The sixth passion killer is…
6. 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.
My guess is that the people at Saddleback church know more about the purposes of God than probably any other church. We talk about it all the time. But even still it’s easy to forget why we’re here on earth. We get distracted by budgets and bills and babies and baseball and all kinds of other things. We forget the five reasons God put us here on earth. Whenever you forget why God put you on earth you’re going to drift toward apathy and lethargy. Who cares? Why get out of bed if there’s no meaning, if there’s no purpose to my life. Maybe you’ve felt like Isaiah who said in Isaiah 49 “I’ve labored to no purpose and I’ve spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”
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. “I’m living for me.” That’ll give you a lot of energy to get out of bed in the morning! You need a cause greater than yourself. That gives life significance and gives life meaning. The more you understand God’s purposes for your life and the more you live those purposes the more passionate you’re going to be.
Hobbs wrote this about passion. He said, “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.”
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.
It might be good idea this summer to go reread Purpose Driven Life. I know we’ve all gone through it before but it’s easy to forget, what on earth we’re here for. And an unclear purpose will kill your passion.
