Sunday, March 20, 2016

When Did My Passion Grow Cold?

  This week's sermon made me examine my life. What am I passionate about?
  
  My initial response would be worship, God, people, but does that show through my actions? 

  Looking at how I live my life I'm not sure how to answer that question. You see this thing happens to me when I'm not focused on Jesus, where I seem to be reduced to a person who reads a lot and spends most of her time alone. 

  Sure, I love to read, and I'm an introverted person, so I need my alone time, but that tells you nothing about the passions I truly have. Passions that just get burried. 

  Right now, it feels like my passions are asleep. 
Take worship for an example. I *love* worship; truly and deeply I do. But right now... My focus is so off, AND I haven't taken the time to have any personal worship time, that it takes work for me to even sort of enter into true worship. 

  Another example is my love for people. I'm living half way across the world for ministry, for people, and somedays, I *know* I'm just going through the motions. You know what? Devotions are really hard to lead when you're just going through the motions. 

  All of this stems from where my relationship with God is, at the moment. I haven't been seeking Him the way that I should. I haven't been reading His word the way that I should. I haven't been entering into worship with Him the way that I should. I haven't been praying the way that I should. Sporadic time with God, means passion is going to waver. 

  This is really frustrating to me. I mean, I'm where He called me to be, to do ministry for His name, aren't I? But I know better. I know that there's more to following God, than what I've been doing. I've neglected my relationship with Him, and my life... My heart... My passions show it. 

  This has to change. I have no desire to live this way. I so easily go into a place where I just go through the motions. But it's not a loving and life giving way to live.

   You see, if I didn't know what it felt like to be alive in God and operating in my passions, then maybe I could sit by. But I do know what it feels like. It's amazing. Joy which I've never experienced from anything else, comes out of it.  It's satisfying, yet at the same time it makes you hungry for more. 

   It's incredible. My Daddy in heaven is incredible. He loves a messed up person like me, so much that He reminded me of where I've been... Because He knew it was so much better than where I am. 

Shalom 


P.S. This is what God spoke to me through a sermon I didn't understand most of, because it was in Tagalog. God is cool. 

3 comments:

  1. Great blog Alana. He knows your heart. And He is faithful to loving, relational and true no matter where you're at. He's that good1

    ReplyDelete
  2. This happens to me too, a lot. In fact, it's where I am right now, and I'm so glad you wrote about it, because now I'm going to pray and make efforts to fan the flames of His love in my heart. I'll be thinking about it some more. but here's something that helps me sometimes, for whatever I want to happen in my life: I beg and beg God for it to happen. Then I think, well, what if He does make it happen, what are some things I might do with that love, and I can start practicing it or at least role-playing it or at the very least just daydreaming about it. Also, to rekindle His love in my heart I might try to remember how that has happened before, and do the same things again. I don't know, just pray for it and do some brainstorming about it, and imagine it's going to happen, and play into it.

    ReplyDelete

Jesus loves you & I do too!
Be blessed, but also be a blessing.