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Something the Godspace community is considering in this season is our passions. What we are truly passionate about? What drives us? It is a good idea to sit with God and ask these questions, examining our hearts. I felt challenged to do this recently when a writing guild I belong to asked what our life’s ‘mission statement’ might be.
I came up with this: ‘To draw others deeper into the loving heart of God by showing them God’s beauty, Word, and character, primarily through prayer and creativity.’
God, you see, is my passion. And that means my relationship with him is paramount in everything, or it should be. I want to share who he is and how much he loves us. That means sitting quietly with him, in adoration or contemplation. It means having conversations with him, both long and short including petition and intercession (praying for myself and others). It means spending time pondering his Word and his ways. It means listening to the still, small voice.
Also, it means letting his love and personhood flow into a living water that I hope very much is passed on to others. In my case, because I’m so isolated by my disabling illness, that happens through the written word, and through my art.
I write all kinds of things: articles; poems; poetic prose; devotionals; stories; novels; children’s books. I just love words. I’m passionate about them too, and how we are all hard-wired for story, mystery, truth and beauty. But I have to say, I never had any real idea about writing more than one or two things before I began a deep prayer life. It seems that if we begin there, God then enters into our hearts as we do his, and nurtures the seeds he first planted many years ago, perhaps before we were even born.
As Jesus told us, if we do the one needful thing, sitting at his feet, everything else that is meant to be ours in life will be brought forth. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Mark 6:33, NIV).
Perhaps you have passions in life. Maybe that is women’s rights, or cricket, crochet or go-karting. Maybe you crochet go-karts. Whatever it may be, God can bring good fruit out of it. Sometimes our passions need a little redirection, but we need not fear losing anything if we focus on God with all our hearts as our first passion in life. Nothing is better than relationship with him, and if something does need to fall away, we will not miss it.
God knows us so well, just as the potter knows the clay (Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 1:5). He knows exactly what shape we can be and what will make us shine with his glory. He alone knows precisely what works were preordained for us to do: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” (Ephesians 2:10, NIV).
If we make God our first passion, the rest will come into focus. It doesn’t mean we won’t suffer, or be persecuted. It doesn’t mean as well as having our successes, that our inbox won’t be full of rejection letters. But the things that are meant to be, will come, and our hearts will be overflowing with love. We can take joy in bringing God our offerings and the desires of our hearts, asking them to all be used for him and in alignment with his glorious will. This is the process of the Kingdom we are seeding, of the King whom we serve with steadfast, passionate hearts.
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