Huge houses — 4,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 square feet, and even larger — inhabited by 2 or 3 people, abound in our society. Why is that? People have fallen for the myth that says that unused floor space is important.

But why would unused floor space be important? For some people it may be important for their image and for their ego, but in an age of energy shortage and planetary mismanagement, is that a wise use of limited resources?

If a house has everything a person needs, why does it need to be huge? Of what practical use is unused floor space? Isn’t it just something extra to clean and to heat and to waste precious resources?

Many people have become slaves to their houses and mortgages. They are under constant pressure to meet their financial responsibility for all their unused floor space because they fell for Myth of our Time #15 that told them that they needed lots of floor space to show their importance.

In our constant striving for bigger and better houses, many of us have lost our peace of mind. However, 19th Century American writer, Henry David Thoreau had a better idea — once your basic needs are met, spend your time and energy on self-improvement rather than on the acquisition of more stuff.

A seldom heard Bible verse agrees. It reads: “Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content.”

The human appetite for unused floor space will never be met. Even if you have built more than Biltmore Estate, someone else has or will soon have a bigger house than you. That competition is an endless waste of energy and of earth’s resources.

The truth is: if you have a roof over your head, you are fortunate. Once your housing needs are met, unused floor space is meaningless.

Motivation Quotation: “You must deliberately demand self-improvement. Brain cells and brain fibers cannot learn better ways from preachers, only your own untiring will can do anything with them.” –Frank Channing Haddock

The Scope of Motivation: Motivatiion should create an inner fire of possibility and passion that drives us to demand continuous self-improvement. Weak motivation teases and disappoints us. To be effective, motivation must be strong, compelling, and demanding.

Hope on fire with passionate desire will cause us to consistently strive to teach our brain cells and brain fibers “better ways.” Just listening to and learning techniques for living a better life will not change anything about our lives, unless we bring to bear our untiring will in an intentional demand for self-improvement.

Motivation that makes no demands on ourself is only an illusion. Real motivation gets up from apathy, gets prepared, gets tough, continuously improves, and stays ever alert.

Motivation — like diamonds or gold — is extremely costly. You can’t get it on the cheap. It is purchased with the personal strokes of moment-by-moment all-out effort to demand that our brain cells perform better. If we slack, we will lack motivation.

The farmer who plants no seeds has no hope of a harvest. People who plant no motivational thoughts (or motivation quotations) have no reason to expect a harvest of motivation. Their fields are overgrown with mental and emotional, life-sucking weeds.

Staying motivated is work — hard, demanding work! Those courageous ones who persist to raise a harvest of personal motivation, not only greatly improve their lives; they inspire others to press into a motivated lifestyle.

Get motivated, be a motivation-hog, a motivation-hero!

Can the Holy Spirit direct a meeting, without the help and control of a human leader? Yes indeed! It is an awesome thing to behold if we let it happen. It is a deeply moving experience.

The early Quakers sought to have Spirit led meetings. They had no pastors to direct their church services. They gathered and sat in silence, waiting for the Holy Spirit to prompt different individuals into action.

At the Spirit’s leading someone would begin a song. Someone else might share an idea that the Spirit put in his or her mind. Another person would offer a Spirit led prayer. Someone else might present a short teaching. Someone else might begin to weep or to rejoice.

The Quakers didn’t invent this form of worship. They found it in the New Testament. This is the way Christians are commanded to worship in I Corinthians 14:26

Christians are also commanded: “Quench not the Holy Spirit.” That means we are not to hold back the Holy Spirit or refuse to obey Him. Unfortunately, however, our modern church structure frequently compels us to quench the Spirit. (For example, if a person is led by the Spirit to go to the altar and pray during the sermon, they almost always disobey and quench the Spirit so as not to be out of the traditional order of the meeting.)

Openly Spirit led meetings are difficult to find. I have been searching for them for years. An informal group that I was involved with in college had frequent Spirit led meetings and they changed my life. God often showed up in supernatural power. He touched me deeply by allowing me to see many of my brothers and sisters obeying the Holy Spirit in meetings.

It only takes two or there to have a Spirit led meeting. Sometimes my wife and I will gather with two or three other people and allow the Holy Spirit to lead. It is awesome how God shows up. (Sometimes when just my wife and I pray together our prayer can become routine, but when we allow the Spirit to freely lead us, even our prayers together are moving.)

Our traditional methods of having church are not reaching our society. Sermons and ritual are not working to influence people to follow and obey God and His principles. Something else is needed. Our churches and our world desperately need actual demonstrations of the power and presence of God. We need Holy Spirit led meetings and Holy Spirit led lives!

Thirty minutes after writing this post, I picked up a Bible in another room and opened it at random. It fell open to I Corinthians 14:26. How’d that happen?

I recently read an Associated Press article entitled: “Here’s how to fight back or give in to 7 deadly sins”. They say: “. . . you might want to check yourself out against something that has stood the test of time: the seven deadly sins . . . And in the interest of free choice, here are some modern suggestions for fighting them off — or indulging them”.

They list the seven deadly sins as: 1) greed, 2) sloth, 3) lust, 4) gluttony, 5) pride, 6) wrath, and 7) envy. AP gives a paragraph or two on how to fight back or how to give in to each of the seven sins.

I take this article as a challenge. Anybody can give in to the 7 deadly sins through passive surrender. That requires no effort, no resistance, no courage, no principles.

However to rise up and overcome the 7 deadly sins requires great determination, heroism, boldness, and character. Only the bravest and strongest individuals will sincerely and consistently attempt it.

Life without challenge is boring. Fighting to overcome the sins in our life, makes life an exciting challenge. Why not put even more effort in your fight to do right this new year?

Just before the New Year, a giant shredder in Times Square beckoned to all: “Come, shred your sad stories, regrets, and pains.” A garbage truck was waiting to carry away the shredded misery forever.

The industrial size shredder was provided by the Times Square Business Alliance (TSBA) which also offered people stationary for them to write down their problems, their wrongful behaviors, and their gripes . The idea was to help people get beyond their past by giving them a symbolic way to leave it behind. TSBA president, Tim Tompkins, said: “New Years is always about looking back, about reflection, but it’s also about renewal, looking forward and letting go of things.”

The televised event attracted attention. After stuffing a photograph of her ex-fiance and his new girlfriend into the shredder, Khadija Jackson, 23, exclaimed: “I feel liberated!”

Geraldine Webber, 36, visiting from Ecuador, wrote down the name of her soon to be ex-husband and shoved it into the industrial-size shredder. “We were walking around and saw the TV cameras,” she said. “We thought it would be fun to do it.”

TSBA also provided a sledgehammer for items that couldn’t be shredded. Joe Costarella used the sledgehammer to wreck a kitchen trash can that he and his wife had repeatedly argued about this year.

It is good to leave the negative aspects of your past behind — and you don’t have to go to New York City to do it! Why not write down your mistakes, regrets, disappointments, character flaws, and sins? Then ask God to forgive you and to heal you. As a symbol of His forgiveness and healing, tear up or shred the paper and throw it away. Then begin to live a better life in 2008!