If someone could peel back your heart to see what or whom you are passionate about, what would they find? More importantly, would they find any fire in your belly?
Is there a burning desire to fulfill your destiny? Do you find yourself excited about addressing a great cause? Are you still hot for your spouse? Are you passionate about your relationship with God? If you are a leader, did you wake up this morning ready to face whatever life throws at you—with joy?
If not, why not?
If your love for a person, a previous passion, or your God-given purpose is on life-support or already dead cold, what happened?
Here are a few things to consider:
• Have you lost your passion because you neglected your fuel? Even a huge bonfire eventually fades to smoldering ash without new wood. The only way to keep a fire going is to feed it. What feeds your soul? What fuels your enthusiasm? Great leaders, companies, and churches became great by tapping into their passions and doing so again and again. What are your emotional, physical, and spiritual gauges showing? Maybe it’s time to refuel.
• Have you made it (whatever you’re doing) too much about you? Self-centered narcissism is like dumping ice on your passions. Sadly, if you forget that it’s not just about you and what you want or think you need, you start to drift into the lukewarm waters of me-ism. When you make a relationship about what you can get out of it, things grow cold quickly. When you make your role as a leader about you, the result is emptiness, not true meaning or fulfillment. Passion is maintained when you are otherly.
• Have you and what you do become far too complicated? It is the nature of things to go from simple to complicated. What once started as a clear-cut and straightforward mission often ends up over-regulated, complex, and convoluted. A problem occurs, and we create a policy. We hit a roadblock, so we develop more procedures or systems to help us (or so we hope) avoid this same barrier in the future. Sometimes, however, less is more. There’s a reason why new relationships, new companies, and new churches often grow rapidly. They are simple and streamlined, which makes it easier for the participants to be focused and effective. Maybe it’s time to simplify, return to your “first love and do the things you did at first?”
The older I get, the more I realize how easy it is to live on cruise control. It’s safe and convenient to get into a routine. I find comfort in the predictable. Sadly, there’s little passion in the zone of security and ease.
But what if you and I lived every day of our lives—right up to our last breath—with a burning hot passion for something that is bigger than we are? What if we were consumed by a holy obsession to make a positive difference in the place where we live and work? What if we stayed willing to the end to give our very lives, if need be, for an eternal cause?
What if?
Would you risk everything for something that truly matters? I hope so. I pray so. And I know that is the place where you and I find the adventure of God’s abundant life—not in a La-Z-Boy, but where we put it all on the line.
It’s time to get hot again.
Kurt Bubna is the senior pastor of Eastpoint Church in Spokane Valley, Washington, a regional purpose-driven director (Saddleback Church) and the author of the book Epic Grace: Chronicles of a Recovering Idiot. This post was originally published on KurtBubna.com.