In the beginning, people had all they needed. They had a simple life, beautiful surroundings, lush gardens, and an abundance of fresh fruit. Clean air. No major decisions to make and no real worries. Man and woman had no need to decide what clothes to wear that day, for they were naked but didn’t know it.

  Then everything changed. We know the story about how Satan tempted Eve with the fruit from the tree of knowledge. She took it and shared with Adam and mankind has been making their decisions since. They were forced to leave the Garden of Eden and had to go and start a new way of life for themselves. They now had to work hard for everything they got.

  They now had children, Adam had responsibilities of growing food, harvesting, teaching the children and of course caring for his wife Eve. I’m sure they faced a lot of hardships through the years, but were not alone for God still cared. The Bible does not explain how Adam and Eve felt about losing a son, but I’m sure they were not happy. They were able to have more children but they slowly grew older and died. With Adam and Eve, there were no books, videos, friends or family to help them. They had to learn, trial, error and they had the will to survive.

  What did Satan offer to Eve as motivation? Desire, curiosity, perhaps he also used even the mere suggestion that they too could be as smart as God. He used reason, even though she was taught by Adam to worship and obey God, she learned doubt. She made a decision on her own to disobey her husband and God. It really made no sense to her that they would die!

  So desire is a good motivator. Yes, if you really positively desire something enough, you will work, scrimp, save, to get what you want. Desire is a want, not a need. We often desire what we want and rarely desire what we need. We just aren’t made like that. Furthermore we often desire things we don’t really need. How often do we see things in other people’s homes that we decide we want?

  But if we are smart enough, hopefully before we officially decide we want it, we may notice that even though that person has that item, they don’t use it. Because like a small kitchen appliance, it is too hard to clean after using, or either it isn’t worth the bother of moving things out of the way on a counter area, to plug it in to an electrical outlet.

  Otherwise we get it and within a few months we either place it the box for donation or we try to add it to our overstuffed closet full of stuff we are going to put in a garage/yard sale. In which requires time we don’t have or now. Strange how the more convenience time saving items we achieve, the less time we really have to do what we want, but we make time for what we need.

Motivation Part 2 coming soon