I love a good pep talk.
I’m always up for a confidence-building, head-lifting, mood-shifting, perspective-changing motivational speech.
Who doesn’t like an emotional and passionate Inspiring message! I particularly like it when it is fiery. Several come to mind right now from sports history or from classic movies! Michael Jordan’s halftime message in Space Jam. Tim Tebow’s postgame speech in 2008 after a loss to Ole Miss. Currently, I really like this one about being the shark of the ocean.
But for as much as I like to hear those messages, I have learned that they don’t often change me. I mean sometimes I am inspired, but often times I just like it and stay mostly unchanged.
I am learning that it takes something more substantial to really impact me. I have learned that God’s Word is the very thing to move me. I have found that nothing makes such a difference in my mindset and motivation than God’s truth.
It’s not about what I can do. It’s about what God has done. It’s about what God is doing. When I hear and when I am reminded what God is doing not only does it settle me and level me, but it strengthens me! Moreso than anytime I’ve ever been told by myself or by somebody else what I can do.
So I go through seasons of latching on to certain Biblical phrases and passages that are helpful for me.
Currently these 2 passages of Scripture have been very helpful to me:
Psalm 94:17-19
“If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would have soon lived in the land of silence.
When I thought ‘my foot slips’, your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
“And he said to me “my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
There is hardly a day that goes by that I do not recite those 4 verses to myself. They work on me and in me.
God uses His words to speak life in to my life.
That is a good pep talk!