{"id":829,"date":"2011-09-02T22:55:36","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T02:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bottlerockettheology.com\/?p=829"},"modified":"2011-09-02T22:55:36","modified_gmt":"2011-09-03T02:55:36","slug":"what-am-i-passionate-about-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=829","title":{"rendered":"What am I passionate about?  Really &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whatever you are passionate about is what you will build your life toward.\u00a0 So it&#8217;s a good thing to ponder.\u00a0 What do we have when we are finished building?<br \/>\n<strong>Does my passion determine my reality?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a02 Timothy 4:3\u20134 (ESV) For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers <strong>to suit their own passions<\/strong>, 4\u00a0and will turn away from listening to the truth <strong>and wander off into myths<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Myth &#8211; n. 1. a. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society. (<a title=\"Define &quot;myth&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/myth\">http:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/myth<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What are you passionate about?<\/strong><br \/>\nIs this too cliche for you?\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe, maybe not?\u00a0 Let&#8217;s say we step up the discussion to<br \/>\nGod&#8217;s world and God&#8217;s word, projecting the question onto the big screen of forever.\u00a0 Now let\u2019s look at our lives as projected on the big screen through the lens of the Bible.\u00a0 Do you see where I am going with this?\u00a0 I am attempting to move our perspective past now to forever and past our speculation to specific words of God.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maybe now not so cliche.<\/strong><br \/>\nCould it be that this question has only been rendered trifling because we haven&#8217;t really ever asked ourselves the question?\u00a0 In other words, we have maybe played with the question but have never let the question penetrate the surface of our psyche leaving our soul untouched and unexamined, and the question unanswered.\u00a0 And leaving the question unanswered is a big deal.<\/p>\n<p>I will in fact say that many of us do not dare to ask the question because we fear the answer.\u00a0 We cannot bring ourselves to look inside.\u00a0 And now we are past irony to tragedy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So we do need to ask the question again:\u00a0 What are you passionate about?<\/strong><br \/>\nWhatever you are passionate about is what you will build your life toward.\u00a0 If you build to suit your desires, then your desires, your passions, will be your goal.\u00a0 You may say it is God and religion and spirituality, but it is really all about you.\u00a0 And what you pursue, what you focus your life on, sets your ceiling on fulfillment.\u00a0 If you are passionate about the things of this world, then there you find your ceiling, maybe even extending to the uppermost regions of life on the planet, but still losing your own soul.<\/p>\n<p>If your passion is God, then God is your ceiling, God is your limit.\u00a0 And he has none.\u00a0 And there you are, finite touching the infinite, temporal experiencing the eternal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Look again at what Paul writes to Timothy in relation to passion.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2 Timothy 4:3\u20134 (ESV) For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4\u00a0and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The hard words are often the good words.<\/strong><br \/>\nAfter Paul\u2019s exhortation to Timothy to \u201cpreach the word,\u201d he informed Timothy that everyone would not be listening.\u00a0 And here is the thought that grabbed me.\u00a0 They will not endure or put up with the words of God because they are not passionate about knowing God.\u00a0 They have \u201can interest\u201d in spiritual things but are not passionate about God.\u00a0 They still in fact desire spiritual teaching as they build a database of teachers to feed them information about God that fits the myth they have chosen to live.<\/p>\n<p>The people that Paul describes here are people who will build an alternate reality which uses the words of God to actually help them avoid listening to God.\u00a0 And they will wander off into myths.<\/p>\n<p>They are seeking to be passionate about their spirituality without being passionate about God.\u00a0 They cannot take, endure, put up with the very words that directed them to a passionate relationship with the King of all creation.<\/p>\n<p>The hard words are often the good words. The words that we sometimes refuse to \u201cput up with\u201d are the very words that fire our passion for God and for life.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The great and sad irony.<\/strong><br \/>\nThey are pursuing spirituality but not pursuing God even as they seek to learn more about God and the Bible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The dangerous irony.<\/strong><br \/>\nOur desire to merely know about God snugly fits our myth, and we willingly confuse a pursuit of biblical knowledge with a pursuit of God and never come to discover the rationalization until standing before God in judgment.<\/p>\n<p>If we are passionate for God, then the question may not be \u201cWhat would we do for God?\u201d but \u201cWhat wouldn\u2019t we do for God?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maybe even die?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Matthew 16:24\u201325 (ESV)\u00a0Then Jesus told his disciples, \u201cIf anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. <sup>25\u00a0<\/sup>For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whatever you are passionate about is what you will build your life toward.\u00a0 So it&#8217;s a good thing to ponder.\u00a0 What do we have when we are finished building? Does my passion determine my reality? \u00a02 Timothy 4:3\u20134 (ESV) For &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=829\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dxA8-dn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}