so that the radiant glory around Him can wash you clean and you can glory in praising His closeness. You CAN live “to the end that we…would be to the praise of His glory (Eph. 1:12).
Rather than self-directed praise and pride, learn to LAUGH at yourself and at the worldly evidence of how desperately you need God. Laugh, then listen with intent to believe your words when you joyously thank God that you can depend on Him to come to you freely and abundantly because of His grace and not because of anything you can ever do or earn.
Remember again that, based on the Scriptures about idolatry, when God is being God to you (Deut. 32:37-39; Hab. 1:11; Jer. 2:11-13), HE is your reason for feeling confident, secure, and protected. And those things we depend on most naturally are always things that are ours and are close to us. So, “living to the praise of His glory” means that just by how you live, by your learning to fill your neediness with the presence of God, you know and believe that God is being honored, greatly worshiped, and exalted just because you are depending on Him in a childlike way. Here, you learn to believe and enjoy that even simple activities, while depending on God to freely give you His presence, exalt God in heavenly realms, in such a significant way that your motivation and drive are constantly being refreshed because of it. You are motivated because you know that you are filling the earth with His glory by what you are receiving—even while doing the simple activity.
When you make this shift, you will also learn that you have to take responsibility for your level of motivation on an everyday basis. This means you must make heart-training statements on your own throughout the day to keep your faith high and your hope of glory in this life strong. Reminding yourself audibly that hope of more glory in this life is realistic for you personally because God is a radiant fountain of glory, and more of the “Spirit of glory” (1 Peter 4:14), is always available to you. When you teach your heart to believe God’s grace for His presence (Eph. 1:6), you can ALWAYS receive more, and by that, you can do your part in helping to fill the earth with more of God’s glory.
I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you that the middle ground is miserable when you’re changing from your glory to God’s. So keep going with your Heart Training, as that will help you make the transition time as short as possible.
Don’t miss this next sentence: You MUST transition to BOLDLY ENJOYING that your childlike dependence on the nearness of God protects you while also honoring Him in the heavenly realms before onlooking rulers and authorities in heavenly places (Eph. 3:10; Eph. 6:12).
When you combine faith with praise toward the glory and power of God close to you, motivation soars, God gets honored for His being God to you, and you find a practical kind of motivation that stays with you all day. It works even when you are doing things you have to do that are boring, because the motivation you enjoy comes independently of the boring activity you have to do.
I am convinced that when people learn to motivate themselves with the glory of God, that is when these prophecies will be fulfilled: “They raise their voices, they shout for joy; They cry out from the west concerning the majesty of the Lord” (Isa. 24:14). And, “…the nations will bless themselves in Him, / And in Him they will glory” (Jer. 4:2).