“The Daily Motivation”

By Stephen Tan

When I was staying with aunty Janet in Perth, Australia, I found out that she has the best toilet. The toilet is not big or spectacular, but it has the best message glued onto the toilet wall. The message is short but it is very powerful and meaningful.

The toilet message:

“This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use for His glory. I can waste it or use it for Him. What I do today is very important, because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something I have traded for it. I want today to be gain for God, not loss; good, not evil; success, not failure. In order that I shall not regret the price I paid for it!”

What makes this message so powerful it’s because it reminds us of our time on earth belongs to God and we are His stewards. Sadly, most of the time we take it for granted and behave unwisely. Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” James 4:13-17. As stated in the scriptures, we tend to behave arrogantly and thinking that the time is ours, we decide to use it however we want, rather than what God’s will for us is. This act is evil in God’s sight!

Another bible passage make this point more explicit.Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:15-17). We as Christians will become fools if we still don’t use our life to do God’s will. Don’t you know that when there is no time left for us, we all have to face Him and give an account of our lives.  “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive his due for the things done in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 2:5-10).

Therefore, my beloved brethren, our time is very short on earth. We need to keep planning our daily activities for God. Everyday we need to set a time to grow in knowledge of the bible, find ways to improve our skills to serve God, and look for opportunities to evangelize by having bible study or discussions with our friends.

Now as the author of this article, although I know what I must do, I still personally struggle with the challenges of life and its temptation which caused me to fail. Only recently, I realized that I not been doing an important action that I must do everyday. This message has caught my father’s attention too and it has been an inspiration to him ever since then. Almost every morning, I can hear my father motivates himself by reading this message loud and clear while he is having his shower. This example clearly exhibit a very good habit of pre-setting of the mind that every Christian should have. “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:8).

It saddens me more when I realize that I know the meaning of the toilet message and witnessed my father’s daily motivation routine for a long time now, but yet I have been wasting a lot of my time on my own desires and doing my own will. Hence, without the ritual of daily meditation, I will eventually fail again.

In conclusion, I have to start following my father’s daily habit of motivating myself in the toilet. My sincere invitation to all of you readers to join me as well. May God bless us all in His work.

 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).