When You Wake Up Unmotivated

Good morning, brother. This morning I woke up and I did not feel like doing life. I did not feel like studying the word. I did not feel like praying. I did not feel like building my business. I didn't even feel close to God. I felt empty, tired, completely unmotivated. Do you ever feel like this? 

When you find yourself plagued with these feelings, Satan has one strategy and it’s oh so very subtle: to get you to believe those feelings. “Yea, life isn't worth living. Yeah, praying does suck; what a waste of time. Yeah, the work I do is meaningless. And maybe I’m not close to God after all.” 

Listen: Satan’s greatest weapon against you is deception. If you are in Christ, he cannot touch you. He cannot enter you as he did with Judas Iscariot. He cannot force you to do anything as he did to King Pharaoh. 

So he’s left with one device: deceive you. 

If he can get you to move from having feelings to believing your feelings, you have given him a foothold. 

The step from having feelings to believing feelings is a very tiny step–so small it’s almost imperceptible. If I take a pot of water down to the beach and heat it over a fire to 211° Fahrenheit, nothing happens. But the moment I heat it to 212° degrees, it turns to steam that can power an 18 ton train. 

One small step can make all the difference in the world. But in our example, an unbelievably destructive one. 

So what’s the solution? Two steps and very simple: 

First, make Satan run from you. How? Not by saying an elaborate prayer, doing a bunch of ministry, or trying really hard. No. By simply…resisting him. Jesus' brother James tells us in James 4:7: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” 

That’s amazing. You can make the most powerful evil being in the universe run from you. How? Resist. The moment you find yourself tempted to believe your negative feelings, try this. Say out loud: “That is a lie.” I can feel it. But that doesn’t make it true. 

If you hold a bottle upside down underwater, it’s full of air. But just like when you turn it over and the air escapes it must be replaced by something else, so when you choose to reject Satan’s whispered lies, you must replace it with something else. 

What do you replace it with? Truth. That’s the second step. Say truth to yourself. 

The fastest way to destroy a lie is to shine truth on it. 

Here’s a truth: God loved you so much that He died for you (Rom 5:8). 

Here’s a truth: Nothing can separate you from the love of God (Rom 8:28). 

Here’s a truth: “I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14)

You are a man. You are created by God to be masculine, strong, and designed to protect, serve, and build. 

Today, let's live this out by rejecting Satan’s lies and reminding ourselves of truth.  

“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:37-38).