DISCOVERING PASSION

This piece will hopefully help us to discover the passion God placed in each of us.

Discovering Passion
By the age of twenty, any young man should know whether or not he is to be a specialist and just where his tastes lie. By postponing the question, we have set on immaturity a premium which controls most American personality to its deathbed. - Robert S. Hillyer.















CHAPTER 3
Discovering your Passion
I read this commentary from a Christian devotional :
“Do you want to discover your God-given assignment? Listen to your heart! Though there are over six billion people on earth, nobody has a heartbeat exactly like yours. In the same way, God has given you an emotional heartbeat that races when you think about certain subjects and activities. You care more instinctively about certain things than others. These are clues to where you should be serving. Don’t ignore them.
God wants you to serve him passionately, not half-heartedly. “Serve Him with all your heart’’ (Deut. 11:13). We rarely excel at things we do not feel passionate about. Listening for your inner promptings can lead you to the ministry God intends you to have.
One telltale sign is enthusiasm. When you are doing what you love to do, nobody has to motivate you, check up on you, applaud you or reward you; you do it for sheer enjoyment. The highest achievers in any field are those who do it because of passion, not duty or profit.
Don’t waste your life doing something that does not express your heart. Meaning is far more important than money. Ultimately, money doesn’t satisfy. What’s the point of having a lot to live on, if you have nothing to live for”?

Passion has an Object
From the earlier definition of passion and the above quotation, we realize that there is usually an object of your passion. Passion always has some object as its focus. This object usually carries or points you to the ‘seed’ of your life. Your passion throws light on your seed. Scripture reveals that for multiplication and fruitfulness to take place in God’s creation, God placed a seed in the plants He made.

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good”. Gen. 1:11-12 [Emphasis added]

The same applies to us. We all have our seed within us. To benefit from it, you need to discover and invest time, effort and resources in that seed. To discover your passion and hence, your seed, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

Where Is Your Treasure?
Many of us spend all our lives trying to find out what will bring us prosperity and fulfilment. In the book of Matthew in the Bible Jesus gave us a pointer:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:21 [Emphasis added]
The word “treasure” means ‘deposit’ or ‘wealth’. So, the basic question we need to ask if we want to possess the deposits of God in our lives is “Where is my heart”? “What am I always dreaming of” or “what is it for which l love to spend my time and be spent”.
For instance, most people who become musicians often find themselves drawn to musical instruments and musical groups in their youth when their parents expect them to be studying some other subjects. They find themselves creating songs or writing poems without any formal training. They put their whole life into their music and get totally lost in it. Sometimes, they even escape the watchful eyes of disagreeable parents in order to pursue their passion. If you find yourself behaving like this in any endeavour, it is a pointer to where your heart may be. Surely, you will find “treasure” or God’s deposit in your life in that endeavour. You have treasure hidden in that field (Matt. 13:4). That field is your own life. Go ahead and buy it - follow your heart. Treasure may not necessarily mean a lot of money. It may be a fully satisfied life - that says, “I am doing what I love with my life, and I am fully satisfied with myself”.

What is God’s bounty in your life?
The poorest of people are still sitting by their “acres of diamonds”. All they need is the wisdom of God to tap into their seed and bring that seed to the place of multiplication. There is a linkage between that seed, their passion and purpose in this life. Their gifts and talents point to that seed. God is a just God. He is not partial in anyway . He gives every person born into this world the basic gifts and talents – tools needed to succeed in life. As in the parable of the pounds , God has given to each person something to work with in this life. We see an example of the bounty of God in the life of Lamech, the first polygamist in the Bible . This short summary of Lamech’s family shows us the variety of talent and ability God gives humans. With no recorded training of any sort, and in spite of the fact that he is the first person to violate monogamy in marriage, Lamech’s family was blessed with industrialists: they had a herdsman or ranch owner called Jabal; a musician and inventor called Jubal, and a metallurgist cum fabricator called Tubal-Cain. With their passion for their gifts and talents, there is no way misery and poverty could reign in their family. I believe that out of the bounty of God, every family has such a wealth of talent and even more waiting to be tapped. Once you recognize and use them, you and your family cannot be poor. Passion for your gifts and talents is the key. Another lesson from Lamech’s story is that being righteous does not automatically qualify you to be successful in all the issues of life. It depends on how you take advantage of God’s bounty in your life.