Have you come to a place where you have lost your passion for what you do? Maybe you are in a rut or just burned out. Maybe you are just not that “into” the purpose you once felt. It could even be that business going better than ever, but you just don’t “feel it” anymore. I have a couple of ideas that might just help you regain your passion for your God-given purpose!
Forgetting Their First Love
In my last two posts, I have referred to a passage in Revelation where Jesus chastised the Christians at Ephesus for forgetting their first love. He praised them for some of their good works, but He called them out for their wrong motives. In drifting from their relationship with Jesus, they abandoned their first love.
You might not immediately see the connection between this idea and your loss of passion. I understand. At the same time, I believe there is a direct connection. In fact, without you focusing on Jesus as your first love, it will be near impossible to muster the passion you need daily to get through this life!
Find Your First Love (Again)!
Let me get directly to my point – you need to find your first love again! The fact is that it appears you are not in an intimate walk with Jesus in the way you need to be. If I am wrong, forgive me. Maybe there are other reasons for your loss of passion.
For me, it is almost too easy for me to diagnose my own loss of passion when it happens. I can almost always follow the facts right back to a loss of intimacy with Jesus.
Potential Causes
And for me, this is normally the result of one of two potential causes. I will go over the first cause (and my solution) in this post. I will follow up with the other likely cause (and solution) in a future post.
When I lose intimacy with Jesus, one of the first culprits I investigate is my own personal quiet time. So often, when I lose my passion it is because I have drifted from a consistent, quality quiet time with the Lord.
Unfortunately, this happens more often than I would like. Fortunately, I have a fairly easy cure for that when it does happen! Your mileage may vary, but I will at least share my own solution for your review. Hopefully, you will gain something from it.
Consistent Quiet Time
Since 2000, I have had a consistent daily quiet time in the morning when I spend time with God. Over the years, this process has waxed and waned like the moon.
There have been seasons when I hated to tear away from the quiet time in order to get ready for work. During other spans, I find myself distracted and getting nothing out of the time spent. If you have never had times like this, then congratulations! You are fortunate!
On the other hand, if you have also experienced dry spells like this, then you know how difficult it can be. You also likely know how destructive these dry spells can be when it comes to your passion.
Quiet Time Fixer Upper
Because of the seriousness I attach to the need for a consistent, high-quality quiet time, my recommendation is the total demolition of your current process. In its place, I believe you need to rebuild a new process according to your current situation and time constraints.
To be clear, I am only recommending this when you hit the dry spell. If your current quiet time is working for you (generating a fiery passion every day), then keep it up! No need to change it!
Spiritual Desert?
For those of you who feel you are (or have ever been) in a spiritual desert, the rest of this post is for you. In an effort to give you a practical solution for your dry spell, I am going well past my normal post length. If this is not interesting to you, then feel free to exit now. You won’t hurt my feelings!
For the rest of you, I am going to share 5 steps for regaining your lost passion by rebuilding your quiet time. My hope is that you gain something in this process that will help you strengthen your own quiet time experience.
One Assumption
However, before I go forward, I want to hit one quick point. In all of this I am trying to communicate, I am making one huge assumption. I am assuming you already have a daily quiet time!
If you do not already carve out specific, uninterrupted time with God every day, then now is the perfect time to start! I personally cannot imagine trying to get through a whole day at work (and home!) while walking as a disciple of Jesus WITHOUT spending the beginning of every day with Him. I am not that strong.
Enough said. Moving forward, I am assuming we are all on the same page.
Let’s jump straight to the five steps!
Step One – Demolition
- One of my favorite TV shows is one called “
- ” about the redesign and renovation of houses. Co-star
- ‘ favorite day (on the show) is “Demo Day”, when he gets to tear out walls and rip up floors! I think he would like this first step in my process!
My first step in this quiet time renovation process is to fully demolish my old quiet time. Rather than trying to pick and choose what has been working and what has not, I simply start from scratch with a blank page.
Step Two – Gather Materials
- My next step is to determine all of the pieces I want in my new process. For some of you, this may simply be a Bible and a cup of coffee. For others, you may want to go a little further and add more components. Either way is great!
In this step, I encourage you to make sure the basics are included – Bible, journal, and prayer. To me, these are the critical components of a solid time with God. As for the rest of the materials, mix it up!
Research a good daily devotional book. Search online for quality leadership and Christian faith blogs. A unique idea (if it is available to you) would be to take your grandmothers old Bible and read part of the notes she wrote in the margins!
Obviously, that last one is likely a rare find, but I want you to get the idea that you can inject variety into this time! God is not looking for you to struggle through this time with Him. He wants you to ENJOY it!
In case it could be helpful to you, I will share my own (current) materials. Please understand (again) that your mileage my vary – this is what is working for me right now.
- Devotion book (currently Uncommon Life Daily Challenge by Tony Dungy)
- Bible reading and commentaries (Logos Bible Software)
- Journal (Life Journal online)
- News (various websites online)
- Leadership & Faith blogs (various online)
- Game Plan sheet (my personal creation)
- Prayer Notebook
Step Three – Design
- In this third step, I begin to design my new process by assigning approximate times to each component. How much time you assign to each of your components might depend on how much time you have available.
If you are new to the idea of a quiet time, I recommend a small start. Go with fewer components (Bible, journal, prayer) and maybe start at 15-20 minutes. Build it up over time, as you feel you can.
For me, I approached it from the other direction by assigning the times first. Then, based on the total time required, I determined how early I need to wake up in the morning in order to complete my quiet time and still get to work on time!
Step Four – Blueprint
- For some of you, this step may not be necessary. For me, I need to put my plans “in writing” to make sure I follow the process I have created. Once I have done it for a while, it becomes habit. Until then, I am too susceptible to distractions if I run without a map!
At the risk of exposing myself as a little extreme, I will share a tool I found that helped me get a handle on my new process. The problem I found (once I opened my web browser to check news and leadership & faith blogs) was that I was too easily distracted. Fortunately, I found a tool to help me with this.
The tool is actually an online workout timer that is customizable. I have used the custom functions to build a Quiet Time Timer! Now, I simply open this timer in my browser and viola, I have a map and accountability! You can see an example of my quiet time structure and the matching online timer here: My Quiet Time Timer.
Step Five – Execute
- Now, all that is left is for you to execute! Jump into your new process with a renewed attitude and an expectation to meet with your Creator! He desperately wants to spend quality time with you. Give that to Him and watch what He does with it!
I encourage you to expect a need for grace. If you have never done this before, you will likely miss some mornings. Maybe it is due to sleeping late. It could be that things suddenly go completely wrong at the exact time you attempt to start this new process. Don’t be surprised…there is an enemy that is determined to keep you from making this work!
You also may find that your new process needs some tweaking. Good. Tweak it and keep executing. You will eventually find a groove. When you do, you will be amazed at the results! Even more so, when you look back over the changes in you after doing it for months and years, you will be shocked. So will those around you!
I look forward to hearing about your results!
How consistent and quality is your current quiet time?
Do you see anything in this post that is helpful to you?
Do you have any questions?
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