Something I’ve been noticing a lot lately is this new fad of motivational speakers and writers telling everyone how to “make it big” and they all basically say the same thing while using their own story of how the did it. The majority of these people are middle class white women who are “allies” of people of color (a term I HATE by the way and do not understand why brown and black people seem to not get how close it sounds to “colored people”, but that’s another blog post that is sitting in my drafts because I am not really ready for the flame-throwing that will bring me) and who don’t seem to see that their motivational advice is all basically the same and all for one specific audience: people with privileges that poor people do not have. Not just poor people, but people living the struggle.

I do not mean the “oh I had to be on bed rest” struggle either.  I mean the struggle of generational poverty and trauma. Of being a single mother and grandmother who has to wait tables to make ends meet or have more than one job. The people who are working for minimum wage at the conferences where these motivational gurus are speaking. The people who never had the chance to go to college and even if they did, they would be behind socially because we have to learn a new language around kids who went to good schools. People who are worried about racism and how it is an issue that they live, not just learn about in books and on the internet. People without insurance or a spouse or whose whole family has been riddled with addiction. People with a criminal record that means they will never get a job with benefits. People with bad credit which means they can’t rent an apartment or ever own a home. People who struggle with every single one of the issues that I just wrote at the same time. Who is helping these people learn to figure out and follow their dreams?

I’ll tell you Who: Jesus.

Yeah, I said it. Jesus. The one Name you don’t hear much of even though a lot of these spunky motivational speakers will say they are Christians. They use Christianity as a badge of honor but they do not dare speak His name or say anything about His Gospel.

Something I have been thinking about a lot this week is how equal holiness makes us. It does not matter how much money you have, what kind of family you were born into, whether or not you are a millionaire or work seventeen jobs, holiness is attainable for everyone. Not only is it attainable, but it is the purpose of our entire existence. THAT is the true goal of our lives, to be made into saints.

The key words are “be made into”. It is much easier to become a multi-millionaire than it is to be made into a saint.  Because allowing God to make you a saint means that your entire life will be set on fire right before your very eyes. Suffering is the fire that God uses to make saints (He does not cause the suffering, He USES it).

He will perform surgery on your life to take out every single rotten thing out of it and you will not be put under while it is happening. No, it will be painful. So so painful.

I can totally see why these nice, kind, superficial, easy and full of the prosperity gospel “methods” are so in fashion and so marketable while stories of suffering and being nailed to a Cross are not. I can tell you for sure that if I had known the amount of heartache, suffering and all around bullshit my life as a Christian seeking holiness would bring me, I would have run so fast the other way.

I did not know because God dupes us lost sheep all the time, it’s his MO. Just read the lives of the Saints, the unedited versions. He swoons us, loves us, does miraculous things for us and then our lives go right into the toilet. Motivational speeches and “how-to” books do not help when that happens. The only thing that helps is clinging to Jesus who went before us and Who hung on His Cross saying “Why have you forsaken me?”.

Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, for theirs will be the Kingdom of God. 

That is the motivation for the poor. He isn’t a motivational speaker, He doesn’t give us a “how to be a success” plan, He gives us salvation.