Passion Drives You. Purpose Is What You Suffer For

Sermon outline

Passion is about you and your comfort, but purpose is a divine call found in your identity in Christ, and once you know it you will be willing to be uncomfortable and to become a doer of the word.

1. Values are your non-negotiables

   Personal values come from our social world, our religious background, our ethnicity and culture, our upbringing and our education. They answer the questions who am I, why am I and what matters most to me. He asks the church to name their non-negotiables: the lines they will not cross and the things they will never compromise. Values should show in our actions.

   “Values are the system of non-negotiables.”

2. Your identity is in Christ

   The world finds its identity in where it was born, how much is in the bank and what position it holds. Christians have put on Christ, where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and anyone in Christ is a new creation whose old nature no longer exists. God has reconciled us to Himself and made us ambassadors with a ministry of reconciliation. Worship is then a whole life: at work, in the kitchen and in how we treat others.

   Illustration: Eve could have sat anywhere in the garden, but she sat next to the one tree she was not supposed to eat from, and so put herself in harm's way.

   “We can't say that we are filled with the Holy Spirit and are filled with anger.”

   • Galatians 3:27-29
   • 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
   • 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
   • Galatians 2:19-20

3. Passion is for you; purpose is a divine call

   Passion is about your emotions and what drives you to explore and engage, and you can have many. It can be self-centred and inconvenient to everyone you love. Work is not necessarily your passion either; it is something you do so you can provide. Purpose is a sense of meaning and direction, usually involving serving others, and once known it becomes a mission in good times and bad.

   Illustration: Fishing can be a passion even when nobody at home eats fish and it takes you away from your family. He tried to turn his cycling into a family activity, buying bikes for everyone and riding together on Saturdays, and it worked for a while. And nobody in the room, he says, has a passion for doing their children's homework.

   “My passion can be something that can be inconvenient to everybody that I love.”

4. Where purpose is unknown, the enemy leads you astray

   Where the purpose of something is unknown, people turn to medication, alcohol, drugs and addiction. The devil likes us chasing our passions but not finding our purpose, so he offers just enough truth to keep us on the wrong path. Answers will not be found on YouTube but in the word, as the mind is renewed daily.

   Illustration: He points to flat earthers and to people who go hunting through the Book of Enoch, the Anunnaki and reptilians for the meaning of life: searching for purpose through passion, in the wrong place.

   “Just enough truth to keep you. Just enough of a lie.”

   • Matthew 7:7-8
   • Romans 12:2

5. Step out before it is perfect

   No one in Scripture followed a perfect roadmap; God says something, they do it, and the next step comes. There is always an element of the unknown in faith and in working in your purpose. A mind bound by fear is a prison, but God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. Do not despise small beginnings.

   Illustration: If you are only driving a little VW Beetle now, do not despise it; one day the Lord may bless you with the expensive car. But a man who thinks he got the car and the house himself will still not serve the Lord.

   “If you're waiting for things to be perfect before you start, start now.”

   • 2 Timothy 1:7
   • Zechariah 4:10

6. Purpose makes you willing to be uncomfortable

   Passion is always about comfort; purpose is what gets you up in the morning and makes you prepared to be uncomfortable. When the house is in turmoil, you are the prophet in your home, and the church meetings are where revelation, healing and miracles come. Do not believe the lie that you can have a relationship with God without His people; the call not to neglect gathering is about purpose, not a convenient church down the road.

   Illustration: A bodybuilder accepts being punished by trainers and diets to get the body he wants. A homebody who loves Netflix will still leave home, knock on every company's door and sleep on the road with the ticks if he knows a hundred refugee children in Rwanda are depending on him.

   “When we know our purpose, I am prepared to be uncomfortable.”

   • Hebrews 10:25
   • Ephesians 4:4-6

7. Be doers of the word, not hearers only

   Receive the implanted word with meekness and then do it. The hearer who does not act is like a man who looks in a mirror and walks away forgetting what he looks like: a man without his identity. The one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it is blessed in what he does, and in the doing he establishes his purpose and generational blessing. Breaking that hedge by not doing the word opens the door to trouble.

   Illustration: A man comes to church, hears the pastor tell him what to do, walks out and does nothing, and so forgets everything he saw.

   “A man who is only a hearer and is not a doer is a man without his identity.”

   • James 1:21-25

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