What does it take to motivate people? Millions of dollars worth in books, tapes and seminars have wrestled with this question. If you have the answer, it will make you rich.

A more pressing question for many of us is how can I motivate myself to do the things I know I ought to do? Because as hard as motivation is, self motivation is even harder. That’s why the self-help section in book stores is huge.

This morning I want to focus on a young man who was very highly motivated. His name was Jeremiah, and he was not a bullfrog. Jeremiah was a prophet who was only a teenager when God told him to prophesy.

Where do we find the motivation to keep going, to keep striving, to keep serving, to be all that God has called us to be?  We see some clues in the Jeremiah’s example.

First of all, Jeremiah had a strong consciousness of God in his life. I believe most people have a consciousness of God. Most people are religious.

Back when George W. Bush was Vice President, he represented the U.S. at the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by something that Brezhnev’s widow did at that funeral. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid to close it, Brezhnev’s wife reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband’s chest.

Fifty years of atheism under communism had not extinguished the flame of hope that the cross represents, even for the widow of the man who led the communist regime.

Most people have a consciousness of God, even though some work hard at ignoring it.  After all, if we admit God exists, we might have to plan our lives accordingly.

Catherine Rohr was living well as an investor on Wall Street.  In May, 2004 she toured a prison in Texas that changed her life. Not only did she have compassion for the inmates, but she sensed that they had potential in the business world. Drug dealers, as slimy as they are, are, after all, entrepreneurs who know how to handle money. Rohr wondered if their potential could be redirected in a positive way?

Rohr was so intrigued by this possibility that she quit her New York investment career, moved to Texas with her husband and started a ministry to help inmates develop legitimate business skills.

It wasn’t easy. For one thing, immediately after moving to Texas , all her belongings were stolen by the type of people she moved to Texas to serve. Many among us would have been so angry that we would have turned back right then. That’s because we don’t have a strong God-consciousness.

But Catherine Rohr hung in there, and today more than 370 inmates have graduated from her program, 97% of whom were employed within four weeks after their release from prison.

The feeling that Catherine Rohr had when her goods were stolen by the very type of people she was setting out to help is the feeling that plagued Jeremiah all his life. People simply would not listen to his message. They didn’t want anything to interrupt their comfort and convenience.

When, at the urging of God, Jeremiah proclaimed, “Look guys, we have a problem,” they taunted him, ridiculed him, persecuted him.  A lesser man would have folded his cards and gone home. But Jeremiah had a strong consciousness that God was with him.

He hung in there, secondly, because Jeremiah knew that he had been “set apart.” “The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart . . .” What does that mean, “set apart”?

It literally means “put into office”.  There was no career track, no training.  God appointed Jeremiah to the right job at the right time.  He got the corner office.  The nameplate was put on the door.  His business cards were made, and wardrobe chosen.  Said set him apart, appointing him to the task at hand.

You’ve heard the phrase, “He marches to a different drummer”.  It’s a derisive term, often used to indicate that someone is out of step with the rest of society, and few of us wants to be thought of as “different.”

If wide ties are in style, we wear a wide tie. If narrow ties are in style, we wear a narrow tie. If no tie is in style, we wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one. Usually our conformity is rather harmless, but sometimes it’ll get us in trouble.

Woody Allen readily admits that he’s afraid of doctors. He also admits that he’s tight with money.  So years ago, when he started to suffer with headaches that eventually became intolerable, he was forced to see a doctor.

After being examined, the physician informed him that he’d need a few thousand dollars worth of testing. That gave Allen an even larger headache, until he remembered that his old friend Billy had suffered with similar headaches. Maybe he could learn how Billy cured his headaches without going through all those expensive tests himself. He determined that he would do just what Billy did.

So he called his old friend, but Billy’s mother answered the phone. After some pleasantries, she informed Woody that Billy was dead. Startled, Woody dropped the phone and immediately made appointments for all of the expensive testing that the doctor had prescribed.

Two weeks and thousands of dollars later, he met with his physician and was relieved to learn that there was nothing seriously wrong. There were no brain tumors, no cancer. Excited, Woody called Billy’s mother to apologize for his hasty phone call two weeks before and to say that he was sorry he had hung up on her.

He explained that he had been upset because he had been suffering with the same headaches that had killed Billy. “Oh no,” said Billy’s mother, “Billy got hit by a truck.” (4) So much for learning from Billy’s experience.

Remember when you said to your mother, “But everybody’s doing it”? and your mother said, “If everyone was jumping off a cliff, would you jump off one, too?”

The crowd can be wrong. The crowd was wrong in Jeremiah’s time. They wanted to worship idols and ignore their responsibilities to God. God set apart Jeremiah to confront the crowd.

Lastly, Jeremiah lived a purpose-driven life. Jeremiah had that figured out long before Pastor Rick Warren wrote his best-selling book. In that book, Warren begins with these words, “It’s not about you.”

Jeremiah understood that. God had work for him to do - dirty work, unrewarding work, unglamorous work – and because God had called him to the task, Jeremiah did what needed to be done. God is looking for people willing to do what needs to be done today, people who live with purpose even when everything around them looks dismal and hopeless.

Most of us will never live under those extreme conditions. Most of us will never really suffer for our faith. Most of us will never even be socially ostracized like Jeremiah.

But many of us are in situations in which we are not appreciated, even though we are doing the best we can: caring for aging parents, loving special needs children,  working against great odds to make our community a better place to live and our church a better place to be.

We may not be a prophet like Jeremiah, but we have a strong consciousness of God in our lives. We may not be a prophet like Jeremiah, but we know that we are set apart to make a difference. We may not be a prophet like Jeremiah, but understand that our lives are driven by purpose - to be all God created us to be.