Jesus says, “Men should pray all the time and not lose heart.” It seems prayer and passion walk together. I know that many intercessors require seasons of renewal because hell is working to distract them and life presents them with burdens to bear that are not the burden of the Lord. I know this is true of all of us.
[Found these notes in my notebook. Could be my scribblings or notes on something else…good though]
Go Back to Basics
To renew passion, go back to basics. Go back where the passion comes from in the first place. Jesus says to Ephesus, “You lost your first love, so go back and do the first works again.” The first works are the initial birthing of who you are, what you are called to do, and the passion of the Father for your life.
1. Go back to who you are. Since hell is always working to get you to be someone you aren’t and pushing you to do what you aren’t called to do, you must reset your personal destiny and purpose. If hell can’t keep you from destiny or purpose, hell will work to limit the fulfillment of them by pushing you into false destiny and purpose.
You burn out in false destiny and purpose because there is no grace there. You lose heart in pursuing your purpose only because you get sidetracked and hijacked. You burn out doing good stuff with wrong motives.
Burn out comes through competition, control, and comparison. These are not the motivations of Divine passion. These are efforts that only become necessary when you are pursuing life with misguided passions. Whatever is achieved in this setting is never enough, never satisfying.
You can never satisfy your true passion with a substitute for its true object.
Once you have God’s passion for destiny and purpose, you will never experience satisfaction being someone else or doing something you aren’t called to do.
Paul says, “I am what I am by the grace of God.” This is true humility, true self-awareness, and true to who I really am.
Go back to your call, gifts, and anointing. Stop running around after the latest hot spiritual fad seeking a new zinger. Don’t get conference-itis, the horrible malady of hearing the best of other ministries’ stuff and then attempting to substitute that for your ministry. Learn from “best practices” and break through barriers from international level ministries, but don’t invest passion in becoming someone else and doing their thing. It ain’t you, doesn’t look good when you wear it, and drains your soul. Especially if they want to give you the “if only” virus: “if only” everyone would do what we do…the kingdom would come and Jesus would be President…all sin would disappear and every witch would repent…etc. You get the idea.
2. Go back to your home base and gut check your true condition. No one is more real than family and home base friends. They are home base for a reason. Rebuild passion at home so you can release passion when you go out.
Go back home and face the Judas in your home base. God will not allow this spiritual condition to continue if you are willing to return to first passion and first works. Watch how Jesus deals with Judas in His ministry and learn who God shows you what is really in people’s hearts.
Jesus went back home to Father to hear what to say, see what to do, and get a gut check on destiny and purpose. He didn’t do everything, try to be everyone one to everybody, and He did not respond to need as a demanding distraction to His call. He didn’t need ministry to define Him or to fill some empty place inside for respect, honor, and love. He didn’t need to be needed. This is the only way to understand, “I delight to do your will, O God” properly.
Go back home where you can be you and measure who you are and where you are among your closest allies. Hear the wisdom of words from those who have your best interests at heart.
Your passion, hijacked by people with false expectations and demands inconsistent with your destiny, will be renewed!
Ignore Distractions
1. Renew passion by ignoring distractions. Like, in a final way. Over it. Done with it. Moving on as if it didn’t happen. Let’s talk more about false expectations because you can be the source of these as easily as anyone else, and they can come from your home and home base as well. These are Judas distractions.
Understand the situation when the woman broke open the alabaster and poured anointment on Jesus: Judas says the stuff should have sold and the money given to the poor. The point is that what was really in Judas’ heart was revealed. He didn’t care about the poor at all. He didn’t care much about Jesus either! He was into the expectations of kingdom being his release point for false destiny and purpose because he was Jesus’ accountant.
Much has been said about this passage. The Gospel writer is giving us glimpses of Judas’ heart so we will understand the final kiss. Judas has no passion for being discipled into his true destiny and purpose; he is using Jesus to get something else. He has left his first passion and stopped doing his first works.
False expectations – It is really difficult for a man to try to please his wife and her family when they have set up false expectations. This is a passion destroyer of the first measure. It is most difficult for a woman to be redefined by expectations of church family, tradition, and controlling people. Leaders’ wives die every day under the crush of this dilemma. It is devastating for a young person to face demands of home and home base that require him to be someone else or do something else other than what God has designed and designated for him. A generation can be driven away by this plastic coldness.
Distractions to destiny can be as destructive as deadly sins to destiny.
False expectations can breed fear of man. Passionate pursuit of God will build fear of the Lord into your motivations; close to God and fear of God move you into His heart. It is a matter of keeping someone happy: God or men. You have to choose a master. If your lifestyle has changed so that you lack time or passion for worship, you are on foreign soil in the spirit.
Subtle changes can occur in your sincere concern for living peaceably with all men that set you up for passion-killing fear of man. You lose your grace flow because God isn’t energizing you spiritually to get people what they want, but to get Him what He wants.
One trick of hell will be to face you with demanding, controlling people who never seem to be happy about anything. They demand to control or “have a say” in everything, and convince themselves they can do anything better than anyone else. These people, in your face, will become a passion-draining distraction because they appear to have a high interest in kingdom of God objectives when they are really using you and kingdom of God settings to perpetuate their personal malfunctions and cycles of behavior.
You must never invest passion in these people! When you do, stop. Cold turkey. Walk away. Don’t look back. It is a whirlpool of emotional swirling. They want you to get into the whirlpool with them. The resolution of this conflict is not a Matthew 18 process. They are not “ought against you” people. They are people with issues that demand that you be a fellow victim.
Jesus never dealt with controlling people from a “mushy love viewpoint.” God’s love isn’t surface slush. Trying to love people with these issues back into peaceful relationship won’t work anyway. They will use your attempt, pearls before swine, to trample you, manipulate you, and use you. There will never be a time in your spiritual life when controlling people are absent from your life; get this one right if you want to maintain passion.
Uncover the Next Level
You can’t see clearly from where you are when you have lost God’s passion. Once you are reset to true destiny and purpose, look ahead at the next level your destiny and purpose calls for. You will discover that this is what hell has been working to keep you from! You will discover that a destiny reset will relight the fire of passion for purpose! You will step from where you are to where you are going next! You will discover you are very close to expansion!
The next level usually involves new things: new anointing, new vision, new relationships, and new ways of doing familiar things. Next level is sequential: “next” infers stepping from “here to there.” You gotta be “here” before you can step to “there.” If you get what I mean.
If hell can move you out of here, you can’t get to there. Yes, in this sense, “you can’t get there from there.” You have to get there from here. (Confusing or enlightening?)
Once you recover passion, you can reset yourself to the “full speed ahead” mode of spiritual revelation and function. It will be a revelation of what you’ve been doing in your own passion, and what can only be done in God’s passion. You will discover you have been holding back the best because you had a sense of “something’s not right” and you will remove hesitation from your heart.
“Renew a right heart within me, O God.”
