What is your passion?
I have asked these questions for years. In an early NorthShore Finishing Well reflection, I asked, “Where do the world’s needs and my passion intersect?”
I still think that is a good question. But I have learned to ask another one alongside it: Lord, what do You want to do with this concern?
What do you care about deeply? What need do you keep noticing? What kind of work or service gives you a sense that your time has been well spent?
A passion can be a clue. It deserves our attention. Yet a strong feeling alone does not tell us what to do, when to act, or whether we are the person called to act. Those questions call for prayer, wisdom, patience, and a willingness to serve.
Passion Is Part of How God Has Shaped Us
On NorthShore Finishing Well, I wrote about S.H.A.P.E.: Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences. Our heart includes the people, needs, and concerns that move us.
I returned to that idea in You Are Special and Unique—But What Is Your Vision?. God has made each person with a particular story. Our passions belong in that story, together with our gifts, strengths, relationships, opportunities, and even difficult experiences.
In How to Find Joy in Our Work, I remembered how meaningful it was to use my farming background and other skills while volunteering with Chapin Living Waters and ECHO. Those opportunities helped me see that the abilities we have developed in one season can sometimes serve people in another.
We may discover something about our passion by asking: When have I felt deeply engaged in serving others? What was I doing? Who benefited?
What Christian Writers Have Helped Me See
Bill and Kathy Peel, in Discover Your Destiny, describe passion as a deep longing or persistent concern. They also make an essential point: a passion, by itself, does not tell us whether its object is good. We need to examine what we desire and where that desire is leading us. I explored their thoughts in How to Find Joy in Our Work and an earlier reflection on finding a place to serve.
Ralph Mattson and Arthur Miller, in Finding a Job You Can Love, encourage readers to look back at things they have actually done well and enjoyed doing. Their SIMA approach—System for Identifying Motivated Abilities—asks us to notice patterns in our experience. What abilities do we repeatedly find ourselves eager to use? I discussed the book, along with my own ideas about meaningful work, in Finding a Job You Can Love!.
Andy Stanley, in Visioneering, says a vision often begins as a concern about the distance between what is and what could and should be. He uses Nehemiah’s concern for Jerusalem as an example. Nehemiah cared deeply, but he also prayed, waited, learned about the situation, and acted when the time came. Stanley points out that a vision does not necessarily require immediate action. As a vision becomes clearer, it can give passion direction and help us persevere through ordinary work.
Tony Evans, in his Discover Your Destiny, calls us to consider our particular assignment within God’s larger kingdom purposes. Our gifts and desires matter because they can be used for God’s glory and the good of other people. I reflected on both books called Discover Your Destiny in Discover Your Destiny: Finding God’s Purpose for Your Life.
Bob Buford, in Finishing Well, asks what it means to invest the later seasons of life in lasting significance. Passion may change its expression as our circumstances change, but our experience, resources, and relationships can still be put to fruitful use.
Hal Habecker, in Aging with Purpose, reminds us that we do not retire from following Christ. Growing, loving, connecting with others, encouraging younger people, and remaining available to God are meaningful callings at any age.
Os Guinness, in The Call, brings me back to the starting point: before we are called to a job, place, or project, we are called to God Himself. And John Piper, in Don’t Waste Your Life, urges us to live with a greater passion for the glory of God. Together, their words challenge me to ask whether a desire is drawing me closer to Christ and toward love for others.
These writers do not offer one formula. They give us useful questions. What do I desire? How has God shaped me? What need is before me? Whom could I serve? And am I willing to follow God even if the path looks different from the one I first imagined?
When a Passion Changes Shape
My late wife, Naomi, cared deeply for people. Her passion for compassionate nursing took her into the hollers around Buckhorn, Kentucky, where she served mothers, babies, and families. I wrote about that chapter of her life in Naomi Koerwitz Driving Her Jeep in the Hollers of Buckhorn Kentucky.
Her work in Buckhorn came to an end, but her care for people did not. It found expression in other places throughout her life.
I find that encouraging. A job can end. A ministry can change. Our strength or circumstances can change. The deeper concern may still have a place in the life God is giving us now. We can ask how to express it faithfully in this season, with the abilities and opportunities we have today.
That is part of what I mean by blooming where you are planted.
Take Time to Listen
Perhaps you have a concern that keeps returning. It may be for a person, a neighborhood, a church, a school, or someone walking through a loss you understand. You do not need to turn that concern into a large project today.
You could begin by asking:
- What need keeps coming to my attention?
- Why does it matter to me?
- What have my gifts and experiences prepared me to offer?
- What do the people involved say they need?
- Who could help me pray and think wisely about this?
- What small step could I take to learn more or serve now?
Sometimes the next step is a conversation. Sometimes it is volunteering, giving, mentoring, writing, or simply showing up and listening. A small step can teach us something that planning alone cannot.
Passion is worth noticing. Bring it before the Lord. Let it be tested by Scripture, shaped by love, informed by the people you hope to serve, and guided by the opportunities He provides.
Where might God be asking you to take your next faithful step?
Prayer: Father, thank You for making each of us with a heart, gifts, abilities, and a story. Help us pay attention to the people and needs You place before us. Give us wisdom to examine our desires, patience to listen, and courage to act when the time is right. May our lives bring You glory and serve others with love. In Jesus’s name, amen.
Wondering how your passion fits into the bigger picture?
Read You Are Special and Unique—But What Is Your Vision?”**
