Chasing your Passion
From this year’s devotional from Gateway Church called “Let’s Go!”:
God wants to use you … to send you. Don’t think you’re too young or too old for Him to use you. Regardless of your age, His plans for you are so much greater than you could ever imagine. What stirs your heart? What burning passion has God given you? Don’t grow weary and give up. The dreams He has placed in your heart He will accomplish—in wonderful, creative, unexpected ways—if you choose to seek Him, trust Him and obey Him. Ask yourself today: “Am I willing to be open to God’s will for my life?”
I seem to always struggle with this tension of “lay down your life” and “what are your dreams/what are you passionate about”. This scripture from Matthew 16:24-25 is clear:
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.”
Questions like “What stirs your heart?” and “What are you passionate about?” seem to be conflicting with “give up your life for me, and you will find true life.” Because what if your passions are in conflict with your calling?
I think the key is the very next verse: “And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?” v26. A wrong motivation is to “gain the whole world” at the cost of losing your soul. To save your soul, come to Christ, and let him resurrect the Godly passions that were wired into you when God formed you in your mother’s womb:
“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous–and how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! They are innumerable!” Psalms 139:13-17, NLT.
I like what Erwin McMannus wrote on the back of one of his book covers. He simply said, “Since God has changed your heart, he can now trust your passions.” I think that is the key. I have a new heart, a new motivation, a new desire. When I think about my dreams, my desires, my passions, they are rooted in glorifying God. So, God can trust my passions.
What makes your heart come alive?
Stop praying for revival, and BE the revival
Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now. — TERESA OF AVILA
My 2010 New Year’s Resolution is to stop praying for revival and BE the revival.
Finding freedom through imagination
Recently, I’ve been listening to a series from Greg Boyd called Animate. In his series, Greg talks about how to find true transformation and freedom through our imagination. He describes how the church has tried in vain to find freedom. He describes three common attempts:
1. Try Harder
How often have you heard it said, “If you want to overcome this problem, then just try harder.” It’s so engrained in our culture and now it has permeated into the church. ”To find freedom, you must try harder.” But, it’s not true. While there may be some elements of truth to working harder, it’s not the end-all path to transformation.
2. Wait on God
This is the pendulum swing the other way from “try harder”–just wait on God. Instead of being actively engaged in transformation, this ideology is just to wait on God, wait for transformation to come, wait for God to move, wait for the Holy Spirit to transform. Again, there are elements of truth to this, but it’s not the solution.
3. More Information
This is another path that is quite common today. Knowledge. And, with the Internet so pervasive, we have information at our fingertips. But, more information is not the solution. If it were, then the Pharisees would have been perfect. In their time, they were to the keepers of the Biblical information. But, information does not lead to transformation.
So, where does transformation come from?
More on that later.
The bride of Christ is a rather large woman
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a certain king who threw a wedding feast for his son.”
Jesus begins conversations in strange and unusual ways, but His message is different from anything we normally expect. The opening of Matthew 22, I believe, describes for us, something of God’s very big picture plan for creation. God, who was sufficient unto Himself, (not lonely) spoke creation into existence, and He did so in order to accomplish a very specific purpose. When time as we understand it comes to an end, the one thing that will be different is that the Son of God, (His Word, Voice, Expressed Self) will have a Bride. And if you continue the story in Matthew 22, it would appear that this bride, is not necessarily composed of the people that we would expect.
If the phrase “the Bride of Christ” is unfamiliar to you, I am referring to the church. Not “a” church. Not the Baptists, the Catholics, or the Charismatics. I am referring to the ones who will be with Jesus for all of Eternity. And among the groups mentioned, and many others not mentioned, I believe many of those people will join Jesus in eternity, and, frighteningly, many members of those groups will not.
The Bible teaches us that when Jesus returns for His “Bride” she (guys, don’t let the feminine reference throw you off… this includes us too) will be blameless and without spot. It is for this reason, that I think of this “freedom ministry” thing that I am called to, as pre-marital counseling for the Bride of Christ. Freedom, as I understand it, is not so much about helping you have a better life, though that is a wonderful side-effect. Freedom is about preparing us all to unite with Jesus for our eternal destiny, to stand alongside Him and play our role in the ongoing unfolding of God’s eternal plan.
It is crucial to our understanding to realize that God had a plan for man’s role in creation. In the garden of Eden, Adam had a role to play. That plan has never changed. Jesus came to Earth, taught and ministered, lived and died, and then was resurrected. He sent the Holy Spirit to us to guide and empower us now, here on Earth. He did not do this primarily to improve the quality of our lives or reduce our suffering, He did this in order to continue with the plan He instituted from the beginning. We must be careful that we are not satisfied simply to be relieved of our burdens. We have a mission, an assignment, a created purpose. We are being prepared here to fulfill that assignment.
We must become familiar with some of the essential tools of our mission, therefore our time on Earth may be considered boot camp, a place to learn to use the equipment we are given to reign with Christ in eternity.
It is good to no longer be addicted, but it is crucial that we now learn to be sustained by His Spirit. It is good to no longer be afraid, but it is crucial that we now learn to live by faith (interaction with the invisible Kingdom). It is good to recognize that the gifts of God are irrevocable, but it is crucial that we now learn to use them to fulfill His plan, not just to pad our spiritual resume. It is good to forgive those who have trespassed against us, but it is crucial we now learn to be moved by the impulse of His love, and restore on Earth the dominion of God’s nature. It is good to recognize God’s desired outcomes, but it is crucial to now learn that His Means are equally important as His Ends.
The church, the people on Earth who have been born of His Spirit, and are being conformed to His image, faces a time of unprecedented change. The season in which we currently live is marked by massive change in every aspect of culture. World economics, political conditions, even the weather and the planet, all are shifting at an accelerated rate. In this time the church world as we know it is also changing. While it is true that change is good, it is more true that the right kind of change is good.
Destiny and Purpose
I’m one of those destiny and purpose kinds of people. I love thinking about the bigger picture. I love doing what I was created to do, so I’m driven by my destiny. What am I supposed to do? I think it’s a question that all of us needs to answer, and not just once, but continually.
Back in April of 2004, I read a book called “God is My CEO“, and in the appendix, there was a template for your personal business plan. So, I spent a month writing out my personal business plan. Forty pages later, I landed on my three goals:
- To get completely out of debt, mortgage and all.
- To make a feature film.
- To step full-time into ministry work.
Those were my goals. Interestingly, by the end of 2004, a big project came in and we paid off our mortgage. Wow, that was fast. Goal 1 is done.
In 2005 I resigned from my job to start a production company, and by the end of 2006, we had all of our funding for a feature film. In 2007 we shot the film and by the end of 2007, I had made my first feature film, Fissure. Goal 2 was done.
At this point, you may be thinking, that must feel wonderful, having completed your goals so quickly. Yes, kind of. Another part of me is, “what now?” I kept thinking “full-time ministry” would be in my late 50′s, early 60′s, not my early 40′s. I didn’t quite expect it to happen that fast.
This past week, our church kicked off a beta run of a new program called Emerge. It helps you focus in on your strengths by using a variety of tools. One of those tools is Gallup’s Strengths Finder 2.0. That alone has been wonderful!
Then, with these strengths in mind, you begin to map out your calling and destiny. Using key action words that define your drive, and mapping those into your passion and the people who stir your heart the most, you develop and shape your mission and vision statements.
Let me tell you what I’ve discovered so far. (I say “so far”, because there is so much more to be discovered.) Let me start by mapping out some of the things I discovered about myself:
STRENGTHS
- 1. Learner – People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.
2. Relator – People strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
3. Responsibility – People strong in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.
4. Individualization – People strong in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.
5. Belief – People strong in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life.
These descriptions are found in the Strengths Finder’s book. I grabbed these descriptions off of someone’s blog about Strengths Finder.
Then, we were shown a list of “Action words”, and told to scan them quickly and see which ones stand out, which ones jumped off the page. I narrowed it down to the top six, and then then top three. Finally, I put them in the order that made the most sense to me.
Those three key Action Words were:
- Understand
- Communicate
- Inspire
Then, with our new destiny ingredients, we started crafting our vision statement. The first task was to identify a people group, or types of people that are important to us. Immediately, two groups of people came to mind–lost people (non believers) and hurting people (both believers and non-believers). Knowing that three of my strengths are relationship-focused (relator, responsibility, individualization), I knew my calling was to hurting people. That’s who I relate to the most, and that’s who I want to help the most.
So, equipped with this new information (at least new to me), I crafted my vision statement as follows:
- To understand and encourage the hurting through communication and inspiration.
I think that really sums up what I feel called to do.
And so, I challenge you–what is your vision statement for life? What has God called you to do? What is your destiny?
Recent Posts
- The Knowledge of Good
- What do you believe about God?
- Go to the Mattresses
- Sin Mangement Vs. Forming Jesus In Us
- Focusing on your problem or focusing on God?
- Think Again
- What does it mean to Repent? What is repentance?
- Chasing your Passion
- Stop praying for revival, and BE the revival
- Divine Power within us to ask
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