Thought Exercise on Passion

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The Problem with Passion Guiding You

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 9:10, 1 Corinthians 10:31

The problem with making your passion the thing that guides you is that passion can trick you into avoiding tasks that maybe aren’t fun but that are absolutely vital to get you to where you need to be....

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From Action to Passion

Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 14:10, Romans 8:32, Matthew 27:1-2, Luke 23:1-3, John 19:16

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

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Children' s Innate Passion for Justice

Author

Gary A. Haugen

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 4:8-10, Exodus 23:2-3, 1 Kings 3:16-28 , Luke 18:1-8, Matthew 27:24 , Psalm 82:2-4

As any parent of small children will tell you, children have an amazingly acute sense of justice. Even the most fractional disparity in the distribution of the most trivial family good will be met wit...

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“FIRE”

Author

Calvin Miller

Keywords

We must journey to the edge of heat if we would catch the flame. When Blaise Pascal died in 1662, his servant found a scrap of paper hidden in the lining of his coat. It turned out to be a testimony o...

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The Diamond Merchant

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 4:7, Philippians 1:9, John 10:14, Romans 12:11, 1 Corinthians 13:1-2

A wealthy Dutch collector was searching for a rare diamond to complete his collection. When a renowned New York dealer located the perfect stone, he invited the man to come see it in person. The Du...

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Chess and Surrender to God: The King is Infinity Points

Author

Ryan Bundrick

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 6:33, Exodus 20:3, Deuteronomy 6:5, 1 Corinthians 10:31, James 1:17, 1 Timothy 6:17, Luke 14:26-27, Philippians 3:8

We sometimes imagine surrender to God as emotional starvation. Every pleasure feels suspicious, and every passion feels in competition with our love of God. We think that the more miserable we are in ...

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Finding Your "Why"

Author

Simon Sinek, David Mead, and Peter Docker

Keywords

Every one of us has a WHY, a deep-seated purpose, cause or belief that is the source of our passion and inspiration. You may not yet know what yours is or how to express it in words. But we guarantee,...

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The Poor in Spirit at an Oregon State Correctional Institution

Author

A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

Keywords

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

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Dost Thou Know Before Whom Thou Speaks?

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Daniel 3:, 1 Kings 19:, Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:4-5, Acts 5:29

Hugh Latimer was the Bishop of Worcester, England during the reign of King Henry VIII. On one occasion he preached a sermon that offended the king, who sat in the audience. The king commanded Latimer ...

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The Embodiment of their Hopes

Author

Alan Jacobs

Keywords

Scripture

Joshua 1:9, Isaiah 40:29-31, Romans 8:37, Hebrews 12:1-2, Philippians 4:13, Psalm 31:24, 1 Timothy 6:12

I have been reading Julian Jackson’s biography of Charles de Gaulle — it’s exceptional, so far — and I find myself meditating on a story Jackson tells near the beginning of the book. In June of 1940, ...

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Love Makes us Vulnerable

Author

Gerald G. May

Keywords

We frequently repress our desire for love because love makes us vulnerable to being hurt. The word passion, which is used to express strong loving desire, comes from the Latin root passus, which means...

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Don’t Professionalize Pastoral Ministry

Author

Frederick Buechner

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:4, Jeremiah 12:1-3, Matthew 11:28-30, 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, Psalm 42:1-5

Ministers run the awful risk . . . of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives — let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to — of a living God who transcends ...

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When the Fire Goes Out

Author

Albert Schweitzer

Keywords

The missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in his memoir, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should...

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One Problem with Modern Life (Especially Social Media)

Author

Martin E. Marty

Keywords

Scripture

Micah 6:8 , 1 Kings 18:17–39, Proverbs 15:1, 2 Timothy 2:24–25, Ephesians 4:15 , Psalm 85:10

One of the real problems in modern life is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.

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Never Give up

Author

James Boice

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 13:, Exodus 14:21-31, Daniel 3:13-30 , 1 Kings 18:20-40, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 23:

In the second century before Christ the great rival to Roman power in the Mediterranean world was Carthage, the Phoenician city-state located on the north African coast. It had been founded in 822 B.C...

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Playing for His Father

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 22:23, Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Philippians 4:13, Hebrews 12:1-3, Psalm 19:93-94

A blind father, proud of his son who played Rugby at its namesake school, would listen intently to the roar of the crowd and the cheers for the winning team. Though he never saw his son in action, he ...

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Welcoming Children is Like Welcoming Jesus Himself

Author

Cody Sandahl

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 9:30-37, Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 18:2-6, Luke 18:15-17, Matthew 18:1-5, Matthew 19:13-15, Matthew 18:10

Just this morning, my family attended church with our son who has autism. He was particularly enthused by the music today, and he was moving around quite a bit. A man in the choir noticed our son, and...

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Is it a Note Worth Playing?

Author

Seth Godin

Keywords

Passion

I’ve never really played a single note in my life. For 8 years I played the clarinet growing up. Actually, that’s not true. I took lessons but I’m not sure I actually played the clarinet. I went to h...

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The Testimony of the Great 20th Century Pastor Martin-Lloyd Jones

Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

One of the things that is interesting about Lloyd-Jones’s testimony is that he was a royal physician when he became a Christian; he worked for Lord Horder, the physician to the royal family. If he had...

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What Do You Do?

Author

Steven Garber

Keywords

Scripture

Micah 6:8, Matthew 25:35-40, Isaiah 58:6-7, Proverbs 24:11-12, James 2:15-17

I recently had lunch with a former British boarding school chaplain. He remembers being with the boys in his school the morning thirty years ago that the very first pictures of widespread starvation i...

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St. Matthew’s Passion: Not Theater But Prayer

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:8, John 12:32, Isaiah 53:4-6, Luke 23:39-43, Hebrews 12:2

Another example struck me forcibly during the 2014 season of Promenade Concerts in the Albert Hall in London. (The “Proms,” as they are known, make up a major annual festival, offering world-class mus...

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He is With us in our Crying Out to God

Author

Wesley Hill

Scripture

Mark 15:34

When the great theologian Jürgen Moltmann was sixteen years old in 1943, he was drafted into the German army and was soon captured by the Allied forces. He wound up in a prisoner of war camp in Scotla...

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And So Was Raised the Cross…

Author

Melito of Sardis

Keywords

And so he was raised on a cross, and a title was fixed, indicating who it was who was being executed. Painful it is to say, but more terrible not to say. . . . He who suspended the earth is suspended,...

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A Roomful of Yearning & Regret

Author

Timothy and Kathy Keller

Keywords

Writer Wendy Plump wrote a candid, vulnerable article in the NY Times called “A Roomful of Yearning and Regret” (Dec. 9, 2010). In the article she disclosed that both her & her husband had affair...

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A Wrong Understanding of What This Life is Supposed to Be

Author

Larry Crabb

Keywords

Questioning God

The problem sincere Christians have with God often comes down to a wrong understanding of what this life is meant to provide. We naturally and wrongly assume we’re here to experience something God has...

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Finding Your Blue Flame

Author

Jennifer Fulwiler

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 1:6, Psalm 37:4, Galatians 6:9-10, Matthew 5:14-16, Colossians 3:23-24

I had just started dating my husband, Joe, when I met international speaker and bestselling author Keith Ferrazzi. He was a friend of Joe’s …but on this day he was an intimidating public figure. I wan...

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Getting the Right Goals May be the Key to Success

Author

Arthur C. Brooks

Keywords

Worthy goals are generally motivated by something deeper than success. In her conversations with Nobel laureates, [researcher Xiaodong D.] Lin said she has found that “they all have insatiable passion...

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What is Love?

Author

John Mark Comer

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 10:25-37, Romans 12:9-10, John 15:12-13, 1 John 4:7-8, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 1 John 3:16-18

In love. What does that even mean? “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them. I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See the probl...

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Following Jesus Requires Real Commitment

Author

Bradley Long

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 3:5-8, Matthew 22:37, Romans 12:1-2, Luke 14:26-27, Deuteronomy 6:5, Luke 16:13, Mark 12:30, John 14:15, Matthew 16:24-26, Luke 9:59-62, Matthew 6:24, Hebrews 11:13-16, Hebrews 10:38-39, Matthew 6:33-34, Matthew 10:37-39

What are you willing to do for love? An instructor for the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course shared with a class the major hang-up he had to get over before asking his wife to ma...

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The Trickiness of Defining Love

Author

John Mark Comer

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 7:7–9 , Hosea 3:1–3, Exodus 34:6–7, John 15:12–13 , 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 , Psalm 136:

In love . What does that even mean? “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them. I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See ...

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