Finding a balance...

At the beginning of this week I came across a sermon by Rick Warren and it started,

“The creative force behind all great art, all great drama, all great music, all great architecture, all great writing is passion. Nothing great is ever accomplished in life without passion. Nothing great is ever sustained in life without passion. Passion is what energizes life. Passion makes the impossible possible. Passion gives you a reason to get up in the morning and go, "I’m going to do something with my life today."

And so I sat there thinking, "Do I wake up excited about the day, ready to seize it and make a difference?

Do I go to bed thinking, oh wow, how I love my job and how I love LIFE; can’t wait for the sun to rise again to get going again? Do I end the day and lay back with a grin from ear to ear confident that I have made a difference, touched a life?"

{hmmmm, not sure I want to share with you my answers ;) }

I'm sure each one of us gets to a point in our lives when we feel drained, exhausted and dry, like we don't have much more to offer. Moments when we feel our reservoirs are empty and we are not sure where or how to refuel. Times when we ain't even sure how we run out and why. Sometimes we have an idea where this is coming from but are so feeble and don't feel like trying to 'patch' things up.

Warren in his sermon was talking about 'Reigniting your passion for God.' Definitely when our passion for God is on "track" our passion for life is on track too.

He shares 7 passion killers:

An unbalanced schedule

That means either if you’re overworked or you are under worked you’re going to lose your passion for life and lose your passion for God. Life is a series of seasons, the Bible says. There’s a season for everything. And there’s a rhythm to life. You need both in your life -- both input and output. You need both rest and work. And too much of either will cause you to lose your passion. Too much nothing -- boredom -- will cause you to lose your passion too.

An unused talent
An unused talent will cause you to lose your passion for life and your passion for God. 1 Peter 4:10 says "Each of you has been blessed with one of God’s many wonderful gifts to be used in the service of others. So use your gifts well."

If you don’t use your talents you’re going to lose your passion. God did not give you special abilities just to sit on them and do nothing about it. God says I want you to use it or you’re going to lose it.

If you are stuck in a job that does not use your talents to any degree you are inevitably going to lose your zeal and zest and passion in life. It’s going to burn you out. If you’re in a job right now that uses only 30% of your talent that’s going to give you what I call a 70% boredom factor.

An unconfessed sin
Few things rob us of joy, rob your confidence, rob your passion, more quickly than guilt. We cannot feel enthusiasm and guilt at the same time. You can’t feel guilt and passion at the same time because guilt by its very definition robs you of passion.

Psalm 38:4&6 "My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear... I am bowed down and I am brought low."

To confess just means you agree with God. You just say, "God, I agree with You. It’s a sin. What I did was wrong. I agree with You. And I want to begin to live the kind of way You want me to live. Would You free me from this guilt?"

The minute that you realize that the red warning light flashing; Do something about it.

An unresolved conflict
Conflict just drains the passion right out of you. Some of you, you’re in situations at home or at work where the conflict is constant. Maybe you’re even doing all that you can to minimize the conflict. But it’s coming from the other person. How do you keep your passion in a situation like that?

The three emotions that kill our passion in the midst of conflict are resentment, jealously and prolonged anger. This is why forgiveness is so important. If you want the passion to be restored in your heart, in your life, you have to forgive. You have to let it go.

You decide to protect yourself from the three passion killing emotions that can come into our lives in conflict. An unsupported lifestyle

Sometimes you lose passion for God because you’re not spending time around other people who have a passion for God. We need each other. We all fall sometimes. We all stumble at times. So we all need people to help us up in our lives.

An unsupported lifestyle
Sometimes you lose passion for God because you’re not spending time around other people who have a passion for God. You’re not spending time around other Christians. Human beings were made for relationships. We’re made to live that way.

An unclear purpose
When you forget the purpose of your life that is a sure way to kill your passion for life and for God. If you don’t know the purpose for life, why bother? Why get up in the morning? Why put forth the effort? Why get out of bed? Life without purpose is activity without direction. It’s motion without meaning. Life without purpose is trivial, petty, and pointless.

Passion and purpose go together. When you have a clear purpose it’s going to give you a lot of passion. But it’s got to be God’s purposes for your life. If you’re only living for yourself, that’s a pretty dinky purpose. That isn’t going to make you very passionate. In fact it’s pathetic.

Nothing matters more than knowing and living the five purposes that God put you on earth to fulfill. Nothing else can compensate for not living those. Not fame, not wealth, not success, not pleasure. Nothing can compensate for life without meaning. So whenever your purpose gets unclear and you tend to forget why we’re here in the first place you’re going to lose your passion.

An under nourished spirit
Every day you face all kinds of circumstances that conspire to shrink your spirit and shrivel your heart. You’re going to get up tomorrow morning. You’re going to have distractions and disappointments. You’re going to have conflicts and you’re going to have changes and challenges. You’re going to have problems and pressures. You’re going to have frustrations and fears and failures and fatigue. All of these things fall in on you to shrivel your heart and shrink your spirit. So you must intentionally nourish your spirit.

How do you do that? Through the five purposes. You need times of worship with God everyday, where you get to know Him -- private worships. You need fellowship with other believers. You need to read God’s word and grow to be more like Christ. You need to have a ministry where you’re using your talents to help other people. And you need a mission in the world where you’re sharing your faith. If you just choose one of those purposes and forget the others you’re going to be imbalanced and you’re going to lose your passion. You need them all.

The starting point is to remember how God feels about you. You know it but you forget it. Did you know that God is hopelessly in love with you? The reason that you’re not passionate about God is you have forgotten how passionate God is about you.

"Passion is waking up in the morning wherever you are and bounding out of bed because you know there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that God made you for and you’re good at, something that’s bigger than you are and you can hardly wait to get at it again. It’s something that you’d rather be doing than anything else and you wouldn’t give it up for money because it means more to you than money." ~ Hobbs

Well, I was inspired and challenged by Warren's words. I realize that my life is quite unbalanced and that it would be a shame to keep things in this state.

I need to be able to be and live the life that God designed me to live; to be able to offer the world what only I can offer it coz only I was designed the way I was and given the gifts I was given for a certain/particular purpose.

It's not going to be easy to set this ball rolling but for how long will certain facets of one’s life keep in a state of ‘unconsciousness?'

Let’s go find that place of balance ...    :)

{I guess you can now tell the general direction of the answers to the questions ... ;) }