Motivated by Stories
In recent months, I have been asked about the work I do and what do I see in the future of the work I do. I have also been asked if I am doing too much. I lead an organization / ministry that serves hundreds of people of various ages. I preach regularly to adolescents and work with young people as they explore their faith. I help parents build better relationships with their children through enhancing their communication skills. I am also studying, taking classes, and sharing my learning to help others. Underneath the surface, I am really just doing one thing, helping people transform into the person that God has wired them to be. Above the surface, I am doing this one thing in different ways.
Like any work, I get frustrated, tired, disappointed, discouraged, and disheartened. Things don’t go as well as I have hoped, and my excitement are met with resistance and oppositions. In those times, it is easy to give up and follow the current. Let majority rule, so they can tell me what to do. There is a part of me think that it is easier to just let people tell me what to do so I don’t have to do the hard part of thinking and planning anymore.
In these moments, I wonder where I get my motivation. As a Christian, it might be easier to say, my motivation comes form the Lord. That might be easy to say, but it is not always the truth. If I am being honest, knowing that God calls me to serve his people doesn’t motivate me. It just sounds like hard work filled with a lot of self-sacrifice. That just sounds challenging. Jesus shared with his disciples that by aligning with Jesus, the disciples can expect to be treated poorly by the world. Following Jesus will be met with a lot of opposition.
So what really motivates me?
What really motivates me are stories, specifically the stories of transformation. It is when a person that I have helped transformed, moving from one identity to another. The story of a student felt ignored felt known and understood. The story of a disorganized person found ways to be more organized and thus having more time to be with the person’s love one. The story of someone feeling unappreciated to someone who has a good relationship with their children. These stories motivates me to keep going. It made me feel like the work I do are meaningful. I see these stories as evidences of me loving God’s people, and therefore I love God. I love the people that God loves.
As I dig a little further, I feel God’s love through God’s people loving me. God’s people call me to pray with me. God’s people meet up with me to hear how I am doing, and they cared about how I feel an who I am. God’s people sat with me when I was sad, and God’s people celebrated with me when I experience a win in my life. God’s people showed me God’s love, and therefore I felt God’s love. Because I was loved, then I am able to love God through loving his people.
These stories of transformations are like the fuels that kept the engine running. They motivate me to keep going, and they remind me the work I do is meaningful because it made a difference in someone’s life. To help me remember, I write down these stories and save those emails. So when I needed a reminder, I can go back and read these incredible stories.
Stories motivate me, and I am grateful to be living inside the greatest story of all: God is transforming me into his likeness. I can’t wait to live the story and share my story with others.
