For the last week, I have seen several trophy-size blacktail bucks in our neighborhood. Their antlers are immense. They are the stuff of a hunter’s dream. Rarely are these deer seen except when they enter the rut and let their guard down in pursuit of a doe. They allow their unrestrained passion to put them on display and in places of jeopardy. I have some friends who are excellent hunters who only hunt during the rut because the old mossy-back bucks come out from hiding at that time of year.
It seems a lot of us can be like a rutting deer. When we fail to discipline our passions (not just our sexual impulses), we start to roam into vulnerable territory and expose ourselves to unnecessary risk.
Our passions are a gift from God if they function in submission to His will. When they are not restrained and directed with truth and under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, they produce negative outcomes leaving us depleted, wasted, and vulnerable.
Passions have a unique function. They can help us discover the season in which we live if we are willing to do some personal research. Frustration, anger and depression can attach themselves to a season of life in an attempt to blind us to the deeper spiritual realities taking place. If we can restrain a passion long enough to inquire of the Lord about its motivating factors, we will begin to see those things our passions blinded us from seeing, like the season of life in which we currently live. If we can discern the season by understanding its connection with our unrestrained passions, we will not walk into the crosshairs of the enemy and become an easy target for deception.
The beginning of a crazy wild passionate relationship with God began when he delivered me from a torrid set of circumstances when I was 19, homeless and pregnant with my second child.
I had a tearful conversation with Him…knowing that if I gave up my second child I would not be able to live with the decision. I knew only He could deliver me from myself abd save my unborn child. I promised if he would deliver me and let me keep my baby, I would return to the darkest places and feed his children, and love them…and bring them to his light.
That night I had a dream. I saw a small second story apartment, beautifully furnished. I walked through the apartment and saw every detail. Felt the texture of the sofa..saw the bedspread on my bed…and a view from the second story sliding glass balcony door of a surrealisticly large oak tree.
When I woke up from the dream, I was envloped in this amazing heavy, weighted peace. The experience was…and still is…something I can not adequately put into words.
I sat down at the shelter for breakfast…I’ll never forget that soupy bowl of oatmeal lol… and while I was slurping my oatmeal the social worker for the shelter came down the stairs talking to another woman. I was seven months pregnant.
I have just the person for your program….
She walked over and introduced herself to me.
Within 24 hours I had the key to my apartment, fully furnished just like the dream. Off white twill loveseat…pink and white checkered bedspread….
I was able to keep my unborn baby. I had a home and an income. I could be a mother again.
God redeemed what I had lost…I went on to marry a wonderful man and have three more children. My life is far from its troubled beginnings.
And it’s all because of God’s grace.
I know where my passion comes from. That personal encounter with Him..and many more like that. It’s rooted in the desire to lead other people to experience Him as I have. I want to be a tangible expression of His love to someone else that sits in the darkest of places.
But I missed one very important symbol in that dream. The tall, big oak. When I received the keys to my apartment, and looked out the sliding glass doors…it was a field, not an oak tree, that I saw.
I had no idea that the tree represented a process that I would have to endure before becoming mature enough to bear the fruit of the passion He placed inside of me.
Twenty six years later…lol….I see the tree for what it is…
After trying and…not launching….a million times I gave my desires to God. I trusted him with the seed He gave me. I realized there was a process in place that I didn’t fully understand at the moment. I let the passion grow dormate, and God took me down another lane of adventures for over a decade.
Being prepared to carry His plans is a process that takes TIME. The process has required me to lay down every single run away emotion (being passionate means I had alot of em lol). He has required me to love those who hurt me…forgive those who wounded my family…lay my ideas of justice down and pick up His mercy…and soooo much more.
It has been a painful process… and I didn’t learn my lessons on the first go around… somethings got repeated painfully over and over till I was so exhausted from carrying around my own feelings that I finally submitted and collapsed at his feet.
The journey has been the most intense experience of my life… and honestly, I would have dropped the idea of serving… writing… building… along time ago if He hadn’t placed this insane passion inside me…because it has been an intense painful, personal journey. A sane person would have quit along time ago…
When I asked God about writing again, the excitement of the moment was tempered by the realization there might be more…. processing…. required before I could write.
My heart did a little dip… because I’m pretty raw from the previous season of learning the emotional first fruits 😉 I also wondered if there was another path I was to take. I didn’t want to pick something up, or even entertain the thought of doing something, that God didn’t want me to do.
There have been dreams…and little hints and nudges….that what ever is about to happen does involve writing, but there is something more to it that I can not see yet.
So with much temperance, I eagerly await the end of this transition and the unfurling of the new assignment knowing that the path forward might not be the obvious choice, but a hidden option not yet revealed.
Passions in check.
Thank you Garris for your timely advice.
As always
Much love in Christ
Jamie
Thank you for sharing your long walk of learning and the hope that learning continues. In our culture anti-God forces would insist on instant results, yet God is the God of the long walk, patiently waiting until we ‘get it’, no matter how many repeat situations we need. He builds trust through the ‘track record’ He takes us through.
What a story Jamie! May God bring to fruition the fulness of your dream! Thank you for sharing!